Calling meteorologists?

Question

Can any one actually tell me what are the chances of some hot and sunny prolonged weather in the uk this year?.Every time i hear someone giving their opinion on how the summers going to be its different every time.I am so fed up of rain.

Thank you.

Answer 1

Sas, I am not a meteorologist but I teach meteorology to aviators and it has been my life long hobby because I have sailed all my life and now, I fly a small aircraft. Weather forecasting is very important to me.

You must understand that, at our latitudes (I live in south Norway) we see a constant flow of low pressures passing along the front between polar and temperate air masses. Ocasionally, a high pressure builds up and divert the low pressures more north or south.

But no one can predict how the weather will be in the weeks to come. The best meteorologists can do is to feed the data to a computer that - based on previous observations - try to guess what will happen. It may then say that there is 80% chances that it will rain tomorrow; 40% chances that it will be sunny the day after and ... maybe 5% chances that it will be sunny in ten days.

But what's the point to know a forecast that has only 5% chances to happen?

There is little chances that the future will see much more accurate and/or longer forecast. In the 50s, a meteorologist, using one of the first computer, did a simulation and came to the same result, each time. One day, being impatient for the result, he fed the computer with the data collected half way in the simulation and drove it from there. To his great surprise, the end result was totally different. That was because the rounding decimal from his entered data was only tiny little bit different from what was actually in the computer.

From there came the notion of the "butterfly principle" that says that a butterfly wing flapping in Africa can be the cause of a storm in America months later. From this came the Chaos Theory and its use in fractal modelling. In the meantime, Quantum mechanics came with the principle of uncertainity, thus ending the old Newtonian idea that if we knew the laws of physic ruling the universe, we could predict everything in the future.

Answer 2

Not a chance if the jet stream is still in its current postion over us. Its bringing all the Lows in...

Answer 3

the summer is going to remain changeable I'm afraid we will have the odd hot day but not prolonged global warming doing its bit ie more and more rain .