Opinion
Weather forecasting is a famously inexact science, yet we’re supposed to believe that an agency which has repeatedly failed Australians when it comes to devastating weather events is nonetheless able to accurately predict the global climate one hundred years hence.
To be fair, to an extent climate is easier to predict than weather, in the same way you can predict a tree will grow, without being able to specify how many leaves it will have next week. Yet, as we’ve seen, even the best computer models are hopelessly not up to the task of modelling the real world climate. As Japanese climate modeller Nakamura Mototaka confessed, climate models are helpful abstract tools, but “worse than useless” when it comes to making real world predictions.
“Worse than useless” is also how a great many Queenslanders probably feel about Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology, right now.
The Bureau of Meteorology has been accused of issuing inaccurate and incomplete warnings about the monster rain event that battered far north Queensland, causing chaos across the far-flung region […]
On Saturday, the bureau was predicting that Cairns faced “possible heavy falls” of 30mm to 130mm. Instead the city of 130,000 received 268mm on Sunday, a record-breaking amount. No fewer than 12 locations across far north Queensland posted record rainfall totals.
Now might be a good time to yet again remind former Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery of his dire prediction that Australia was never going to get rain enough to fill its dams, ever again. Harping on Flannery’s failed climate predictions (when a scientific paper listed eighty of the most egregiously failed climate predictions, ol’ Timbo took a starring role) is a bit like kicking a dead donkey, but one can never resist giving the carcass a poke or two with a stick.
Amid growing anger at the inaccuracy of storm warnings to local communities, Douglas Shire Mayor Michael Kerr blasted the Bureau of Meteorology for failing to predict the severity of the rain.
He said the region had been exposed after the bureau moved local staff to its Brisbane office. “They don’t know the lay of the land,” he told The Australian.
“If this is so record-breaking, how did no one know this was going to happen … we need to have forecasts closer to what is going on.”
The Australian
By Sunday morning the weather alert for Cairns had been upgraded to a severe thunderstorm warning, involving life-threatening flash flooding for Cairns, Redlynch and the nearby Aboriginal community of Yarrabah.
A major flood warning for the Barron River north of Cairns was issued at 10.47am, predicting the possibility of major flooding at Cairns airport on Sunday afternoon. The bureau noted that up to 513mm of rainfall had been recorded over the Barron River catchment in the 24 hours to 9am Sunday.
That was soon upgraded to warn that the Cairns airport flood levels would exceed 1977 levels by Sunday afternoon.
Queenslanders ought to have been prepared, really. The BOM similarly failed them during last year’s floods. Victorians, ditto. Ironically, perhaps, the other taxpayer-funded climate alarmism behemoth, the ABC, insists that, sure, the BOM keeps stuffing its storm warnings, but don’t let that fool you: they’re really getting more accurate.
On Monday afternoon, BoM officially cancelled Queensland’s severe weather warning after rain eased and flooded rivers began to recede. However, BoM senior meteorologist Laura Boekel said storms could still bring significant falls. “While that widespread, very intense rainfall is moving on, there is still shower and storm activity in the area, which can still drop a significant amount of rainfall, just not what we have seen in the past 24 hours,” Ms Boekel said.
The Australian
Yikes. Better batten down the hatches, then, banana-benders.