Cold Weather

I think the cold weather in Tainan is over, it has reach 24C(76F) for the past three days. Short sleeved shirts are now in style for me. January was cold and windy too. These bicycles fell down over the New Year's vacation.

The official Taiwan Central Weather Bureau says that this January was the coldest in 40 years in Taipei. Of course, Tainan is better but still colder than normal.

I believe that the trend of global warming is real and to "average out" what seems to be cold weather through out the world this January, I predict that this summer will be a "scorcher" everywhere. I willing to put money on it. Any takers?

I don't think anyone is good at predicting what effects global warming will have, but I know 2010 tied 2005 as being the warmest of the past century(Paul Klugman), so I think the trend continues because nothing has been done to reduce the inputs. We'll see.

The weather forecasters in Taiwan predict that there is a cold front coming this weekend. That maybe true for Taipei, but I don't think it will effect Tainan as much. First Northern Taiwan(Taipei) is the major TV market so the news concentrates on what will effect them.

Second there is an "unsymmetric payoff matrix" for weather forecasters:

                                              Weather is cold              Weather is hot
Forcasters predict cold                     1                                    0
Forcasters predict hot                   -10                                    1

If the forecaster is correct then they get:1
If the forecaster is pessimistic(predicts cold on a hot day) nobody really cares:0
If the forecaster screws up then all hell breaks loose:-10

With such a payoff matrix, of course forecasters are paid to be pessimistic.

Now if the daily weather is so hard to predict, why is global warming easier to predict? Here we have the difference in time scales, the daily predictions are just "noise" to the trend predictions. (Although the summation of the "noise" produces the trend.)

This global warming thing should be a big issue in Tainan because Tainan is on a flat plain into the ocean. If the sea level rises a meter, I probably slosh my way to school and a lot of beach front becomes fish housing.