UK's Met Office blows another summer forecast

“If the spate of miserable summers is to continue, Brits should know so that they can at least plan holidays someplace warm and sunny, like the Arctic.

To quote that great American thinker, Larry the Cable Guy: “I don’t care who you are, that right there is funny!”
Great post, Steven. Maybe the Met office should start consulting The Farmer’s Almanac for their weather climate predictions? 😉

is “Climate Change Science” the new & politically correct name for “Climatology”
Would anyone using the term “climate change” be comfortable using the different but equally stupid expression “water wet”.
Just curious.

If you leave out the UKMET daily weather predictions, NAO predictions, and future climate predictions, they do a reasonably good job. 🙂

Oldjim,
The Met 2007 wrap up said that temperatures averaged 14.1C, not 15.2C as you wrote.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2007/pr20070831.html
This is deceptive because due to all the clouds and humidity, night time temperatures were elevated. The high temperatures were well below normal and there was no escape from the cold, damp cloudy weather.
Same with this summer. July had two weeks of warmer weather which brought the numbers up some – but most of the summer was cloudy and rainy with low daytime temperatures.
Are you American? I don’t suggest that you walk into an English Pub and tell them that they had an above average summer.

Here in London it has been constantly overcast and raining torrents for the past few days, with daytime high temps struggling to reach 17 or 18 degrees. Feels like October out there! It has been a bad year for UK farmers, with much rain and not enough sunshine for the crops.
Here’s a news story about the horrendous summer they’ve had over in Ireland too, and here’s yesterday’s Guardian article about the current rainfall and flooding here in the UK.
A quote from the Guardian article: “Not surprisingly, the number of people suffering from seasonal affective disorder, which affects 4 million across the UK, has reached a record high because of the poor summer. Amanda Cross, of the charity Sada, said: “Many people already find autumn a difficult time of the year, with summer – and this one wasn’t particularly great – seemingly a distant memory.”
However, there is some good weather news on the distant horizon. The Met Office says its long-term forecast for September to November suggests there will be less rainfall than average.”
Hmm, so the Met are predicting less rain than average in the next few months, which probably means – expect the opposite… Yikes – we’ll need to build an Ark!

Steven,
You are correct but I was referring to the Hadcet numbers which you can download from here http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/ these are representative of a roughly triangular area of the United Kingdom enclosed by Lancashire, London and Bristol. I use these numbers because they go back to 1659 and let me look at the really long term trends.
However I did mess up a bit because the summer average for 1971-2000 using these figures is 15.6 not 14.1 (I made the mistake of not checking the average)
Hence using those figures it is colder than average.
Actually, although it has been wetter than usual, the temperatures down here in Dorset haven’t been too bad although the lack of sunshine was very obvious.
Looking a bit deeper at individual months during Summer (defined as June, July and August) June and July were well down on the average but August was about average.
June July August
13.9 16.2 16.2 actual
14.14 16.44 16.21 average
A graph of the long term averages shows that the summer hasn’t been far away from the normal lousy English summer and really shows the effect – or lack of – of global warming on our summers.
http://www.holtlane.plus.com/images/cet_graph.jpg

Subjectively, from Gloucestershire and Worcestershire – West Central England – , it’s been mostly cloudy, dark and wet, particularly late in the summer. There’ve been few nice periods. There’s a lot of talk of how the wet weather has interfered with the harvest.
This last week or so there have been a lot of heavy squally showers which have caused flooding.
Not a good summer at all.

Old Man Winter (12:29:12) :
“Looking at the last 10 years in particular, it is difficult to understand why the panicky predictions of dangerous warming continue to be released by a government office of “scientists.” Note that the maximum value for summer in England came in 1977 — 17.8 degrees Celsius.””2
It’s not a bit difficult to understand. AGW has become accepted by the establishment; the three main political parties, the EU, the BBC, the press. It’s passed into school science syllabuses. Big money is being spent on Windmills for power generation.
Don’t forget, that the Met Office aren’t just scientists, they’re also Civil Servants and there isn’t much mileage in saying, “Nothing to see here, move along”.
I find their short term forecasts are pretty accurate. Longer term – well there was talk in the papers of an Indian Summer, which must have come from the Met Office, unless it was made up – not impossible. I suppose it could still happen. Longer term still, one’s entitled to ask questions about whether taxes are being directed to fruitful ends.

