By Kable, 28 April 2005 11:30
NEWS An upgrade to the Met OfficeÂ’s supercomputing system has cut error rates for weather forecasts by 11 per cent over the past year.
A spokesperson said it had achieved an 11 per cent reduction in the error rate for its predictions for the northern hemisphere.
This follows the installation of an NEC SX-6 supercomputer in spring 2004, and compares with an average error reduction rate of 3 per cent in the other five major weather modelling centres in Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the US.
On a global basis, the Met Office has achieved a 6 per cent reduction in the error rate.
The supercomputer has provided a six-fold increase in processing capacity compared with the old model, and enabled the Met Office to use models with a finer resolution to predict the weather.
On 12 April 2005, it began to use a new supercomputer with even more processing nodes: the NEC SX-8. The spokesperson said it is working on a model that uses 12km 'boxes' from the atmosphere, that these should be reduced to 4km in the near future, and that there are long term plans to shrink them to 1km.
The Met Office hopes this will enable it to achieve further improvements in its accuracy, but is not making projections on any future reduction in the error rate.
Roger Hunt, chief operating officer at the Met Office, said: "We need to continually improve our forecasts to meet the growing expectations of the public and our other customers. The improvements will continue as we produce more and more detailed forecasts in the future."
Comments
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1. Richard
OK, so why are BBC forecasts so vague?
Perhaps the Met Office generates accurate forecasts, but the BBC and other broadcasters then wreck these by rushing their broadcasts.
"Weather girls" gabble things such as "rain in the east." Does this mean Yorkshire or Kent?
Similarly, "rain in the West Country." Does this mean Swindon or Lands End?
Many areas have features such as the Blackdown Hills, which make the local weather very different.
Tourist businesses and many other businesses are very dependent on ordinary people's perceptions and expectations.
Vague and inaccurate weather forecasts cause real economic harm.
2. anonymous
Talking of which ... did you hear Paxman on Newsnight the other week? He condensed the whole report to:
"Well, it's April ... what do you expect?"
3. anonymous
My advice to you is to register for the free aviation weather breifings from the metoffice. Once youve spent 30mins learning the abbrieviations the text reports give you HIGHLY accurate weather information for your nearest airfield.
They are rarely wrong because of the obvious implications.
It won't get much more local than that.
Hope that helps.