Piers Corbyn

Piers Richard Corbyn (born 10 March 1947) is a British weather forecaster and consultant, and owner of the business Weather Action which makes weather forecasts up to a year in advance, and which he also bets on. He was a left wing squatters rights activist.

Personal life

Corbyn was born in Chippenham Wiltshire in 1947. He began recording weather and climate patterns at age 15, constructing his own observation equipment. He gained a Royal Scholarship to Imperial College and obtained a First Class degree in physics at Imperial College London, where he was also in 1969 the President of the Student Union. His first papers were published as an undergraduate in the Royal Meteorological Society's journal Weather discussing his brine-filled barometer; in the Journal of the British Astronomical Association for his home-based measurements of the eccentricity of the earth's orbit; and in the Geographical Journal (of the Royal Geographical Society) for a study on the pebbles. Following some years of activism, he studied astrophysics in 1979 at Queen Mary College, London and published papers on the mean matter density of the universe and The cosmic string Loop of galaxy formation (Refs; 1984 Clusters and Groups Of Galaxies, F Mardirossian et al (eds) pp517; Cosmic String-Loops and galaxy formation – Angular Momentum and The Hubble Sequence. 1986 Cosmologia Di Gamow, Proc of Enrico Fermi International School of Physics 1982 pp231; A Virial Approach to the Relation between the Cosmological Density Parameter Ωo and the Microwave background Temperature To ). He later studied the relationship between the Earth's weather and climate and solar activity. Following some years of research and trial he formed the business 'Weather Action' in 1995.

Political activism

Corbyn was a housing and squatters rights activist in the North Paddington area of Westminster City Council in the mid-1970s. In 1974 he fought for a seat on the council as a "Squatters and Tenants" candidate; in 1978 he and a colleague fought as 'Decent Housing' candidates. In the 1977 GLC election he was the International Marxist Group candidate for Lambeth Central. He and all the squatters in Elgin Avenue were - as a result of their campaign which included the building of barricades against eviction - rehoused to Southwark, South London, by the GLC in 1975. He later moved from that rehousing in Rust Square to the Alvey Estate in Southwark where he became a leader of the Tenants Association. He was a member of the Labour Party and a campaigns organiser, but has since left it. His brother, Jeremy Corbyn, has been Labour MP for Islington North since 1983.

Weather Action

Weather Action is the business through which Corbyn sells his predictions. He also bets on these predictions, stating he achieved significant gains between 1988 to 2000 at which time William Hill banned him from betting. (Some of this was reported on the QED documentary about Piers on BBC2 July 4th 1996) His betting attracted much interest in 1990, when his predictions of bad weather were met by a year of the "worst extremes".

Weather Action was formerly listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) as 'Weather Action Holdings plc' in 1997, and was transferred back to private ownership in 1999, primarily because of increasing losses sustained and the impact of costs related to public status (around £70,000 annually) compared to annual revenues of £250,000. Corbyn acquired back the weather prediction business; the listed shell was taken over by investors and changed its name to 'InternetAction.com', with the intent of researching potential net-based takeover targets.

Corbyn has a wide range of weather sensitive customers, including gas and electricity companies, farmers and retailers. - for example, PolyGram staggered their release dates and promotional tours for the motion picture Bean around Corbyn's predictions.

Predictions

Corbyn's predictions are based on what is called "The Solar Weather Technique." The technique "combines statistical analysis of over a century of historical weather patterns with clues derived from solar observations." He considers past weather patterns and solar observations and sun-earth magnetic connectivity. Conventional meteorology claims that such influences cause minimal impact on the Earth's atmosphere. Corbyn has declined to publish the details of his method.

Corbyn is also a global warming sceptic, and a noted dissenter in reports about the storms in Europe in 2000 and in Martin Durkin's documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle.

Evaluation of predictions

The sole academic work conducted involving Corbyn's work, published in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics (2001), took Corbyn's 'likely damaging gale periods' predictions for the island of Britain for October 1995 to September 1997. Corbyn's enlisted work then (which was carried out for a consortium of insurance companies) was only for the most likely periods of the strongest winds and specifically not a full forecast to include lesser winds:

"Forecasts prepared by Weather Action would repay further attention. The results provide little evidence to dismiss the observed success rates as being attributable to mere chance or good fortune. Indeed the balance of evidence indicates that the system performs better than chance although it is recognized that the margin of success differs greatly between the seasons and is lowest in winter when gales are most frequent."

"This analysis has been wholly empirical in nature, seeking only to establish the success levels of the gale forecasts. Other aspects of the forecasts have not been considered in this evaluation. Inevitably however these results draw into the debate questions surrounding the methodology by which the forecasts are prepared. This is not, however, the arena in which such issues should be taken up."

Researchers also stated of Corbyn's predictions that:

"It is unusual for most of the detail to be completely correct, but equally it is rare for nearly everything to be wrong ... Some forecasts are clearly very good, and a few are very poor, but the majority fall in the gray area in between, where an optimistic assessor would find merit, but a critical assessor would find fault."

In accordance with this view, critics point to inaccurate predictions, such as a white Easter in 1989, and "raging weather" in September 1997.

Outside the scientific arena, according to Corbyn in 1998, independent research conducted by insurers showed that for a particular day, up to nine months in advance, Weather Action's forecasts have achieved an accuracy rate of 55 per cent, rising to 80 per cent for 24 hours either side.

Reliability of forecasts in 2007

In December 2006 Corbyn predicted the summer 2007 floods in detail (correctly identifying 11 flood periods 10 of which occurred in England and one of which missed England but caused landslips in Scotland). Details were sent in a letter to the Prime Minister Gordon Brown and later submitted, on request, to the Government’s Flood Review. Corbyn also correctly warned the Reading festival organisers (Mean Fiddler group) of impending torrential rain and floods.

Corbyn predicted from 11 months ahead two major storm periods for parts of the British Isles and much of Europe for November 2007: 'around 8th-13th' - which would include a dangerous North Sea storm surge; and 'around 25th-28th November' which would involve 'extremely stormy sea conditions and alarming build up of swell' ( The full forecasts are available via www.lowefo.com )

In the event, the largest North sea storm surge in at least 30 years occurred on 9th November, and the Yarmouth sea defences came within eight inches of flooding and the Government evacuated 2,000 people. In Holland ALL Flood defences were raised for the first time in 30 years (or first time ever for some). . For the second period Corbyn extended the time window by 4 days (for reasons based on solar activity notified in emails to forecast users). The period began as originally predicted with a Northerly track storm and in the extended part there were many very strong winds recorded and a tornado in France (details and links via www.lowefo.com) and an extreme sea-state on the Irish coast, where 55ft waves appear to be the largest in modern records.

In the Netherlands, Corbyn warned email enquirers that whilst Holland and Belgium were not in the core storm track, some potentially damaging winds were very likely. Such winds did occur in parts of Belgium and Holland (and France, Ireland, Wales, England, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Germany etc).

References

• Some of these results were reported on the BBC2 ‘QED’ documentary (June 1996) about Piers and WeatherAction.