Whether it was the UK or Indian Met Office – or whoever it was**, they deserve praise. An effective early forecast has allowed the government to act early to save life. The importance of this was brought home to me last October at the Royal Society meeting where three different researchers highlighted the way near-term forecasting could save thousands if not millions of lives. But this near term forecasting was very much the poor cousin of the much less robust and discredited longer term climate forecasts.
The UK Met Office stopped issuing yearly global temperature predictions after most of the nine they issued proved to be wrong. They then claimed that their decadal forecast was very good because it was only 0.05C/yr out, when if I remember right they had claimed 0.06C/year warming.
But praise where it is due. They may still be deluded about their ability to predict climate over the longer term and denying that the stats tell us we cannot distinguish the warming from noise … but they will learn. They have however saved many lives in India.
**I’m still suffering without a pc and doing time-share on my daughter’s one. And to make things worse it is half term and raining and I have been told she wants to show something to her friends.
Also an indication of how economic progress is far more important for human wellbeing than “green” Luddism. A few years ago cyclones like this killed over a hundred thousand – now it is only 10s of people.