Met Office tones down its summer forecast

08:54 29 July 2009

The proposed "barbecue summer" has turned out to be something of a washout, prompting the Met Office to rethink its original prediction.

Its new forecast is for more unsettled weather through August.

The backtracking has raised concerns over the Met Office's reliability when it comes to seasonal weather predictions, being that in 2007 and 2008 they wrongly predicted warmer than average summers.

However, the organisation has defended itself citing that many had forgotten about the heatwave experienced in June and the subsequent fine weather for Wimbledon, the Open golf and the cricket Tests. There was also a lack of the major floods like those which struck the UK over the last few years.

The Met Office has also maintained that temperatures have been roughly around, or even above, normal and that by the end of August these levels may be reinstated.

The weather predictors even disclosed that they coined the term "barbecue summer" to aid journalists with their headlines.

Chief meteorologist Ewan McCallam has claimed that seasonal forecasting is not yet developed enough, comparing it to a cross between climate change prediction and a typical weather report for tomorrow's forecast.

 However he claims that traditional forecasting had vastly improved, being that the four-day forecast is now as reliable as the one-day forecast from back when the Met started their predictions over 30 years ago.

Seasonal forecasts are much trickier due to sometimes unpredictable nature of jet streams (high level wind that moves around the globe 10km above the surface dictating weather patterns).

The previous two years saw this stream locked above the UK resulting in a low pressure system resulting in rain. This returned this July.