On 25/02/2016 00:39, Tudor Hughes wrote:
On Tuesday, 23 February 2016 11:12:33 UTC, Jumper wrote:
On 23/02/2016 09:15, haaark wrote:
On Sunday, 21 February 2016 16:40:30 UTC, haaark wrote:
I know it's been many years since the DT and ST were real quality broadsheets. I also know that the circulation of hard copy is in its death spiral-five years maybe I'd guess before the anachronism of sending hundreds of tons of newsprint round the country every day comes to an end, anyone?-and the papers must be haemorrhaging cash.
Phillip Eden's successor at the ST is Peter Stanford,a lightweight waffler who today came up with a classic.
Talking about the two ways of looking at winter's end, he said that one way was the end of February, and the other was the astrological way-i.e.March 21st.
Like almost everybody and his wife these days, he must have a degree.
Did he get it from the University of Glastonbury?
What started off as a lament for the quality press, and continued with the usual gratuitous vulgar abuse from a resident troll, has ended up with sad news about PE.
I've followed him for at least at least twenty years. Where else would you find out that in the 1850's-60's Sydney had its coldest ever winter's day? A southerly blast from the Antarctic with a max. temp. of 3C! Coming from any other source you wouldn't believe it.
All the best PE. Get well soon.



Unfortunately, all good things come to an end eventually. :-(

That's a bit trite. Phillip is only 64.

Tudor Hughes


I believe the date we are born and die on are pre-determined, maybe by
God, or natural forces in the universe we know not of at the moment.

On 25/02/2016 06:18, dawlish wrote:
'great men'


Oh just hilarious! 😀😀😀😀😀 hughes thinks he walks with 'great men'. One of them being the resident newsgroup racist

Brilliant! Do keep it up, hughes. It's wonderful entertainment; just wonderful.


It seems I've gone beyond the lower case titling of my surname, to be
called a social cosh word of "Racist".

I am supreme in dullish's world of hate. (*_*)

On Thu, 25 Feb 2016 00:45:45 -0800 (PST)
haaark wrote:

On Sunday, 21 February 2016 16:40:30 UTC, haaark wrote:
I know it's been many years since the DT and ST were real quality
broadsheets. I also know that the circulation of hard copy is in
its death spiral-five years maybe I'd guess before the anachronism
of sending hundreds of tons of newsprint round the country every
day comes to an end, anyone?-and the papers must be haemorrhaging
cash. Phillip Eden's successor at the ST is Peter Stanford,a
lightweight waffler who today came up with a classic. Talking about
the two ways of looking at winter's end, he said that one way was
the end of February, and the other was the astrological
way-i.e.March 21st. Like almost everybody and his wife these days,
he must have a degree. Did he get it from the University of
Glastonbury?

I remember reading-it must be 40 years ago at least- that no weather
forecaster worth his salt would open his mouth without looking out
the window first. How many forecasters today even have windows?


I remember an assistant at Wattisham telling me how another forecaster
had been briefing DOF and a few pilots in the office and saying when
the current rain would stop. He was standing facing the pilots leaning
against the forecast desk with his back to the window. The assistant
tried a couple of times to interrupt, but to no avail and the
forecaster continued his story as the snow swept across the airfield
behind him.

--
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks. [Retd meteorologist/programmer]
http://www.scarlet-jade.com/
I wear the cheese. It does not wear me.
Posted with Claws: http://www.claws-mail.org/

"George Booth" wrote in message
...
On 25/02/2016 10:23, John Hall wrote:
In message , Eskimo Will
writes
snip
The MetO fully intend to make use of WOW information in model analyses
and a whole host of other data types. They will be able to do this due
to improved data error co-variances and some cunning mathematical
trickery which I cannot go into here. This is due to happen by the end
of this decade.

