The Met Office have produced an easy to use front end to their UK Climate Projections 2009 report. Included is a "How the climate might change in your region" piece of flash programming. This purports to give you graphical data to show how temperature and rainfall may change. I have looked at the London graphs and they are woefully inaccurate:
Average Annual Rainfall is predicted to fall from 640mm to 639mm, a minuscule change but the graph seems to show around a 5% fall.
Average Winter Rainfall is predicted to rise from 157mm to 180mm, a 12.8% increase but the graph seems to show a near doubling of rainfall.
Average Wettest Winter Day is predicted to increase from 14mm to 16mm, a 14.3% increase but the graph seems to show around a 25% increase.
Average Annual Temperature is predicted to rise from 11° to 13°, an increase of 18% and this graph seems to show around that degree of increase.
Average Warmest Summers day is predicted to rise from 31° to 33°, an increase of 6.5% but the graph seems to show around a 25% increase.
So on the five graphs I examined for one region only one was broadly correct, one shows around twice the rate of change, one around four times the rate of change, one around eight times the rate of change and one around 500 times the rate of change.
Why the discrepancy between figures and graphs? Do the Met Office not understand how to accurately present graphical data? Have they deliberately missed out the Y-axis figures so as to exaggerate the changes predicted? If they cannot present results accurately then why should I trust their figures?
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