Yeh
This wasn’t a fair and reasonable analysis. I am no supporter of the UKMet although I used to be.
They did say that this summer would be nothing like last (2007) which turned out to be inaccurate but then it wasn’t a technical analysis. True, temps were above normal as they predicted but only because night temps were so high.
Day max temps were below the long term ave, but their prediction wasn’t that detailed and never is. They always have a great deal of wiggle room in their press releases, just in case I suppose.
Sadly they appear to have become enthralled by the amount of money available for Climate Studies as opposed to their old job of weather forecasting. They did claim that their new high resolution models for climate and rainfall would allow to give accurate forecasts 12 hours ahead for heavy rainfall and 10 years ahead for climate parameters but I see no evidence of them achieving either at this moment.

Patrick Hadley (11:46:53)

A few months ago somebody posted a link to an archive showing just how bad they had been over the years: I wonder if anyone remembers how to find it.

That would be my post at the CA message board, which you commented on a while back.
http://www.climateaudit.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=119
Here’s an update (I’ve corrected an error I made for 1999 and added the forecast and the average anomaly for the first 7 months 2008.
year….mean forecast …actual …..next year hottest?
1999 …….0.38 …………0.33 …………..No
2000……..0.41………0.32-0.33………..No
2001……..0.47………0.42-0.44………No(2nd)
2002……..0.47………….0.49………….No(2nd)
2003……..0.55………….0.45……………Yes
2004……..0.50………….0.44………….No(2nd)
2005……..0.51………….0.48………….No(2nd)
2006…0.45(0.37?)…….0.42…………….No
2007……..0.54………….0.40……………Yes
2008……..0.37………….0.28…………….No
For those who don’t want to look back at the original post, the last column is whether UKMet predicted the coming year would be the “warmest ever”. Also note that the “actuals” are as presented in their yearly summary. Their master database has had several adjustments, and currently has slightly different values. For 2006, their forecast differs from what they state was their forecast in the following year, perhaps because they converted their previous forecast to an adjusted dataset (real clear huh?).
Note: I’m still interested in tracking down past claims of “next year will be warmest EVER!”

Here’s a Met Office report for central England 2008, with a nice graph
comparing this year with highs and lows 1772 -2007.
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/cet_info_mean.html

Aw, come off it, chaps. By our domestic metric, this summer was better than last. One barbecue rather than nil.

One more point. When I am wrong, I admit it. If we could see some of that from some global warming advocates or political candidates, perhaps we would have a healthy dialogue? Warm does not equal cool and dry does not equal wet.
If the IPCC would come out and say “the world is not warming as quickly as we forecast” or “our models aren’t ready for policy decisions yet” perhaps it would be possible to move forward with a sane discussion. When Lewis Pugh gets stuck in the ice a few miles outside Svalbard and three days later tells Gordon Brown that he has seen the Arctic melting down, how are we supposed to take his arguments seriously?
Politicians are attempting to manage the earth’s temperature within one tenth of a degree 100 years from now, when it varies more than that every day.

Steven Goddard:
“When Lewis Pugh gets stuck in the ice a few miles outside Svalbard and three days later tells Gordon Brown that he has seen the Arctic melting down, how are we supposed to take his arguments seriously?”
What is it that attracts Gordon Brown to poorly planned failures?
I guess Pugh was totally relying on an extended melt since everything else I have read about Arctic exploration indicated the need to be out of the area by the end of August at the latest.
You just have to wonder what the whole project was really about.
Ric Werme:
The summer weather here has mostly been driven by warm wet winds heading up from the Atlantic. Cloud, rain but generally averagely warm with a few slightly hotter days once in a while. Interestingly just recently here in the Midlands we seem to have moved into a regular overnight rain scenario. The clouds kept the night temperatures relatively high except for those nights where the wind direction was from the north or north east. August is often quite stormy, especially in the South West, but usually the cloud is more broken and far less persistent as I remember.
Looks like the lead into autumn is heading the same way.
The Hurricane stuff, or at least the tail end of the tropical storms, often reaches us but not with the same effects as experienced in the USA.