That makes me a little uneasy. Will they be able to get rid of all the
wrong data, of which I'm sure there must be a lot on WOW? And there's
also the opposite problem that, the more stringent their checks, the
greater the risk that some valid and important - but unexpected - data
might be discarded. Take the Hampstead thunderstorm in August 1975, for
instance, when a phenomenal amount of rain fell in an hour or so when
IIRC practically everywhere else in the country was dry. I can imagine
the vetting algorithm seeing a WOW report of say 160mm of rain and -
with no other reports of rain - deciding that it must be a typo for 16mm
or even 1.6mm.

Yes, these were my thoughts as well. If you look at the WOW homepage there
are very obviously a (minority) of AWS which suffer from poor exposure
and/or inaccurate instrumentation. The same thing is obvious when looking
at Weather Underground maps as well. As long as some filtering/moderation
of data from such AWS data takes place then I would agree they have a
value. I would add that all the folk I've spoken with over the years
who've set up AWS have been most conscientious in ensuring that their data
is as accurate as can be. However we now have a lot of low cost units
available which are set up with insufficient regard for siting
requirements.


That's where the clever mathematical stuff comes in taking account of the
error covariances. Basically you extract what you can from the WOW data but
giving it low weight compared to SYNOPS etc but it will still add value. I
did a study many years ago where it was concluded that for fog observing
what was needed was not just well-sited obs but loads of obs, even if they
were poorly sited or just plain wrong. Also don't forget the model itself
will have some idea what to expect from an observation, especially if the
assimilation is continuous, so it will be able to better decide how much
weight to give it. In the Hampstead storm situation it would "know" the
situation was convective and so a sudden report of 160mm would not surprise
it - clever stuff isn't it?!

Will
--
" Some sects believe that the world was created 5000 years ago. Another sect
believes that it was created in 1910 "
http://www.lyneside.demon.co.uk/Hayt...antage_Pro.htm
Will Hand (Haytor, Devon, 1017 feet asl)
---------------------------------------------

The MetO fully intend to make use of WOW
information in model analyses and a whole host of other data types.

This s symptomatic of what I said in an earlier post re senior managers not understanding the importance of standards. All Met O AWSs are inspected annually and sensors are standardised and calibrated every six-months. There are ongoing QC checks on all data, which allows sensor errors to be picked up quickly. There's a Metadata database for all official sites. WOW data is interesting but not reliable enough. No sensor checks, no exposure checks beyond self certification. GIGO!

"Graham P Davis" wrote in message
-jade...
On Thu, 25 Feb 2016 00:45:45 -0800 (PST)
haaark wrote:

On Sunday, 21 February 2016 16:40:30 UTC, haaark wrote:
I know it's been many years since the DT and ST were real quality
broadsheets. I also know that the circulation of hard copy is in
its death spiral-five years maybe I'd guess before the anachronism
of sending hundreds of tons of newsprint round the country every
day comes to an end, anyone?-and the papers must be haemorrhaging
cash. Phillip Eden's successor at the ST is Peter Stanford,a
lightweight waffler who today came up with a classic. Talking about
the two ways of looking at winter's end, he said that one way was
the end of February, and the other was the astrological
way-i.e.March 21st. Like almost everybody and his wife these days,
he must have a degree. Did he get it from the University of
Glastonbury?

I remember reading-it must be 40 years ago at least- that no weather
forecaster worth his salt would open his mouth without looking out
the window first. How many forecasters today even have windows?


I remember an assistant at Wattisham telling me how another forecaster
had been briefing DOF and a few pilots in the office and saying when
the current rain would stop. He was standing facing the pilots leaning
against the forecast desk with his back to the window. The assistant
tried a couple of times to interrupt, but to no avail and the
forecaster continued his story as the snow swept across the airfield
behind him.


ROFL - brilliant!

Will
--
" Some sects believe that the world was created 5000 years ago. Another sect
believes that it was created in 1910 "
http://www.lyneside.demon.co.uk/Hayt...antage_Pro.htm
Will Hand (Haytor, Devon, 1017 feet asl)
---------------------------------------------

"Desperate Dan" wrote in message
...

