2004 IRISH SCIENTIST YEAR BOOK

Home Page

Table of contents

Index by Author

Index by topics

Search


Mary Immaculate Secondary School, Lisdoonvara, Co. Clare
Se�n O'Gorman
Is the weatherman always right?

Se�n O'Gorman at the Exhibition

I realised an opportunity for a project one day as I admired the Irish weather {rain} and watched the forecast which said that it was supposed to be sunny. At this point I also realised the title of my project 'Is the weatherman always right?'. The aim of this project is to see if the weather forecast is consistently accurate. I used the following methods:

  • �The first thing I did was to record the weather forecast for each day from 4 November 2003 to 31 December 2003.

  • �My second method of gathering information on the weather was to record the condition of the weather every hour for the above period.

  • �Thirdly, I recorded the temperature four times daily using an electronic thermometer.

Below I give a sample of my results:



When I looked at all aspects of the weather for December, I got accuracy results which ranged between 83% and 100% for different dates, except for December 17, which rated 75% and December 22, which rated only 63%. The average was 89%.

I have come to many conclusions within my project. Firstly, wind speed was most accurate in forecasts at 93%, whereas the least accurate in forecasts was temperature at an average 78.5%. This was unexpected, but the overall accuracy was still high at an average 89%.

Also, I discovered that 11% of the temperatures I measured were either 1 or 2 degrees above forecast: only 0.1% was 1 degree below forecasted temperature. I believe this to be due to my area's proximity to the sea.

I believe I have fulfilled the aim of my project � which is to see if the weather forecast was consistently accurate. Yes, I think the weather forecast is consistently accurate in my area.

Se�n O'Gorman entered his project in the Junior Individual Category in the Chemical, Physical and Mathematical Sciences Section at the EsatBT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition in January 2004. He won a Special Award presented by Met �ireann. His teacher was Mr John Sims.


This article was sponsored by Met �ireann