BOM rainfall outlooks lead to farmer disillusion

IN the chaos of Australia’s climatic extremes everyone clings to the promise of certainty.

Inaccurate: Calls for BOM to admit its limitations and failures.

IN the chaos of Australia’s climatic extremes everyone clings to the promise of certainty.

But nothing, not even the Bureau of Meteorology’s
$77 million supercomputer and its team of climate scientists, can deliver anything that is remotely certain.

Of course that hasn’t stopped the bureau issuing overly ambitious three-month rainfall outlooks, which are usually way off the mark.

These repeated failures lead to farmer disillusion, frustration and usually the search for alternatives — on the web or in rural folklore.

The best the BOM could do is admit its limitations and failings. But instead it’s crowing from the rooftops about the value its forecasts deliver.

It’s a joke for the BOM to claim “feedback from the Bureau’s key customers is that our outlooks are widely used and add value in the decision-making process for a number of important sectors, including agriculture, emergency management, and energy”.

What value? Where is the measure of this value?

Farmers cannot rely on BOM outlooks to make decisions on pouring vast sums into feed, fuel, buying irrigation water, seed, fertiliser or livestock.

It’s clear the BOM’s forecasts are not based on articulating the uncertainty of science, but on proving its worth on the back of multimillion-dollar taxpayer investments.

As Professor Andrew Vizard said, it’s time for another independent assessment of the value the BOM’s forecasts deliver. Those farmers who sit on the boards of Australia’s research and development corporations could do us all a favour by calling for an independent analysis of the real value of the BOM’s three-month rainfall outlooks.