This s symptomatic of what I said in an earlier post re senior managers not
understanding the importance of standards. All Met O AWSs are inspected
annually and sensors are standardised and calibrated every six-months. There
are ongoing QC checks on all data, which allows sensor errors to be picked
up quickly. There's a Metadata database for all official sites. WOW data is
interesting but not reliable enough. No sensor checks, no exposure checks
beyond self certification. GIGO!
============================

TBH if the WOW input software is suitably written, it would be reasonably
easy to ascertain over the course of several weeks/months evaluation which
WOW reporting stations were generating the best quality data and to weight
them appropriately. When WOW was first being set up there was input from
several parties to the effect that some ranking of stations by QoD would be
a good idea, much as CWOP is able to do (primarily) in the US, but there's
no obvious sign that this suggestion was taken on board.

John Dann
www.weatherstations.co.uk

On Thu, 25 Feb 2016 11:11:28 -0000
"Eskimo Will" wrote:

Basically you extract what you can from the WOW data but
giving it low weight compared to SYNOPS etc but it will still add
value. I did a study many years ago where it was concluded that for
fog observing what was needed was not just well-sited obs but loads
of obs, even if they were poorly sited or just plain wrong.

That takes me back fifty years when Freddie Inman of Met O 1 was
arguing strongly that no observations could be useful for compiling
records of fog. Sounds weird but in was when weather reports from ships'
log-books were being digitised. Freddie insisted that when a ship had
entered the region of the Grand Banks, say, and no observations were
entered in the book because of "navigational duties", then these null
reports should be recorded as observations of fog, particularly if the
last observation had recorded fog or adjacent fog. This didn't go down
too well with the powers-that-be but I think he got his way in the end.
If he hadn't, frequency of fog at sea would have been severely
under-reported in the records.

--
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks. [Retd meteorologist/programmer]
http://www.scarlet-jade.com/
I wear the cheese. It does not wear me.
Posted with Claws: http://www.claws-mail.org/

TBH if the WOW input software is suitably written, it would be reasonably
easy to ascertain over the course of several weeks/months evaluation which
WOW reporting stations were generating the best quality data and to weight
them appropriately. When WOW was first being set up there was input from
several parties to the effect that some ranking of stations by QoD would be
a good idea, much as CWOP is able to do (primarily) in the US, but there's
no obvious sign that this suggestion was taken on board.


The only way to understand a site is to survey the site. The only way to understand how or if a site exposure changes is to maintain the site Metadata.. As an example, how do you know if lower than expected rainfall at a site is due to the instrumentation, the natural environment e.g. topography, or overexposure/underexposure due to poor siting? You can even have variable seasonal exposure! All of this would be picked up at a site inspection but all that an evaluation program would do is monitor for consistency (assuming that there was no obvious error). This goes for the temperature as well and don't even think about wind!

"Desperate Dan" wrote in message
...

The only way to understand a site is to survey the site.

Sorry, but I don't really agree, or at least not completely. There's no
argument but that the gold standard is for a professional survey of each and
every site contributing data (to WOW in this particular instance). But
that's not practicable nor is it every likely to happen - although I
wouldn't exclude some more informed type of self-reporting/certification
than exists at present, maybe even encourage well-briefed amateurs in the
area to visit and comment.

However, that doesn't mean that all data from sites that haven't been
individually surveyed is equally bad and unreliable. Modern statistical
methods are quite powerful in monitoring the deviation of actuals from
gridded data calculated from the overall observational data set and should
quickly be able to prioritise site that offer consistently accurate data,
especially if the self-certification for exposure can be factored in too.
No-one is making the argument that this is ever going to be as good as data
from a well-exposed and professionally surveyed site, but I do strongly
suspect that this approach may well be more powerful than you might imagine.
Again I'd suggest looking at what CWOP does for the US.

JGD