Flood - or "Bad Meteorology"

A storm surge associated with a low pressure system hits the north of Scotland, runs down the east coast and hits London.
First things first. It's a drama, it needs a bad guy and in this case it's the Met Office, shown as a bunch of model following incompetents. The only people aware of the danger are private companies, and if you're not attached to the office, you'd probably enjoy it.
Now, a couple of things. The facts as stated in the first sentence are true, large storm surges happen and are one of the things that we monitor VERY closely. The Ops centre (not shown accurately) do have lots of models but they also have satellites and actual reports to look at. They've also got us. All of the outstations would be watching this and all of us would be working on it separately, if we thought the Ops guys were wrong we'd sodding well tell them! The office would issue warnings for what might happen, as has been shown recently - and like I said, east coast surges are a sore point. We're often criticised that we issue too many warnings, but it's better to be warned.
Having said that, sometimes things do go wrong and sometimes forecasts go wrong, but on that scale? For us to miss the possibility by that much is a bit much.
This is the thing I'm not liking about the program - we're shown in a pretty shit light. Apart form that, it's actually not too bad. They point out the 1953 floods when exactly this happened, it was the highest peacetime loss of life in Britain for a very long time.
People don't like to think about storm surges, they're scary, but they are real. You get (roughly speaking) one metre of surge for every 10 mB drop and about one metre of wind wave for every 10 knots of wind, so to get the 50 odd foot you'd need a central low pressure of about 900 mB and winds of about 80 kt. Possible. In fact, statistically, likely - given a long enough time frame. But not this week. In fact we've had two big storms that threatened to do just this within the last two years, one on the west coast and one on the east. In one case the surge hit at low tide and for the other the pressure wasn't as low as could be and went further off shore, allowing the flood defences to work.
It's just how they show the Office that sticks in my craw. Trust me, if I'd seen a storm like that heading for the coast I'd be looking at it HARD. We'd be one of the first groups hit so we'd be signing the clarion call at the top of our voices!
By the way, as with pretty much all British disaster films, they get COBRA wrong. It is the emergency group but it actually refers to Cabinet Office Briefing Room A. It's a room they use; or at least was originally. I may put in more as the film progresses, depends on how annoyed I am.

On communication.

Two points mainly, it's been one of those weeks.
This week there's been a few extra aircraft up here, various exercises and the like. Most of them were up for Joint Warrior including the French Air Force and the French Navy. Odd thing is that we're not supposed to talk about them until they're finished and everyone's gone home but within six hours of the first plane landing the pictures were up on various aircraft spotting websites. Another exercise was also on, and as the details haven't been put in the public sector yet I can't say much but this one was a mostly British affair with one or two notable visitors. For this one we were asked to provide on site met in the form of a briefing, which is something that I enjoy but haven't really done much of recently. Hopefully we'll be doing more of them soon.
Even given the fact that we work pretty closely with the air force I was somewhat put out that after I'd done my little bit and was sitting through the rest of the brief (bloody interesting stuff) I realised that if I'd known more about what they were doing I could have REALLY focused on what they needed.
The whole reason that we're cleared and out in theatre with the guys is that we can give specific information rather than just general forecasts for wide areas; I've begun now to understand more how better knowledge of the way they work will allow me to do my job more efficiently and just generally better. It's not that I think I gave a bad brief, but if I'd done another one at the end of the mass brief I would have delivered a very different one. Knowing what they were planning, not just the general area they were working in, knowing the profiles they'd be likely to fly and the things that they'd be doing, it all gives me a better idea what they want and what they need to know. The way I did it I gave information that they didn't need and focused on things that were frankly irrelevant. I'm going to try and get some feedback about it and see if, in future, we can get just five or ten minutes heads-up with Ops to, yeah, focus more.

