The weirdest year ever?
Jan 17, 2013
Bishop Hill in BBC, Climate: MetOffice

Roger Harrabin takes a look at the recent furore over the Met Office's climate predictions and finds that some within the Met Office are none to happy with the organisation's PR performance.

The damage to Met Office credibility, though, was exacerbated by a couple of blunders in its own communication.

The first was to put the decadal report on its website on Christmas Eve - the traditional date for burying stories that the authorities don't want publicised. I was initially suspicious. But the Met Office since explained that the scientist responsible was due to finish the work by end of year and was about to go on holiday. That sounds plausible.

The second error was in the caption to a graph comparing the new temperature forecast with one from the past. It was badly-worded and led bloggers to conclude that the Met Office were trying to cover up the disparity between forecasts. (They seem to have accepted later that this is not the case).

Interesting stuff. The article also includes the remarkable claim that this has been the UK's "weirdest year of weather".

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