THE NEXT ICE AGE - NOW!

29 Jul 09 -  “You will need a brolly (umbrella) on holiday in the UK in August - the Met Office is issuing a revised forecast for more unsettled weather well into the month.

“It is a far cry from the "barbecue summer" it predicted back in April.

“But this has come back to bite the organisation because many people do not feel like they have been enjoying a "good" summer, especially compared with previous searing years.

“The real problem for the Met Office is that this is the third summer in a row where its forecast has failed. In 2007, the Met Office chirped: "The summer is yet again likely to be warmer than normal. There are no indications of a particularly wet summer."

“We got downpours and floods in the wettest summer for England and Wales since 1912. Temperatures were below average.

“In April 2008, the Met Office forecast: "Summer temperatures are likely to be warmer than average and rainfall near or above average."

“That did not prepare people for one of the wettest summers on record with high winds and low sunshine.

“This year was supposed to be "warmer than usual with rainfall average or below average".

“But the independent weather forecaster Piers Corbyn says the Met Office failed to make a correct forecast because it cannot predict the jet stream.

“He claims his solar-based forecasting method is consistently more accurate for medium-term predictions than the Met Office, and he urges them to give up medium-term forecasting.

“The Met Office complains in response that Mr Corbyn will not publish his "unique" methods of forecasting.

“For the record, Mr Corbyn predicts that August will be generally wet and cool, especially in the West and the North later.
  
        I met Piers Corbyn when I was in London last year, and am impressed
        with his forecast  abilities. This article fails to mention that Piers is an
        astrophysicist, which makes his forecasts a tad more credible.

See entire article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8173533.stm 
Thanks to John Brown in Ardrossan, Scotland for this link