“The combined effect of low temperatures and rain has presented Britain’s invertebrates with a double whammy.”
Oh come on, that’s no way to refer to the warmists 😉

Old Man Winter. I think there is something wrong with your choice of 1977 for the hottest recent English Summer. In England 1976 was “the Summer without end, hot and dry from May to September. I remember it well.
“There was a taste of things to come in early May 1976 when a short heat wave led to 29°C being recorded in Greater London and Kent. The real heat set in on the 23rd June and for 14 consecutive days the temperature topped 32°C at a number of places in southern England.
At Hurn Airport in Dorset and Cheltenham (Gloucestershire) it exceeded 32°C for seven successive days. This is without parallel anywhere in the British Isles in modern times. Many long-standing records were broken. At Mayflower Park Southampton a reading of 35.6°C on the 28th June ranks as the UK’s highest June temperature.
The longest run of days with no measurable rain was 45 at Milton Abbas, Dorset and Teignmouth, Devon, in July / August which came on top of three other periods of absolute drought including 17 days in April, 22 days spanning May / June and 19 days June / July.
The drought and great heat combined to provide the ideal conditions for the propagation of heath and forest fires and some proved devastating. As the Summer wore on the situation became ever more dangerous.
The county of Dorset was typical of the serious situation throughout England and Wales with fires breaking out on a daily basis. Some were extinguished only to start again the next day having smouldered underground through the peat soils.
One fire at Horton common was started when a whirlwind or dust-devil picked up embers from one burnt area only to deposit them on another part of the bone dry common starting a conflagration a mile wide. Another inferno destroyed 50,000 trees in Hurn Forest.
A last minute change of wind direction helped prevent loss of life.
Meanwhile at St. Ives, near Ferndown, 250 acres of woodland was decimated when a 15 metre high wall of flame moved at 40mph across the area leading to the evacuation of 350 people from a nearby hospital. The incident made national headlines. Many patients were in beds and wheel chairs and thankfully emerged unharmed through a pall of black smoke. A last minute change of wind direction helped prevent loss of life.
The main A31 road was closed and hundreds more people were moved from nearby caravan sites. At one point a military fuel dump near West Moors was almost encircled by flames. Altogether 250 firemen and 110 soldiers using 37 fire appliances and two 6,000 gallon milk tankers commandeered from the milk marketing board fought to control the blaze.
In Surrey, the Fire Brigade answered 11,000 fire related calls in five months. 22 Home Office Green Goddess pumping appliances were called in to help. Concern was expressed for the effect of the fires on the habitats of rare birds such as the Dartford Warbler.
As the ground dried out thousands of subsidence claims poured into insurance companies with buildings in clay areas particularly vulnerable. Overall costs amounted to £60 million. Agriculture suffered badly with £500 million worth of failed crops.
The peak of the drought coincided with the holiday season and much of the south west of Britain could not cope with the increased demand for water. A Drought Act was passed and half a million people in Wales suffered cuts to water supplies. Standpipes were in use in Devon. Throughout Britain people became adept in saving water including British Rail who stopped washing their trains.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/understanding/1976_drought.shtml
We’ve never had a Summer like it in 36 years. Happy Salad Days.

NOAA agrees, 2007 will be the warmest year ever.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/01/070104-warmest-year_2.html

Oldjim (11:50:39) :
I noticed one of the planned improvements for the center is the inclusion of Antarctica in future projections of sea levels.
That’s probably a good idea as the southern polar regions contains 90% of the world’s ice.
If I were doing sea level projections, I would ignore the Arctic before ignoring Antarctica.
I’ve noticed the AGW crowd doesn’t like to talk about Antarctica. I found the place fascinating when I studied it back in 1958-59 at Carson Elementary in Denver.

To BC, driving from the UK to the US across the Arctic ice would be a great idea – maybe we can get Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson to lead a convoy of us over. Or we could all meet up half way, and have a Frost Fair, like they used to do on the Thames – just like old times. One thing’s for sure, we wouldn’t need a lot of refrigeration for the beers…
I remember how it used to be, only a few years ago. The UK might soon have a Mediterranean climate, they said. We would grow grapes on our patios, and sip the local red wine, looking out upon a parched landscape of olive and citrus groves, they said.
Yeah, right.

“Early indications for Winter 2008/9 (December, January and February”
“Temperature
Winter temperatures are more likely to be either near, or above average, than below average over much of the European region. For northern Europe, including the UK, Winter 2008/9 is likely to be less mild than last winter.”
“Rainfall
There is currently no clear signal for either above or below-average rainfall. However, for much of northern Europe, including the UK, rainfall is likely to be lower than observed in last year’s relatively wet winter.”
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/seasonal/winter2008_9/
If the high altitude temperatures around the tropics have fallen (as I’ve read on these pages) I,m guessing that the overall energy in the tropical band has dropped. Presumably thats why the Jet Stream hasn’t gone as far north as usual. Unfortunatly it is sitting over the British isles.

oldijm,
I looked closer at the CET graph you linked. It struck my how similar the last 30 years are to a comparable warming period starting at about 1700. It appears that annual temperatures have risen less than 0.5 degrees over the last 300 years.
http://www.holtlane.plus.com/images/cet_graph.jpg
Also interesting to note that that period was followed by a very sharp drop of about 3 degrees.
I remembered that the pub is in Torquay, not Torbay – about a block from the harbour.

