Wrong type of weather trips up Met Office

Staff at the Met Office face a gloomy financial outlook after failing to meet government targets for accurately predicting the weather. The wrong type of weather in February means forecasters could miss out on up to £500 of performance related bonuses - the first time standards have slipped since the targets were introduced in 1997.

Clive Wilson, a forecast model expert at the Met Office, said: "We did miss it this year but we haven't missed it by much. It will cost us a bit but fortunately we don't set our mortgages based on this."

Predictions of air pressure, temperature, wind and rainfall made by the office's computers are checked against observations the following day to produce a measure of whether they got it right, called the numerical weather prediction index.

Set at 100 in March 2000 the index has risen steadily since, which indicates forecasts are improving. But in March this year it stood at 113.7, short of the National Audit Office's target of 113.9.

Dr Wilson blamed an unusually settled period of weather in February.

"Basically the weather wasn't changing very much. As a person who experienced the weather you probably wouldn't have said it was particularly good or bad. It was just quite dry. If it had been a more normal February we would probably have made it. I know that sounds like an excuse, a bit like the wrong type of leaves on the line, but it really isn't."

The index rates the skill of the forecasters in predicting how the weather will change against an "idiot's forecast" which merely says tomorrow will be the same as today. "If we get very settled weather then we don't have to try too hard. The fact that it happened at the end of the year when the target was about to be met means it was a problem."

The numerical weather prediction index is one of six targets set for the Met Office each year. Hitting all of them earns staff about £1,000 each. Bosses, who have discretion over the bonuses, have yet to decide whether to pay up for the failed forecast target and two others missed this year.

The news comes a week after the BBC was forced to modify its new weather map after complaints that it did not give enough prominence to Scotland and the north of England. The tilt of the UK map was changed after the BBC said it "carefully assessed feedback from viewers".

The Met Office said improvements in the numerical weather prediction index are now back on track, helped by an unseasonably cool June so far. RAF Benson in Oxfordshire recorded record lows for June of -0.3C (31F) on Monday night, but still much warmer than the all-time coldest June temperature of -5.6C, shared by Dalwhinnie in Scotland in 1956 and Santon Downham in Suffolk in 1962.