We have an open and transparent policy on how well our public weather forecasts are performing. See how we are doing against our targets.
The World Meteorological Organization compares similar statistics among national met. services around the world. These show that the Met Office is consistently one of the top two operational services in the world.
Verification involves comparing our forecasts against relevant observations to determine how accurate they are. Verification, therefore, underpins the targets set by government and the Public Weather Service Customer Group. These forecast accuracy targets are part of our ongoing long-term commitment to improving the accuracy of our forecasts to the public.
Forecasts for both maximum and minimum temperature are compared to the actual values observed at an agreed list of 119 sites across the UK. The sites used for verification are those where we have quality-controlled data and where we produce forecasts for.
The early morning forecast on our website is used to produce a percentage number of the times when the forecast is accurate to within +/- 2°C. This is based over a rolling 36-month period to smooth out extremes and give a representative average.
This information will be updated every month.
Three-hourly temperature forecasts are monitored in the same way as maximum and minimum temperatures, but using our three-hourly forecasts for the current day. We have only recently started to verify these forecasts, so they are based on a rolling 12-month average.
We also monitor how well we forecast weather types, e.g. 'rain' or 'sun'.
The forecast weather type is compared to the actual weather observed at the same agreed list of 45 stations across the UK. The early morning website forecast is used to produce a percentage number of the times when we correctly forecast the weather as 'rain' or 'sun'. This is based on our three-hourly forecasts for the current day and is based over a rolling 12-month period, as it is a relatively new measure.
We continue to increase our forecast accuracy through research, investment in satellite remote sensing and supercomputing technology.
For many years we have verified our forecasts by comparing forecasts of mean sea-level pressure with subsequent model analyses of mean sea-level pressure. These comparisons are made over an area covering the North Atlantic; most of western Europe, and north-eastern parts of North America. From this long-term comparison an average forecast error can be calculated.
The graph shows how many days into a forecast period this average error is reached compared to a baseline in 1980. This graph shows that a three-day forecast today is more accurate than a one-day forecast in 1980.
Last updated: 5 November 2014
