Cliff Mass reports:
Last week there was a hearing before the House Subcommittee on the Environment regarding a piece of legislation, The Weather Forecasting Improvement Act of 2013, that has the goal to:
“To prioritize and redirect NOAA resources to a focused program of investment on near-term, affordable, and attainable advances in observational, computing, and modeling capabilities to deliver substantial improvement in weather forecasting and prediction of high impact weather events, such as tornadoes and hurricanes, and for other purposes.”
Sponsored by the Republican side of the committee, the goal of this act is to provide sufficient resources and guidance to push weather prediction forward more rapidly. And the sponsors are right, with better organization and enhanced resources, weather prediction could improve rapidly in the U.S.. The Democratic side of the committee were clearly unhappy since it is clear that part of the intent of the bill is to rebalance resources in NOAA: more for weather prediction and less for climate.
It is my observation that weather reporting 2 days in advance is, at best, 50% reliable. The next day weather report is about 60% reliable and I’m just considering precipitation. My perception is that weather forecasting is getting worse! It would appear that the dependence on models is creating confusion and inaccuracy. Anybody know why?
“Climate is what we expect; weather is what we get.” Lazarus Long, via Heinlein. It’s more difficult than that.
Weather prediction has more practical use than climate prediction and is probably more practical to achieve. Based on the range of climate models that lack “skill”, as the term is, I’d much rather see weather studied.
Charlatans may still blame anything that causes annoyance or damage on people, but they’ll use a shorter time frame. Charlatans already do that, vice the post above this thread.