Who should we trust when it comes to predicting the weather?
When it rains, it’s easy to see it an inconvenience, especially when you’ve already left the housed and didn’t take an umbrella because the weather forecast predicted that it would stay dry. The weather forecast features quite strongly in our lives. In the UK, a colour coding system is used when the weather is predicted to have a risk to life. Recent storms here have highlighted the benefit of being able to predicts strong winds, heavy snow and rain so that people can avoid these risks and shelter from the worst of the weather. The last few storms saw whole communities lose their electricity supply, roofs stripped from buildings, flooding and severe travel disruption.
But weather forecasting has even more importance: if you’re relying on renewables for your electricity generation then you need some idea of when the wind will blow and the sun will shine and it’s also important in the water industry so that the supply of water for sanitation and agriculture can be managed, and so that floods can be predicted. While the forecast on your favourite weather app might only show what may happen a few days in advance, the water industry wants to have some idea of what will happen in 80–100 years.
These forecasts rely on models that are based on historic data but there’s a hitch. The models predict that some events such as…
