this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2025
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How spot on are we talking?
For example, a few weeks ago, the forecaster for Seattle predicted Armageddon, and we got a 3 minute lightning storm instead. On a slow news day they'll talk about how they have all this new tech and multiple overlapping copper stations that they've never had before but they're seldom correct beyond it is or isn't going ot rain. Sooooo much more tech and not any better than when they had a wind sock outside the building.
Soooo we talking about global temperature raises year over year or what?
Climatology and meteorology are separate disciplines with their own very different modelling. I studied the former way back when, and it wasn't even in the same department at my university (geography vs physics). Climatology is about long-term trends and focuses more on energy fluxes, general circulation patterns (both in the atmosphere and oceans), the hydrological cycle, the carbon cycle, etc. Meteorology is about the near-term. It focuses on the fluid and thermodynamics of specific weather systems, and how to process/interpret real-time data.
Thanks for the insight, friend!
You seem to lumping both sort term weather predictions and long term climate models into one category.
As a recommendation, I suggest to watch this video that helped me understand the distinction. It does a lot better explaining then I ever could.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBdxDFpDp_k
"Keep your eye on the man, not the dog"
Thanks for enlightening me!
No worries, after watching the cosmos series this weather and climate episode definitely left me with a better understanding.
The reason weather prediction has become seemingly worse is because part of that forecast was based on using historical data to anticipate future events. That data isn't as great of a source now since things have changed, so they've had to extrapolate as best they can based on science of how weather systems work. Sometimes they get it close, something they totally miss.
As others have said, climate science is looking at a much bigger picture and trends with a different goal. I do disagree with title though - while the overall trend has been close to what was being warned about, the specifics have changed because we were limited then in what we knew and could measure, and there are things occurring that we couldn't have guessed about that will make things worse. The trend is still in the general direction, just how much of a change and how it affects conditions that drive weather change as we learn more.
Basically, you can't say that past models were perfect in their predictions and then have decades of "it's worse than predicted".
To within the range of expected natural variability when looking at global average temperature anomaly.
They're not as good at things like regional predictions or second-order effects
You're confusing weather with climate in your comparison.
Yarp, I skipped that part of science as a kid...