Why Should I Care?

For anyone with experience making plans around a weather forecast, there is no doubt that you have wondered how sure the weather forecaster was about that forecast that seemed to be nothing like the day actually turned out. Of course there are many days when the forecast seems spot on (although we never seem to [...]

As I undertake final preparation on a presentation related to seasonal forecasting for next week’s American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting, it seemed like a good time to look back at last year’s seasonal forecast for the North Atlantic Hurricane Season.  In previous posts (1st, second), we looked at what various forecasting groups were saying the [...]

Since our last post about seasonal prediction of tropical cyclones, one of the organizations (the UK Meteorology Office) mentioned in that post has come out with their official forecast.  The UK Meteorology Office, or simply Met Office, has made a prediction that is substantially different than the other forecasts to date.  Traditionally the Met Office [...]

At some point we have all likely heard a phrase like ‘if a butterfly flaps its wings in <insert location>, a <insert major disaster> will occur in <insert second location>’.  Certainly Jeff Goldblum made such a phrase commonplace in his role as Dr. Ian Malcom in Jurassic Park.  With his introduction of Chaos Theory and [...]

In considering the topic of ‘climate forecast uncertainty’ it became clear that one could easily write a whole PhD thesis on the topic and if I don’t want to read that I am sure you don’t either.  At the same time there was no way to scrunch it down to one single post.  So this [...]