Cliff Mass is a professor of meteorology. Cliff Mass is opinionated. And Cliff Mass is right.
On his blog Mass has gathered the most recent data on verification for the major global forecast models, which is a fancy way of saying he looked into how accurate each forecast model was. These are the forecast models upon which the National Weather Service will, in part, base its forecasts; and the weather apps on your mobile device are almost 100 percent derived from these models. They are the foundation for modern meteorology.
The time period during which the models are being compared is April, and this comparison is based upon each model’s skill at forecasting conditions in the mid-level atmosphere of the Northern Hemisphere.
And here’s the bad news: Not only is the primary U.S. forecasting model, the GFS, behind the European model in the latest rankings, it’s now also lagging behind the British (UKMET) and Canadian (CMC) models.
Note the consistency of the red line (European model), which generally remains at a high level. Now compare that to the major dips in the black line (GFS model), which mean poor forecasts. Inconsistency is a very bad thing in model forecasts.
What’s going on here? Mass explains:
The National Weather Service hasn’t had the computer power to make this next step towards high-resolution prediction over the U.S. a reality.
But here is the amazing part. A year ago, Congress gave the National Weather Service the money for a very large, 2-3 petaflop weather supercomputer. A computer, that properly used, could greatly improve skill in predicting both global and local weather. To quote Louis Uccellini, the head of the National Weather Service, “a real game changer.”
But now a year later, NOAA has still not ordered the computer (the National Weather Service is part of NOAA).
Why? Because they made the mistake of signing a very long contract with IBM and IBM sold their server division to Lenovo, a Chinese company. And the U.S. is nervous about having their weather computer provided by the Chinese.
There seems to be no leadership at NOAA in quickly resolving this issue.
And there are many solutions. For example, IBM could buy an American computer from Cray, an American company. In fact, Cray sold new machines to the European Center and the German weather service recently. Or the government could use the Lenovo sale to void the contract with IBM and shop elsewhere (like CRAY). Or they go ahead with IBM deal, with full knowledge that there is little reason for the Chinese to mess with our weather forecast models, particularly since a number of Chinese operational entities use our GFS.
If that pisses you off, well, it probably should.