The other bit of communications I've had is the reason this is being typed on a Windows machine rather than a Mac. My Mac has died. Gets to the boot screen and just freezes. Tried clearing the PRAM and resetting to factory settings, nothing. Ran a couple of machine checks (including one from a command line - I'm sure Unix is great but I don't have the skills to do more than a basic check) and when running the check from the install disk the system couldn't find the hard drive. Now I'm a bit of a n00b when it comes to sys stuff but I know that not being able to locate the hard drive is a problem. Most of the stuff was backed up a few weeks back so there's a few pictures I'd be pissed off loosing but the big stuff is on the spare drive so re-installing shouldn't ruin my life. The machine is less than a year old so it's still under warranty; hence I started to dig out the documents for it. Found everything (including the bank statement) except the receipt. Bugger. I was sure I'd bought it from PC World (quiet at the back there!) so yesterday I headed over to Inverness to pop in. I was also planning to see Iron Man (brilliant!) so I was going anyway, which was good because when I got there I realised I'd actually bought it at Currys. We've got a Currys here, so I might not have had to drive 45 miles to the one there. As it was I got a copy of the receipt and the phone number for customer support. That's right, they don't handle Apple repairs in store, it's done through a phone contact. Fortunately a 24/7 number so a called a couple of times today as I'd got back a bit late last night. Twice I got the message "Due to circumstances outside of our control we are experiencing a high call volume and cannot take your call. Sorry." Click, buzz. Automatic cut off.
Waited until about 2200, called again, got told, "sorry, we don't do Apple on this number, here's their customer service number, they don't work weekends." I'll try again on Monday but I'm betting they don't work bank holidays either so it'll be Tuesday and I'm just hoping that they won't object to the fact that I didn't buy the care package - they shouldn't, it's within it's first year so still under warranty. We'll have to see.
When wandering through the store, all I could think of was "Nerd Herd! Nerd Herd!" Liking Chuck and Reaper.

Dear Santa...

For Christmas I would like...

An Amazon Kindle. When I was at uni one of my friends and housemates, Sally, told me about some developments in electronic paper. The stuff she was looking into used duel coloured molecules/units that could be turned with an electrical impulse, and as it was pretty much solid state, once the page was set there wasn't any more power needed until your wanted a new page. (Apologies if I've got the details wrong, or explained it badly, it was 5 years ago we had the conversation). The Kindle isn't that sort of electronic paper, but is a form of digital book/newspaper/magazine. First time I've seen it was on Neil Gaiman's blog and after watching the video on the amazon.com website I think I want one. Maybe not first gen but looks like the future.

New arms. Been bouldering today at Inverness, my arms and hands ache. Pulled a muscle in my leg as well, hopefully all will heal in time for climbing at the weekend with Tasha.

A new (or second hand) car. Need a bigger one, maybe then the arseholes in BMWs will see me when they're pulling out into traffic and not smack me in the back bumper! No damage apart from scratches but annoyed me. The sod didn't even stop! Now, I know with advanced driving I'm supposed to look ahead and expect things to happen, which is why when the car pulled out I was already trying to move out of the way but why the hell didn't they stop? I know that my car is small but when it's in front of you it's visible, REALLY visible. Argghhhh!

An iPhone. Okay, it doesn't do as much as the Viewty but like most Apple things, what it does do, it does really well and really easily. Had a play with one in the O2 store and I'm now desparately telling myself that it's too expensive (it is), I don't NEED one (I don't) and I don't want one (ah, but I DO!!!!). I'll hold out for a while, mainly as I can't afford one....

Talking points

There's been a bit of discussion recently about global warming - and more specifically Man Made Global Warming (MMGW). Mainly as a result of the program on channel 4 - The Great Global Warming Swindle. This was a privately produced program that was aired on channel 4. Not, as has been stated in some of the American press, made by or broadcast on the BBC.
The show (note I'm not calling it a documentary) aimed to refute all the claims of mankind's involvement in global warming. It was wrong. Now, by that I don't mean that MMGW is absolutely certain, but that's because I was trained as a scientist, and more specifically, a physicist; so I have to acknowledge that there is room for doubt, although if I was as certain of the Lotto numbers as I am about MMGW, I'd put every penny I had on it, and win.
No, what I mean is that the program used inaccurate data, presented it badly, misquoted many of the scientists and generally did a bad job of presenting both sides of the debate. It would take too long to put all the problems here so I'll link to some brilliant pages that handle most of them.
First off, the Met Office's own FAQ page on Climate change. Read this first, and any further questions can be dealt with much easier.
Next, a section from the weather and climate group RealClimate.org, where climate scientists go to relax.
Next, an article from the Independent (which is not my favourite paper, but it's the one they chose to use) about the program.
And finally a short critique on the issue by Sir John Houghton FRS CBE.

Now, if you're involved in a pub based discussion on how global warming is all a ploy by the Met Office to get more funds, you have the knowledge to put down your opponent and make them feel silly.

I've also been made aware of an article on Gillian McKeith, which I think is rather marvelous.

That should do it for now. When I can be objective I'll put something up about intelligent design, but it'll just fire up the blood if I do.