Are you basing your assessment of the value of the climate predictions on a couple of cases? It looks that way, and that's not very smart. Funding of climate prediction services is based on much longer-term accuracy assessments. I believe these track records are available on Climate Prediction Center's web pages, in the form of a graph showing the "Heidke skill score". Also, a scientific article showing the longer-term accuracy of the forecasts is available in the "Weather and Forecasting" journal, at the link http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/WAF-D-11-00143.1. Other similar articles exist. The page you'll get from that link offers the opportunity to open or download the full article in pdf format. You'll see that the highest accuracy (or skill) scores are in winter, and that overall the forecasts are clearly more accurate than the flip of the coin, but with some individual forecasts busting, like last winter's precipitation forecast (as you pointed out). About this year's La Nina, I don't quite see how you come up with it being a bad forecast. Although it is not over yet, it looks as if the forecast was for a weak La Nina, and so far that is what it looks like is happening. As far as the associated winter climate impacts in the US, we need to wait longer and see how it plays out. So the bottom line is that your criticism is welcome but appears to have been made without very much thought. We admit that last winter's precipitation forecast was a lousy one.
Are you basing your assessment of the value of the climate predictions on a couple of cases? It looks that way, and that's not very smart. Funding of climate prediction services is based on much longer-term accuracy assessments. I believe these track records are available on Climate Prediction Center's web pages, in the form of a graph showing the "Heidke skill score". Also, a scientific article showing the longer-term accuracy of the forecasts is available in the "Weather and Forecasting" journal, at the link http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/WAF-D-11-00143.1. Other similar articles exist. The page you'll get from that link offers the opportunity to open or download the full article in pdf format. You'll see that the highest accuracy (or skill) scores are in winter, and that overall the forecasts are clearly more accurate than the flip of the coin, but with some individual forecasts busting, like last winter's precipitation forecast (as you pointed out). About this year's La Nina, I don't quite see how you come up with it being a bad forecast. Although it is not over yet, it looks as if the forecast was for a weak La Nina, and so far that is what it looks like is happening. As far as the associated winter climate impacts in the US, we need to wait longer and see how it plays out. So the bottom line is that your criticism is welcome but appears to have been made without very much thought. We admit that last winter's precipitation forecast was a lousy one.