I'd like to bring to your attention a number of flaws which I feel hinder the dissemination of weather forecasts since the introduction of new "clearer" graphics this week:

1) The projection used to display forecast data is generally misleading. Scale is distorted by displaying a 3D sphere (the Earth) on a 2D medium (TV screen or online), meaning that locations close to the poles appear "squashed" and locations nearer to the equator are distended. In the general case this is not important, but for displays of pressure where the distance between isobars generally indicates stronger winds, the projection artifically makes the isobars appear closer together near the poles. This is also apparent on maps of the UK where Scotland (and in particular Shetland and Orkney) are less clearly represented than the south of Britain. This could potentially lead to implied political bias towards the south of Britain.

2) Pressure maps (synoptic charts) lack context, particularly on the UK pressure map. Without labels on the isobars indicating what pressure they represent, they are essentially meaningless.

3) Pressure maps online are incorrect. Fronts are shown to be overlapping and going the wrong direction. This is obviously a case whereby they are automatically generated and there's no human input to ensure they are accurate.

4) On TV broadcasts where one appears to "fly" over the UK (starting in Scotland, down the east coast, across to the SW and up to Northern Ireland), some parts of the map are visible for a mere one or two seconds (such as Kent, where I live). This is nowhere near enough time for anyone watching to find where they live and to decide what the weather for that location is.

5) With the removal of the "old-fashioned" symbols, the effect is to give the impression of a more accurate forecast. Rather than saying that there will be sunny intervals in the SE, for example, one could deduce from the new graphics that it might be sunny in one place, but another place 5 miles away might by cloudy. Current forecast technology struggles to provide 100% accurate regional forecasts, let alone being accurate down to the mile. While this might be intended to increase the clarity of the forecast, people might become disillusioned and acquire the perspective that the forecasts are less accurate than before.

6) The colours used to distinguish between radar echoes and cloud on the "cloud and rain" maps online do not provide ample contrast between the white of the clouds and light blue of the light rain echoes. This makes the radar echoes difficult to distinguish from the clouds.

7) Images online are too highly compressed. This leads to artifacting around symbols where the image compression removes detail in order to make the image file smaller. The images appear to be compressed using JPEG compression - GIF or PNG would be more suitable for these types of symbolic graphics.

8) When following an animation of the weather over several hours on the TV, one has to constantly glance down at the corner of the screen to see what time that frame of the animation represents. While it might be more pleasing to the eye, it makes it difficult for a viewer to relate the graphics with a time of day.

9) The lack of discussion of some features of the weather on TV bulletins (such as the wind or a synoptic/pressure chart) is at a clear disregard for those people who rely on that type of detail. Removing wind information from the weather bulletins will not help people who use wind or need to avoid it - people flying kites, sailing, walking, etc. Synoptic charts are important for those who require a general idea of the weather now and in the near future - they may not be necessary on every bulletin, but I watched a number of bulletins yesterday and didn't see a single synoptic chart.

10) Some maps online have the day and time of the map in the bottom-right hand corner of the map. The box with the time in partially obscures the coastline of the south-east of England, and obscures France (which is not useful, for example, if there are radar echoes in northern France which are moving north into SE England).

11) Increasing the size of the font in my browser (which many people do for accessibility reasons if they find it difficult to read small text on a computer screen) causes place-name labels to move. This leads to some potentially confusing situations where some places appear to be in the middle of the sea.

While I applaud the BBC for attempting to modernise the weather forecasts, claims that two years were spent developing the new look for forecasts don't hold up if there was an inherent lack of testing of the various aspects of the forecasts. Claims were made that people were consulted as to what they thought of the old forecasts, but have people been consulted (other than managers, and I would assume forecasters and presenters) as to whether the new graphics are an improvement?