Outlook is still good after 150 years of weather forecasts

The Met Office has been forecasting to the nation since 1861, and in that time it has become ever more crucial to our lives. Sheena Hastings reports.

TODAY a weather app loading five-day forecasts onto your iPhone means you need scarcely ever step out of the house without the wellies and brolly or (more rarely) the suncream.

Before the first weather forecast was published in a newspaper 150 years ago, sailors and country folk had their own unscientific ways of predicting the weather. They’d look at the horizon and study the shape, height and movement of clouds coming in from the west and consider wind direction. More rustic methods included seaweed, garden plants and pine cones.

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But even the best of these early prognostications could not prevent hundreds of British sailors being lost at sea each year due to unexpected storms, including the loss of more than 300 when the Royal Charter ran into disastrous weather off Anglesey in 1859.

A pioneering meteorologist (and former Governor of New Zealand) called Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy, who had risen to fame when he commanded The Beagle during Charles Darwin’s momentous voyage to the Galapagos Islands, had set up the Met Office as part of the Board of Trade in 1854. Convinced that he could help to save lives by forecasting the weather, he initially issued weather warnings to the Royal Navy and merchant ships, using readings provided by sea vessels, the new barometer gizmo and his own expertise as a surveyor, hydrographer, statistician and commander. The device which made the biggest difference at this time, though, was the telegraph. It meant that weather information could be relayed from one point to another in real time.

FitzRoy published his first public general forecast in The Times on August 1, 1861, and it was accurate. But some of his forecasts were well wide of the mark, and he became the butt of many a joke. An extremely religious man, he also came in for criticism for his involvement with Darwin and the scientist’s evolutionary theories. In 1865, FitzRoy took his own life and soon afterwards the weather forecasts ceased. Storm warnings for shipping resumed in 1867, but it wasn’t until 1879 that weather forecasts were published again. Forecasts have been heard on the BBC almost every day since 1923, except during the Second World War, when they were suspended in case they were helpful to the enemy.

If those early predictions about the elements were mostly about saving lives at sea, today’s weather forecasts updated several times a day by the Met Office (now part of the Department of Innovation, Business and Skills, but run as an arm’s length commercial concern, selling its services to the Government and anyone else who needs weather data) are vital to aviation, agriculture, road transport, health and even retail.

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“Back then and now, the basic purpose of weather forecasting is to protect lives and property from the effects of severe weather,” says Met Office forecaster Dave Britton. “All flights in the UK that fly over 10,000 feet and long-haul flights that fly at 24,000 feet or above use our weather data. We’re currently entering into a partnership with NASA, the US space agency, to study how weather in space affects weather down here, including how sunspots, and solar wind might change how satellites operate.”

The UK Met Office was one of the first in the world to use computers in forecasting, in the late 1950s, when the machine crunched 30,000 items of data per second to make its calculations. Today’s super-computer bases its forecasts and models on 100 trillion (yes, that would be 14 noughts) pieces of data a second, taking an hour and half to provide a global forecast four times a day. Over the early decades of Met Office forecasting it became increasingly obvious that physical observations were of great importance but so too were maths, physics and understanding of such specialist areas as thermodynamics. Today’s weather forecasters may not have sailing experience, but they will almost certainly have a top grade degree in physics (like BBC Yorkshire’s Paul Hudson), maths or meteorology.

Weather forecasting has attracted its share of dynamic and fascinating characters – men such as Lewis Fry Richardson, a mathematician, physicist, meteorologist, psychologist and pacifist educated at Bootham School in York and Cambridge, who pioneered modern mathematical techniques of weather forecasting, and the application of similar techniques to studying the causes of wars and how to prevent them.

With the advent of super-computers in the last decades, weather simulators have been designed to preview weather patterns and the accuracy of forecasting has improved immeasurably. Today a four-day forecast is as accurate as a one day forecast 30 years ago. The Met Office prides itself on getting the weather right 87 per cent of the time – or six days out of seven. On a table of world meteorological organisations surveyed by the UN, it consistently figures in the top two in the world, the other being Japan.

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It seems unfair, at a time of celebration of achievements, to keep beating up the Met Office over the hurricane of 1987, so let’s move on. “In 2007, the forecasts accurately predicted the South Yorkshire floods two-to-three days ahead, and in 2009 the floods in Cumbria were foreseen four or five days ahead,” says Dave Britton. “We’re rightly proud of that, but we have to acknowledge that no forecasting organisation is able to give 100 per cent accurate forecasts, due to something called chaos – the theory which says that a butterfly’s wings flapping thousands of miles away can cause a much bigger effect somewhere on the other side of the planet. Forecasting is ever more accurate, but no-one will ever get it completely right.”

What is 100 per cent accurate is that fact that global temperatures have increased by 0.7C over 150 years, and the decade 2001 to 2010 was the warmest ever observed.

The services of the Met Office are in demand by those who struggle to understand the vagaries of the oil prices, reinsurance and footfall at the shops. Weather data also helps to keep our armed forces safe and the Met Office has forecasters currently stationed at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan. Weather warnings are sent to some sufferers of respiratory diseases, to help avoid unnecessary hospital admissions. It even keeps our kettles boiling via information supplied to the National Grid.

Weather not only helps to shape our land; it also shapes history. No wonder we’re obsessed with it.

History of the weather forecast

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1854 – Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy, a pioneering meteorologist, set up the Met Office to give weather warnings which would help to save lives at sea

August 1, 1861 – FitzRoy’s first public weather forecast was published in The Times

1865 – FitzRoy died and forecasts ceased soon afterwards, but were brought back in 1867 after an outcry from the shipping industry, politicians and Press.

1922 – The first radio weather forecast was broadcast

October 1923 – the first radio shipping forecast was transmitted. It continues to be provided four times a day on Radio 4 by the Met Office on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, covering 31 sea areas

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June, 1944 – US President Dwight D Eisenhower “thanked the gods of war” for the timing of the D-Day landings but the Met Office says it was accurate weather forecasting that enabled the success

1949 – the first televised weather forecast, consisting of a basic weather map and voiceover recording

January 1954 – the first live weather forecast was presented on the BBC by George Cowling. He said: “Tomorrow will be rather windy – a good day to hang out the washing.”

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