A verification of monthly weather forecasts in the seventies

Abstract

Monthly forecasts of temperature, rainfall and sunshine have been verified during the period 1970–79. The predictions were based on seven different schemes. Of the seven methods, five refer to De Bilt (The Netherlands), one to southeast England and one to the Federal Republic of Germany. The results are not very encouraging for any of the methods. The skill is negligible except for a few schemes that predicted the monthly mean temperature 10% better than climatology.