Piers Corbyn Quotes

The weather records of the U.S.A. are the best kept and most accessible in the world, thanks to consistent government/military taxpayer support. There are longer European data sets, but the U.S.A. data is enough to forecast major extreme events.

It is almost possible to predict one or two days in advance, within a rather broad range of probability, what the weather is going to be; it is even thought that it will not be impossible to publish daily forecasts, which would be very useful to soci.

It's a pretty widely-accepted notion that the atmosphere is a ridiculously complex system, and the best we can do with our models is a rough approximation.

You can't say for certain what will happen to the weather in the long term.

My dad joined Langley in 1964 as a co-op student and retired in 2004 an internationally respected climate scientist.

Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.

Among all of our uncertainties weather is the most basic. We can’t live without it and we can’t control it.

However useful computer models may be, the one thing they cannot be is evidence. Computer climate models are simply conjectures.

Meteorologists don't use a script, and most create their own graphics and certainly put together their own forecasts. Most of us went to school to become scientists - at least I did - and studied thermodynamics, physics, and tons of calculus to take this young science to the next level. Our accuracy is amazing and will only continue to improve.

When I took over the ministry for science and technology, our weather systems were in shambles. Nobody believed in the IMD. Nothing was in digital mode. I changed all that. We got automatic rain gauges, automatic weather stations, Doppler radars.

I think we do have cyclic changes in weather, and I think that's been throughout the course of history.

The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books - mine included - because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn't happened.

Do you know what 'meteorologist' means in English? It means liar.

The science is clear that there is an increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. What is not clear from the science is how much of that increase is caused by human activity; and what also is not clear is what impact those increases have on the climatic cycle.

The basic science is very well established; it is well understood that global warming is due to greenhouse gases. What is uncertain is projections about specifics in the next few decades, by how much will the climate change.

Some days, I'd feel better with Punxsutawney Phil in the Oval Office - at least he doesn't lie about the weather.

I've never been one to bet on the weather.

I began as a weatherman and I learned very quickly I wasn't very good at it.

One can't predict the weather more than a few days in advance.

Being at NASA and having the access to both computing capability and satellite observation capability is kind of the ideal research situation to try to understand global climate change.

Change of weather is the discourse of fools.

I am saying that all predictions concerning climate are highly uncertain.

This was the most anticipated natural disaster in history.

I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do, and there's tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact.

Prime Minister Cameron says he wants to be the greenest government ever, but the definition of green is immature... I don't deny for a moment that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but there are so many other factors that affect climate. It is more complicated than the computer models that we are using. What the truth is, nobody knows.