News that 2012 was only the second wettest year in the UK, in just over the century since comparable records began, set me wondering how they calculate the average for the whole country – divide by the number of rain gauges, or attempt some more sophisticated adjustment to represent per unit of land area?
In any case it is clear that averages are less interesting than ever as measures of rainfall these days. It is the change in variability & perhaps too the shape of the distributions of rainfall – over units of time, space, intensity which are plainly of interest now. Forget model building & hypothesis testing, let’s just have some good old fashioned comprehensive & careful description.
Links
Met Office Statistics for December and 2012 - is the UK getting wetter?
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