Dumbing down the weather

James Dent has an interesting TCW piece on weather, climate and the replacement of broad historical perspectives by what he calls ‘Presentism’.

The dumbing down of the weather

FOR MANY years media presentations of weather conditions were summarised in a simple map, showing isobars and main weather fronts, accompanied by a concise description on a regional basis, with a forecast statement for the near future. This information was well understood by a range of people with a modicum of education in everyday life. Regular watching of TV and reading newspaper forecasts provided me with the ambition of pursuing a career where I was involved in meteorology. But some time ago both media and printed format presentations switched to using the now universal hieroglyphic weather symbols, which when scattered over a small-scale map can give only a vague impression of actual and forecast conditions.

The main driver for this change came after the serious flood events of 1998-2002 when the Government decided that there was a need to improve awareness. This has led to the present glut of forecast apps giving weather predictions for several days ahead, summarised into a single hieroglyph, which are widely regarded as being nothing more than guesses.

The whole piece is well worth reading, both for what Dent says about dumbing down weather forecasts, but also the more general trend of ignoring the complexities of the past in favour of a distorted but politically convenient present.

Within this time frame of the last 12,000 years, there have been numerous exceptional events. There is indisputable geological and geomorphological evidence of major sea-level changes, inundations and major changes to river courses. Because nature is non-stationary, such events have occurred in recent decades as well as in the far past. For instance the North Sea flooding of January 1953 was just one of a series of similar catastrophic events, such as the storm that brought about the near-destruction of Dunwich, Suffolk, in the 14th century. According to documentary evidence, there were several major floods throughout the Mediaeval period causing thousands of deaths in the Low Countries.