Foul Weather Men Article (Weather Companies)

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Tornado Tim
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Foul Weather Men Article (Weather Companies)

Unread post by Tornado Tim »

As posted by Nev in the I See Thread -however directly relating to the first 3/4 of the article:
Nev wrote:Also posted in the 'New Zealand Weather & Climate' forum...

^ 'Foul-weather men' - Stuff
Boy, the first 3/4 of that article was Weather companies bickering which one has the better system.......
Ramon Oosterkaamp's comments regarding GFS bug me, e.g.:
The data is free from the United States government's supercomputer- driven Global Forecast System (GFS), and is nowhere near as accurate as data from our own MetService, which has more local data, and refines the coarse planetary models with high-res local models.
NOAA didn't have to make a global model free of charge, they sure output a whole lot more data than Metservice does. I understand Metservice use a blend of forecasting systems including the GFS for their forecasting which has been getting better due to the recent upgrades, so I am very surprised he would shun the forecasting model down so much.

Of note: The GFS can only be as good from what available data it receives to calculate the forecast. Eg: The lack of sharing data on Metservices half could be a contributing factor if a GFS forecast turned out to be wrong.
Instead of shunning the forecast they should actually offer to improve it, oh but yes this is the excuse:
Dan Corbett wrote:budgets here are tighter than abroad and, as an SOE, MetService has to make money
That is exactly why Metservice should not be an SOE, they are putting profit ahead of the NZ Public.

A Weather forecasting team should be working for the NZ pubic and not for Profit, while Metservice stays as an SOE there will always be a question "Will Metservice do what is best for the NZ public?"

I understand Metservice is "in-between rock and a hard place", but I would not honestly say out loud "Paraphrasing begins"
GFS isn't as accurate as our models because it doesn't take in local data, our system on the other hand does
"Paraphrasing ends".
What would happen when a person would enquire about this model in Hi-res?
they would reply.
you will have to pay for it
It's complete nonsense. Promoting a product the public can't afford.

Nevermind rant over, LOL
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Re: Foul Weather Men Article (Weather Companies)

Unread post by NZstorm »

so I am very surprised he would shun the forecasting model down so much.
Yes, the gfs is an important cog in the forecasting wheel. And the gfs is based on local data.
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