The BOM should resume service

The Bureau of Meteorology wants to encourage do-it-yourself weather forecasting, deciding to ditch incremental updates on the possibility of La Nina and El Nino, based on a range of models and data. Instead it will keep it simple, with a statement that we are in one or the other, unless we aren’t.

For anybody who really needs to know, such as farmers and fishing operators, the bureau recommends that users check its long-range forecasts of rainfall and temperature, which cover more variables. The reason for the change, as Charlie Peel writes, is that the bureau reckons climate change is making it harder to predict the weather.

Failed forecasts have long upset people whose livelihoods depend on the BOM getting it right. This explains why independent experts exist, using the same public or for-a-fee data to provide predictions.

We already have an indication of what happens when the bureau’s forecast is not much of one – daily estimates for town and city rainfalls that regularly predict rainfall ranges between a drizzle and a deluge. They are undoubtedly statistically well-based but not much help for people who want to know whether they need to take an umbrella or a tinnie.

Reducing the range of what it provides is one way for the BOM (which, for obvious reasons, hates the acronym) to appear to lift its game and to avoid criticism when it is outright wrong, but it abrogates responsibility for its core function. Meteorology is a science but the bureau is a service. It should remember why it exists and step up to serve.