As we officially enter winter, some of us are already looking for signs it will be over soon. Folk wisdom tells us to look to the woollys for insight into how bad the season will be.
A dramatically-named “weather bomb” exploded across the UK in the past week, bringing winds gusting up to 144mph on outlying islands. But despite the cool name these “bombs” are more common than you might…
There has been much media commentary recently about the Bureau of Meteorology’s efforts to use historical weather records to gauge how Australia’s climate is changing. Climate scientists have rejected…
It looks like it’s all over bar the shouting for the chance of this year bringing on a “super” El Niño. Or is it? The Bureau of Meteorology has brought the odds of an El Niño event down to 50%, from 70…
Here’s a new bookmark for the browser on your mobile device: m.bom.gov.au. The Bureau of Meteorology has finally released its new mobile website, formatted for smart phones and tablet computers. The site…
The state of the British summer has always been a constant source of fascination and irritation, if only for its fickle nature. Now the latest prediction is for more heavy summer downpours. Our study…
As notorious weather predictions go, the “barbecue summer” of 2009 is up there with Michael Fish’s dismissal of the incoming 1987 hurricane. The summer turned out to be wet and windy, and questions were…
The IPCC’s latest climate change report has made it clear that global temperature rises will be the cause of more extreme weather events around the world. Indeed, weather disasters increasingly provoke…
Most people saw the warm dry weather from June to September as a welcome, but freak, occurrence. Because, as anyone who invested in floaty dresses, barbecues or expensive sunglasses in previous years will…
Damaging hurricanes are familiar along the US east coast, with the recent hurricane Sandy a dramatic example. In Europe we are unused to such dramatic weather and the widespread destruction that hurricanes…
Typhoon Soulik struck Taiwan at the beginning of the weekend, killing two people before moving on into Guangdong in southern China, where 300,000 people have already been evacuated. Classed as a category…
Adam Kucharski, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
During the autumn of 1944, the US Air Corps forecasting team made a series of perfect predictions about weather patterns over the Pacific Ocean. Or so it seemed according to reports from aircrafts flying…
Tea-leaves, entrails, cockatoos: we all want to forecast the future. Weather forecasts have become so commonplace we rarely think about the technology, research, computing power and millions of observations…
Over the past few months our planet has been impacted by an increasing number of solar explosions that have erupted from the sun’s surface. Even though next year’s predicted solar maximum – the period…
The profound impact caused by the storm that began as Hurricane Sandy has turned the spotlight on many issues, including forecasts. In short: how well was Sandy forecast, and where do our forecasts need…
Over the last two summers, Eastern Australia has experienced two of the hardest hitting La Niña events since 1974. Widespread floods resulted across great swaths of the country. As expected, the La Niña…