Thanks GW.  I congratulate you on your mathematical calculations but I can tell Dev that there is absolutely no skill involved in my predictions.  Mine are pure guesses!  But that's probably obvious given my table position! 

My name is on the list which is good enough for me . Wherever  I may be....

Yup, thanks GW.

I'm not sure there is any skill either but I think there are (or may be) strategies, a little climatology and tendencies that can keep errors under control. But, whether the comp has been running long enough to show that I'm not sure.

Met Office Hadley      5.6c.    Anomaly     0.9c.   Provisional to 29th.

met check                 5.36c.  Anomaly     0.37c.

N-W                          5.83c.  Anomaly    0.74c.

Mount Sorrel               5.48c.  Anomaly    0.38c.

My  Mean                    5.4c.    Anomaly    -1.1c.

Oh no! My record's going to fall?

I predicted December badly wrong, will crash down the final table.

Under RMSD I will be killed, with 3 bad guesses 

Oh dear, always another year to try again

Will be on the bottom or very near.... Usual  place....

I think there is another way of looking at this set of data, though

I'm not convinced that the "skill level" has changed drastically between 2013's rubbish skill and 2014's. budding meteorologists.

2014 happened to be a year with a very high cumulative anomaly but importantly almost all in the same direction. So (at least in my case) the only skill was thinking that this was a longish term trend and going highish every month - which has worked like a charm this year

A better way of assessing skill would be to match the average error against the STANDARD DEVIATION of the monthly anomalies (this is a measure of the degree of scatter pf the anomalies  from the best fit line). 2014 with 10 or 11 anomalies in the same direction has a high cumulative value but a low standard deviation. (This also handles adding + and - figures together OK)

If you look at that way of doing it, you find a reasonable fit between the average error and the standard deviation of the anomaly - and much better than the fit between error and cumulative anomaly. The table below shows the correlation coefficient (how good a fit there is, 0=no fit and 1=perfect fit) between these two measures

Incidentally if 2010 is removed to get rid of the horrendous errors from Dec 2010 (CET anomaly of -5.8C vs 1971-2000) then the correlation coefficient of the STDEV goes up to 0.94

So as a rule of thumb,  2012 and 2014 have been quite easy years and 2010, 2011 and 2013 difficult based on Standard Deviation of anomaly and they have higher error rates

Last one for the month and year.

Met Office Hadley.         5.5c.      Anomaly      0.8c.     Provisional to   30th.

Metcheck                       5.24c.    Anomaly      0.25c.

N-W                               5.66c     Anomaly      0.57c.

Mount    Sorrel                 5.38c.     Anomaly     0.28c

 My    Mean                       5.3c.       Anomaly     -1.2c.

Interesting, and this year I've just assumed (a reasonable assumption nonetheless) the warmth will go on, and on...Only August bucked that trend - a month few came even near getting right.

My question to GW was just that we had several years of data and there might (or might not) be something of interest to be gleaned from it. As I said I think there are clear ways to minimise errors and that thus, maybe, we'll get better at the predictions.

One other thing I find interesting is the shape of each months guesses is, without fail, a stretched 's'. Why is this? Is it 'normal distribution'? I guess it shows we do use some skill in our prediction, they aren't random but they might well not be much better than sticking with climatology (humm, how would someone have done over four years simply going for average each month - I think I asked GW that but I forget...).

You can tell how someone would have done going with the average each month from my table above. In 2014 and also 2010 and 2011 such a tactic would have been a disaster. The cumulative errors to the long run mean being very much higher than the average error of those finishing in the top 10. Conversely in 2012 and 2013 such a tactic would have been good as the cumulative errors from the mean in those years were similar to the average error of those finishing in the top 10 of the competition.

The final December CET was 5.16C. So congratulations to Dougie, Gavin823, GezM and lanky who all predicted 5.2C.

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cet_mean_2014

The final CET for the year (using daily data) was 10.95C which is a new record beating the 10.86C recorded in 2006.

Here are the charts for December. An average month overall but some big swings with a cool spell from the 3rd to the 14th, very mild from the 16th to the 24th and then very cold from the 26th to the 30th.

Annual CET competition - December update

Well I had just typed out a post and the site crashed so I lost the lot. Don't have time to type it again so here are tables.

Congratulations to our winner Darren S and everyone who finished in the top 10.

Thanks for the tables Simon, and thanks for running the competition, you do a wonderful job. It has been keenly contested throughout, so a big well done to everyone for taking part, particularly Darren who won by a bigger margin than I expected.

It's good to see some new additions for this year, so good luck to you all.

Happy New Year.

Thanks for running the competition GW, surprised to have moved up to 3rd, well done to Darren.

Thanks for all those tables, stats and a very big thanks Simon for running this competition.

I'll leave this stickied for a few weeks so everyone can be sure they have seen their results.

Also I must say well done to all those who took part.

Thanks GW and of course thanks for all your hard graft and stats throughout the year !

Nice to get a gold for a change and I know b*ggars can't be choosers but I'd have preferred a January gong to start off the year up the top

Thanks for the tables charts and everything you do. Well appreciated...

Thanks for all you do GW, that silly summer month prediction got me otherwise i could have been top five.