Barbeque Summers & Mild Winters

These are the two predictions for the summer and winter in the last year by the ONCE respected Met Office.

What more can be said.

Well, i have just read that for getting the weather completely wrong the chief executive John Hirst is receiving a 25% pay rise.

Here is a quote from the telegraph article

According to a copy of the organisation’s latest annual report and accounts, John Hirst, the organisation’s chief executive, received between £195,000 and £200,000 in pay and bonuses in 2008/9.

The figure is a 25 per cent increase on the £155,000 to £160,000 "pay equivalent" for Mr Hirst in 2007/8. Mr Hirst had joined midway through the previous financial year in September 2007.

Here is the best quote from the article, it did make me laugh;

A Met Office spokesman said Mr Hirst’s total pay had jumped because a “performance related bonus” from 2007/8 was paid in 2008/9. There was no underlying increase in salary, she said.

She said: "John Hirst’s salary reflected the need to bring in, and appropriately reward, skills to meet the significant opportunities and challenges in our weather and climate business.

Performance related bonus, so he was brought in to get the weather completely wrong then, or have i got the wrong end of the stick.

I know predicting the weather can be difficult, but to get it completely wrong over the last 2 - 3 years doesn't give me much confidence in John Hirst's abilities.

There are arguments that this is due to people in the met Office being part of the climate change conspiracy, where there computers are being manipulated to show or predict climbing temperatures to show global warming.

What ever the reason the people at the met office are getting the forecasts very wrong. In my opinion new blood should be brought in, and they must be allowed to do the job without being pressured by any side of the climate change argument.

I have just looked at the met office's website and i found the following;

"The Met Office provides a service which is second to none in helping the UK understand and make the most of the weather in this country and overseas."
Derek Twigg, Under Secretary of State for Defence

'A service second to none'. Not lately they haven't.

Another quote;

The Met Office’s Public Weather Service (PWS) provides the weather forecasts that the UK depends upon. It funds and is responsible for gathering observations of the current weather, developing and operating the computer model that predicts future weather, and the analysis of observations and model output to create our weather forecasts.

Yes we depend on the forecasts being right, or as near as possible, but you haven't been doing that well lately have you.

You fund and gather weather observations for computer model output to create weather forecasts, well i don't think the computers are working correctly, because i think your computers are adding 1 + 1 and coming out with an answer 4,573,458,215.3.

You can read for yourself the ' How valuable is the met office' web page here. Have a look and see what you think.

In a previous blog entry the met office predicted that 2010 will be 'more likely than not' the world's warmest year on record.

Well let us see what happens this year.