On Thursday, 14 January 2016 23:26:33 UTC, Dave Cornwell wrote:
Further to the earlier thread on this. A most interesting read on TWO
in the Model Output section of the forum, especially for a psychologist
rather than a meteorologist! Basically because of the uncertainty in the
various models at the moment there is the usual ongoing feud between the
irrational cold lovers and the odd person who sees a mild breakdown.
What is interesting is that a cold fan can make a totally unfounded
claim and be declared a hero whereas a person suggesting a mild
breakdown is imminent will be hounded and insulted. The current victim
is one "Shropshire" who is accused of winding them up when he sees that
in the GFS and ECM models. He is quite blunt but never responds rudely
to any of the attacks. It is the anthropomorphism put on the models that
makes me smile. Things like "The UKMO model can be trusted because it is
consistent" as if being consistent means it must be right and therefore
trustworthy. Or " UKMO has stuck to its guns and been consistent in the
story its told, ECM and GFS hadn't a clue and swapped sides every other
run".
It's like a taunting football crowd. Makes a great read though and
funnily enough if you take it as a whole you do get a pretty good idea
of what is actually going on with the various models.
Dave

Interesting and amusing post, Dave, and I'm glad it doesn't happen to any serious extent on this group. The TWO lot seem to think a model should have stout moral fibre and not give in to the Axis of Evil, i.e. westerlies. It also seems to be a case of being told what you want to hear, such as "England are going to win the World Cup". We tend to anthropomorphise everything, even steam engines (Thomas the Tank Engine, but surely he has a driver?)), but doing it to computer models seems particularly barmy. I don't think I'd like TWO.

Tudor Hughes