Saturday, December 12, 2009

Forecasting uncertainty

2010 will be the warmest year on record, predicts Met Office” proclaimed the headline in the hard copy Times.

Oh dear! Another barbecue summer in prospect then.

The Met Office is more cautious on its website: Climate could warm to record levels in 2010



I was going to look at the details, but they do not seem to be there yet, the latest available are for 2009.

The very idea of estimating a single, meaningful, global average temperature is a daunting one; I note that last years report promised a different method would be used for future forecasts since “Previous optimum averaging methods probably underestimate the component of uncertainty due to data gaps.”

Indeed


Link