M White, according to a warmist on another site, the jet stream has indeed settled lower again this year, causing a repica summer of 2007 over the UK. What I want answered is, is this a coincidence that we’ve had two summers of Arctic melt and two rotten UK summers – together?

MarkR: Thanks for the correction! I had eyeballed the date from the list I compiled myself. Sounds like a tough summer!
We were entering a three-year drought at that point in California. Those of us in Northern California got with the program of water rationing right away and would watch news footage of people in L.A. with their sprinklers going and the water running down the street. It started talk of secession!

Steven Goddard,
A nice set of examples, but you omitted one of the best, their news release issued May 30 2007:

Current rainfall indications suggest that over the summer as a whole southern parts of the UK are more likely to experience average or below-average rainfall, while the north is more likely to see average or above-average rainfall.
Trevor Bishop, Head of Water Resources Management at the Environment Agency said: “Although water resources are generally in a healthy position, there’s still no room for complacency. As summer approaches we shouldn’t forget about saving water. An extended period of hot dry weather could start to put water supplies and the environment under pressure.”

For those who don’t know – this was just 2 weeks before the start of the worst floods in living memory, across much of the country.
Then in their review of the year, their propaganda unit (sorry, press office) made the astounding claim on 2 January 2008,

The Met Office played a vital and significant role during the summer, providing excellent forecasts and warnings ahead of the heavy rains.

6 09 2008 Old Man Winter (12:29:12) :
writes
“Note, too, that the long-term mean alluded to by Oldjim includes 200 years’ worth of the Little Ice Age.”
No it doesn’t. The mean referred to is for the period 1971-2000 and covers the UK as a whole (i.e. it includes Scotland, N Ireland & Wales). The figures you posted are from the Central England record which is generally warmer than the rest of the UK. Other posters have made the same mistake.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a supporter of CO2 warming but, like it or not, despite all the rain and the lack of sunshine, UK temperatures have been around (and possibly slightly above) average this summer.
Other criticisms of the MET Office are valid.

Oldjim (13:01:38) : you say,
Steven,
You are correct but I was referring to the Hadcet numbers which you can download from here http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/ these are representative of a roughly triangular area of the United Kingdom enclosed by Lancashire, London and Bristol. I use these numbers because they go back to 1659 and let me look at the really long term trends.
I think there has been marginal level of development in this area since 1659.

Hey ….Steven Goddard
I live in Torquay some 10 mins from the harbour. Now which Pub would that be….

Dear Anthony
Met Office Temps
http://theweatheroutlook.com/twocommunity/forums/t/23028.aspx
I haven’t a clue how many of you look at the Met Office site or even the global temps they show. Leaving aside the mediocre coverage of Canada, Africa and Eurasia in fact everywhere on the planet, even though they must have the data, I am intrigued as to why they are so shy about posting Low Temperatures. To me that is figures in the double minuses Celsius.
I’ve noticed over the past two years that whenever the temperatures drop below minus 10C they tend to be left off the current temps on these pages.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/europe/europelatest.html
and you can see the same for N. American temps as well. As I write the N. American temps have risen so they are shown as of Christmas Eve but only relatively mild temps at say Boston. On the other hand there is no bashfulness about Double Pluses Celsius and temps of say plus 10C to 30C+ are invariably present when they occur. Thus in the N. Hemisphere summer, the temps are invariably shown without any ‘n/a’ (data not available) explanations. To be fair I have noticed occasions when there are n/a explanations but these are rare, unlike in the winter when they are commonplace.
Recently it’s been chilly in North America even by their standards. Kansas, Chicago and Boston have sometimes been below minus 10C yet these figures were not available on the Met Office site at the time. They come back again once the temps have risen above the Minus 10C mark. Of course as anyone here knows you can check elsewhere which is what I started to do some time ago (one and a half years ago) to test my hypothesis that something was not quite right with what was shown on the Met Office site. As another example of this glitch, everyone knows who follows weather knows that Western Russia has had a mild autumn and these temps were invariably reflected on the Met Office site since the summer without any problem as far as I noticed.
If you use this PLEASE DO NOT use my name or email address.
Regards
[snip Then why did you add your name here or in your sign on? Seriously this job is enough work as is ~charles the moderator]