Forecasting the Weather

C1 Advanced · Word Formation · Cambridge Ready original exercise

For questions 1–8, read the text below. Use the word given in capitals at the end of some of the lines to form a word that fits in the gap in the same line. There is an example at the beginning (0).

RELY

REMARK

MEASURE

IMAGINE

CERTAIN

PREDICT

SPECULATE

TRANSPARENT

Few things are grumbled about as (0) ___ as the weather forecast. If rain spoils a picnic on a day that was supposed to be sunny, forecasters are accused of being hopelessly (1) ___ . Yet the truth is that modern forecasts are (2) ___ good. Powerful computers now process millions of (3) ___ gathered every day from satellites, balloons and ships, producing predictions of an accuracy that would have been (4) ___ a generation ago. Part of the problem lies in how we read forecasts. Many people misunderstand a percentage chance of rain, assuming it describes how much of the day will be wet. Others overlook the (5) ___ that is built into every prediction. The atmosphere is a chaotic system, which makes it fundamentally (6) ___ once you look more than a few days ahead, so an outlook for next week is always more (7) ___ than one for tomorrow. To their credit, forecasters now communicate this doubt far more (8) ___ than they once did, and the rest of us might judge them a little more kindly.

Forecasting the Weather

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