UK Met forecast reliability
 

I hear conflicting information on the accuracy of UK met forecasts today vs those thirty years ago.

Many of the experienced guys swear blind it was better then than now.

First question is ...are things indeed worse now than they were. If so do either of the frequently proffered suggestions below hold water.

1- That the thermal imaging used by weather satallites to obtain the crucial Atlantic air mass temperatures has a much wider tolerance band then the very accurate weather ship info. The implication being the reduction in Wx ship numbers is the problem. Has there been a reduction in weather ship numbers?

2 - A change to the computerised modelling techniques?

Thanks in advance.

Overall, the quality and validaiton of the forecast models is better than ever in the past.

The downside is that the Met Office has withdrawn most of the airfield forecasters. So, all that local knowledge is now lost. So, anywhere that has particularly "interesting" local conditions, the TAFS are arguably less trustworthy than they were.

But where we're talking about upper level weather and winds, it is as good as it's ever been anywhere, and probably better.

On the other hand, Met Office continues to be extremely bad at how they present the information. Numerous third party service providers do it better.

G