Crankarm said:
The Government are up to our eyeballs in debt. If the Met Office is still a government agency full of pampered civil servants, which I think it might be, and given their track record on forecasting has been soooo breathtakingly wrong in the past, more recently and futher back, then I know where the axe should fall with an almighty chop.
The met office is still a government agency run by the MOD, however it is not as simple as that as they also run as a private company.
Actually you would find that the short range forecasts they do are surprisingly accurate considering the amount of data they have to produce them. Long range forecasting at the met office to be honest is pretty dire, but long range forecasting is always going to be a shot in the dark all thanks to the chaotic nature of the atmosphere. Medium range forecasts are actually done by another agency of which the met office does have some input into.
To give you an idea of how difficult it is to produce a weather forecast. Try to imagine a picture of a football match which has been made into a jigsaw puzzle, get rid of 75% of the pieces including important ones with players and the ball. Then from the rest of the jigsaw puzzle try to work out what happens next. Then to simulate what long range forecasting is like, try to guess what happens for the rest of the game.