Uncertainty is not ignorance

A temperature reading of 31 degrees Celsius seems straightforward, but the number alone says little. The important questions are whether that temperature is normal for the place and season, how often similar days occurred in the past, and whether an event once considered rare has become more common.

Those questions are central to Podnebnik.org, a new website that puts current weather readings into historical context. Instead of presenting temperature as an isolated figure, it compares today’s conditions with comparable days over a longer period.

For Ljubljana, the site can show whether the average temperature over the previous 24 hours ranked among the highest 5% of comparable days since 1950. That comparison provides information a thermometer cannot provide on its own.

Sašo Dolenc argues that uncertainty does not represent a failure of science. Good science, he says, identifies uncertainty precisely and explains it clearly.

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Good science is not distinguished by the absence of uncertainty, but by how precisely it can define it and how clearly it can express it.