From CFACT

By Joe Bastardi

I grew up at Texas A&M, so I love A&M football. (Obviously, I love PSU football too, and PSU has wrestling, so the nod goes to PSU as far as where my greatest loyalty lies. I did graduate and wrestle here.)

No donor base has spent more money per win than the Aggies. If we take donations versus wins over the last five years, they lead the nation at 10 million dollars per win.

No government has spent more money on their weather models than the U.S. Like the Aggies, the result is extremely disappointing.

I was looking at the site:

Skill Scores Forecast Models Including AIGS and Graph Cast

I have no idea what their stance is on climate. What I do know is they are looking at the model skill score objectively. (As always, I credit my sources, and if they are a man-made global warming site, it matters not to me as you have to be able to look at all information. I am one of those people who, if I see you have something that can make me better, even if you disagree with me, I will try to use your strength and make it mine too. This is a huge difference between the kind of open-minded, free thinking I was taught and what prevails today. No one wants to be challenged by the other side, and it’s a huge problem not only in weather and climate but also in the kind of discourse we see today. Once again, leave it to me to find linkage in weather, climate, and everything else that is going on. But that is a known bias of mine. There, I am transparent.)

Here is their conclusion:

The volatile GFS consistently scored last in skill score.

This is from a NOAA site, so they know what is going on.

The last 30 days of day 5 500mb forecasts: The US model is in black. It beat the Euro (red) once, and even the Canadian in blue is outperforming it in many cases.

A recent high-profile golf event, the US Open, was marred by a lot of rain.

Look at this tweet from June 13 for the crucial weekend period:

US Open forecasters have a no-big-deal GFS versus Euro, Euro AI, and UKMET with much wetter amounts tonight and tomorrow. Once again, the US model is the odd model out.

I think we all saw what happened. Precipitation amounts over the weekend were not 0.15 inches but closer to 2 inches around the area.

Cherry-picking, you may say. Well, when it comes to the GFS, the orchard is overflowing.

Here is what is going on: We keep tweaking the model and making it faster, and it’s improving compared to how bad it used to be. But it has fallen to last place. So why are we spending all this money on a global forecast model when what should be done is to take the Euro models? I am all for competing. I want the Aggies to win, but as sad as that story is, they still have a better chance of winning the SEC than this model has of overtaking the Euro global and climate models. If the GFS actually wins, it’s a coup.

Take the money and develop better short-term severe weather impact tools—hurricanes, tornadoes, lightning, etc. Research should never be cut in these areas. Those things are a matter of national defense, in my opinion, not because the weather is getting worse (in some cases it is, in many cases it’s not because that is what happens; there is a natural swing back and forth) but because a nation that is supposed to advance can’t have weather events that are going to occur naturally foul things up more than they should.

As far as global climate models and our operational models, we are not going to beat the Euro. We have been trying to do it for 40 years. How much more do we have to see? I have been writing about this for three decades.

Now you may say, is this not akin to outsourcing model dependency to other nations? Yes. But it’s not like it’s pharmaceuticals or rare earth minerals. Since model money can be put toward things that I see being cut that should not be cut, which I view on a war footing for the good of our nation, we have to do an objective analysis.

Here is the dirty little secret: if the Euro models do not have something, you cannot trust our models. Most forecasters I know agree with that, whether they will say it publicly or not. For you weather nuts out there (or anyone dictating policy), when was the last time you saw a GFS day 5 standalone forecast on a large scale beat the Euro? Perhaps there are examples, and there may even be some places it is better. But if you can’t hit the overall pattern, that is not going to be sustainable.

Given there are not a lot of policy makers (I can’t find any) that are globally forecasting the weather privately for profit so their livelihood depends on it, I doubt they even look at models every day.

I have heard that it does better in the tropics. The Euro does have a west bias, in my opinion. But look at June. If you take all its runs, 50% had a tropical cyclone hit the US in week 2. Given that I thought in April that could happen for June, I realized once it started saying it, my 45-day idea for that was cooked.

That is how little confidence I have in it.

This is another reason that when looking at decisions for funding, someone outside the government (I volunteer) who has to work privately every day with this stuff should be helping to advise. Quite frankly, I am disturbed by some of the cuts I see. This has to be done with a surgeon’s tool, not a blunt hammer. There should be places where we are ramping up funding for research; I am partial to hurricanes and severe weather, for instance. Since visiting Dr. Timothy Logan at Texas A&M, lightning is something we have to get better at. My head is still spinning from looking at some of his research.

But when it comes to the GFS, I hold out much more hope that the Aggies can contend in football than the GFS ever beating the Euro on a consistent scale globally. Sometimes on a local event, it might, but more often than not, the statistics are not lying.

And there are some of you out there saying the Aggies are never going to win. Where does that leave the US weather and climate models?