It hasn’t happened yet, AFAIK. This from the Met Office on Friday:

“The hottest day of the year so far was Thursday with Heathrow Airport recording a high of 28 °C, but that is expected to be beaten over the coming week.”

This looks like being a warm week, although I notice that our local 5-day forecast, which was for sunshine every day when posted yesterday, now is more cloudy than sunny. And it’s raining at Wimbledon (4:50pm).

Still, I’m sure they know exactly what it’s going to like in 60 years’ time…

1) 1976 – 17.77C
2) 1826 – 17.60
3) 1995 – 17.37
4) 2003 – 17.33
5) 2006 – 17.23
6) 1846 – 17.10
7) 1983 – 17.07
8) 1947 – 17.03
9) 1933 – 17.00
10)1911 – 16.97

Century average 1701-1800 = 15.46C
Century average 1801-1900 = 15.19
Century average 1901-2000 = 15.35

Significant summer warming over two centuries of minus 0.11

Not any more it isn’t.

Again this has a better than even chance of being correct. It’s unlikely we’ll get the continuous weather fronts that plagued the UK in the past 2 years, so they’re probably not going to be far wrong here.
I wonder, a weather forecast yesterday included the Jet Stream, a rare event on UK TV weather reports. Usually considered too much information by the media elite. :)
It shows it as being far to the south of the UK which is I think unusual for summer as it normally establishes itself to the north of Scotland and it is expected to move from its southerly position ending up barrelling into the UK for at least a week or so. If I recall correctly this position was part of the weather conditions contributing to the last two summers and dragged in many Atlantic depressions. Here is a site that provides a similar forecast. http://www.metcheck.com/V40/UK/FREE/jetstream.asp

To be fair to the Met Office, their press release also said the chances of a 2007 summer as hot as 2003 or 2006 were only ’1 in 8′.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/may/03/bbc-weather-carrbridge-scottish-highland

I live in the Isle of Wight, whose Met Office forecasts are usually wrong, too…

That way, if they lose a few times, the Govt can sack those whose predictions are rubbish, saying there’s no more money left.

It’d ‘align stakeholders’ interests’ far better than the current funding mish-mash, wouldn’t it?

Joe’s predicting a moderate El Nino later this summer.

rephelan,
I don’t know why you are questioning Flanagan’s integrity. The lower plot of figure 6 in the Egan and Mullin paper shows precisely what he states:

“…people tend to belief in global warming as a function of their local temperature. In cold and temperate places, those supporting global waming are the ones with the highest level of education, whose opinion is relatively constant whatever the local temperatures.”

Perhaps I was too hasty in criticizing Flanagan’s integrity. There is an equal probability that neither you nor Flanagan can interpret a graph. The paper itself was concerned with the influence of non-ideological information on perceptions of global warming. The non-ideological information in question was the local weather. The chart referenced showed that the weather, either hotter or colder, had almost no effect on changing the perceptions of the more educated and had the greatest effect on changing the perceptions of the least educated. The chart does NOT show that more educated people believe in global warming and less educated do not. The authors own legend for that graph should have given you a clue:

“Figures show predicted probabilities of agreeing there is evidence for global warming when local temperature is much hotter than normal (at the 95th percentile, or 14.7°F above normal) and much cooler than normal (at the 5th percentile, 4.3°F below normal).”

The conclusion of the paper, as presented in the abstract, was:

“Our results suggest that when politically relevant information is conveyed without ideological cues, political sophistication may prohibit the integration of this information into political beliefs regardless of the direction of one’s predispositions. “

The bottom line is that whether you are an alarmist or denialist, political sophistication (defined by the authors as either high education or ideological commitment to a party) tends to leave your position on AGW unmoved in the face of your perception of the weather.

Whether Flanagan has an integrity issue or literacy issue, neither choice looks particularly good for Flanagan….

Can we do better than average?

Thank you for writing the email. It ‘s often best to approach departments in a polite but direct manor. Well done and I will read the reply in full when I have had some sleep. Meanwhile I will comment on a small part of their responce.

Seasonal trends in weather affect large geographic areas, so the seasonal forecast for the UK is set in the broader context of Europe as a whole. We are also looking at trends over a longer period – the actual weather will be subject to many sub-regional and local variations.

In the stock market there is the foolish mantra that “the trend is your friend”. This works well when the trend remains intact and everyone is making money but when the trend changes it is the naive that get hurt the most. They can’t bring themselves to believe that the trend has changed and continue to throw more money in, in the believe that the market will resume the trend.

How is it that we throw our tax money at these shallow buffoons? Do they not know that in order to predict any trend you must understand the underlying fundamentals and even then a seemingly random event may disrupt the best of forecasts.

These people advise governments using short term trends to predict the climate years into the future. Although in this instance we are talking about the weather, it is none the less symptomatic of the shoddy state of the many sciences that have been hijacked by those who are running a political or funding agenda.

Americans just do not understand summer in the UK.
I experienced the whole summer of 1992; it was a Wednesday in July between 2:30 pm and 3:30 pm, when the sun broke through the clouds.

Yes I remember well. The pubs ran out of lager.

Wow, look at the change in attitude! A year ago a warm summer would be a global warming disaster. Now:

“After two disappointingly-wet summers, the signs are much more promising this year.”

They mean they predicted a two hot and dry summers and were disappointed. Now they are predicting a warmer dryer summer and by the mighty god of averages it looks jolly promising.