Shipping Forecast excluding the header line, has a limit of 350 words—except for the 0048 broadcast, where it is increased to 380 to accommodate Trafalgar's inclusion—and has a very strict format. It begins with "And now the Shipping Forecast, issued by the Met Office on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency at xxxx today." This format is followed quite strictly, although some continuity announcers read out the actual date of issue as opposed to the word "today". This is followed by gale warnings (winds of force 8 or more on the Beaufort scale), if any (e.g., "There are warnings of gales
Forecast verification Forecast verification Forecast verification is a subfield of the climate, atmospheric and ocean sciences dealing with validating, verifying and determining the predictive power of prognostic model forecasts. Because of the complexity of these models, forecast verification goes a good deal beyond simple measures of statistical association or mean error calculations. To determine the value of a forecast, we need to measure it against some baseline, or minimally accurate forecast. There are many types of forecast that, while producing impressive-looking skill scores, are nonetheless naive. A "persistence" forecast can still rival even those of the most sophisticated models. An example is: