From the GWPF, here’s a collection of articles that are collectively ripping the Met Office a “new one”. And, it is easy to see why. Here’s the Met Office supercomputer enhanced model output forecast from October 2010:
The map and this below are from Autonomous Mind: The piece even goes on to name the Met Office employee who spoke about the map and talked up the effort that had gone into producing the start point for a ‘seasonal forecast‘:
Helen Chivers, Met Office forecaster, insisted the temperature map takes into account the influence of climate factors such as El Nino and La Nina – five-yearly climatic patterns that affect the weather – but admits this is only a “start point” for a seasonal forecast. She said: “The map shows probabilities of temperatures in months ahead compared to average temperatures over a 30-year period.
Click the links in stories below for more at each website.
Let’s hope Santa isn’t relying on weather forecasts from the U.K. Met Office. The British deep freeze of recent weeks (which has also immobilized much of continental Europe) is profoundly embarrassing for the official forecaster. Just two months ago it projected a milder than usual winter. This debacle is more than merely embarrassing. The Met Office is front and centre in rationalizing the British government’s commitment to fight catastrophic man-made global warming with more and bigger bureaucracy, so its conspicuous errors raise yet more questions about that “settled” science. –-Peter Foster, Financial Post, 22 December 2010
Dave Britton, the Met Office’s Chief Press Officer, e-mailed the following statement to the Global Warming Policy Foundation:
Following the entry on your blog regarding the Met Office please find the Met Office response below:
The Met Office has not issued a seasonal forecast to the public and categorically denies forecasting a ‘mild winter’ as suggested by Boris Johnson <http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/> in his column in the Daily Telegraph.
Following public research, the Met Office no longer issues long-range forecasts for the general public; instead we provide a monthly outlook on our website, which have consistent and clearly sign-posted the very cold conditions.
Our day-to-day forecasts have been widely recognised as providing excellent advice to government, businesses and the public with the Daily Telegraph commenting only today that ‘the weekends heavy snow was forecast with something approaching pin-point accuracy by the Met Office’.
The public trust and take heed of our warnings and it is misleading to imply that the Met Office did not see this cold weather coming.
Dave Britton Chief Press Officer, Met Office – FitzRoy Road Exeter EX1 3PB United Kingdom, E-mail: dave.britton@metoffice.gov.uk – http://www.metoffice.gov.uk
GWPF Note: The Met Office’s track record of forecasting mild winters can be found here: Warm Bias: How The Met Office Mislead The British Public
The Met Office denial of a forecast is fatuous and their temperature map demonstrates clearly their computer models, featuring the global warming bias that undermines the Met Office’s predictions, are as much use as a chocolate fireguard. –Autonomous Mind, 20 December 2010
The economic impact of the freezing winter will deepen this week as Britain prepares for more travel gridlock, and millions of workers, travellers and shoppers were expected to stay at home in the run-up to Christmas rather than brave the icy conditions. Estimates from the insurer Royal Sun Alliance (RSA) have put the cost of the weather to the economy at £1bn per day, a sum that is thought to be hitting retailers, restaurants and bars the hardest. The total cost is expected to be around £13bn. –Jonathan Brown, The Independent, 20 December 2010
The row over the need for a multimillion-pound investment in snowploughs, de-icing equipment and salt stocks deepened this morning with the publication of a government-backed report using Met Office predictions that successive hard winters are rare. But the findings of the government-commissioned study were contradicted by Sir David King, the government’s chief scientific adviser from 2000 to 2007, who warned that ministers should plan for more cold winters. Quarmby said the Met Office remained convinced that the severe cold snap is a one-off phenomenon. –Dan Milmo, The Guardian, 21 December 2010
This is the third winter running when we have had very cold and snowy conditions hitting the UK. It comes at a time of continued, unusually weak, solar activity. Perhaps we all need to get used to colder winters across the UK in the next few years.—Paul Hudson, BBC Weather, 20 December 2010
It turns out that Dr. Viner of the East Anglia Climate Research Unit was flat-out wrong when he told the Independent in early 2000 that within a few years snow would be rare. In fact, snow has been abundant during every year but one since then. — Donna Laframboise, No Frakking Consensus, 7 January 2010
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Somebody should be in trouble for leaking the forecasts. They are so wrong.
Ooops, I guess they are paid to forecast. How is that going for them?
Big LOL at the name of the Met Office employee. “Helen Chivers” – I bet she is right now!
I would be nice if someone could predict the weather or climate, but they can’t.
Predicting mild winters, only to be followed by record breaking cold, is all the proof that someone needs that they can’t.
Hindcasting that the jet stream changed, is only more proof that that didn’t predict it, and even more proof that they don’t know what they are talking about.
Problem is, you can always find someone that got the prediction right. There’s going to be someone out there that predicted a cold winter, and lucked out on their prediction.
But the fact that some predicted warm, some predicted cold……….
That is even more proof that they can’t predict the weather or climate…………
London Heathrow did not buy enough anti-freeze, based upon the Met Office’s predictions. Thus LHR was blocked by snow for three days, and thousands of passengers delayed.
I think the Met Office should give compensation, for everyone who was delayed, throughout the country. And the BBC can help out with further payments, for being such a keen cheer-leader of AGW.
.
Is the yellow snow at some mythical temperature scale. Yes, everyone loves yellow snow.
As Santa might put it:-
HoHoHoHoHoHoHoHoHoHoHoHoHoHoHoHoHoHoHoHoHoHoHoHoHoHoHoHoHoHo
They got Greenland Sea right, temperatures were above average (on minus side they gave it lowest probability).
This is just absurd. What the MET has done is used their AGW hypothesis to create a European temperature template that slowly shows a natural increase in temperatures based upon their supposition that temperatures will increase by 4C per century. Then they introduce what they consider to be effecting variables, such as the La Nina ‘cycles’. Of course they will always be wrong. The bias is built in the model. In fact in a mere few years of existence this model is obviously wrong in every respect.
The Independent was claiming the Met office had predicted the big freeze in October.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/the-uk-may-be-cold-but-its-still-a-warm-world-says-met-office-chief-2165492.html
I not sure where Steve Connor the Independent’s “Science” editor got that from?
Speaking as a Brit, I must say that the Met Office are a joke with regard to their long term forecasts. Met Office short term forecasts (1-2 days) are in general reasonable, but to be honest not much more accurate than can be gleaned by looking at the surface pressure charts, tapping ye olde barometer and looking out the window. Some of their forecasts for prolonged heavy rain have been way off the mark and the scary warnings of extreme weather events are coming thicker and faster than all this global warming induced snow we’ve been having for the last three years. Reading some of the recent Met Office statements in the media makes me wonder if there is a portal to an alternative universe located somewhere in Exeter.
This just means they need a more expensive computer!
Come now Antony, a choco fireguard would be much better in this circumstance as it would predict warmth and cold directly from its constitution – something the MET office appears to be unable to do.
Excelente trabajo
Muchas felicidades y Próspero 2011 Don Antonio
I’d prefer a chocolate fire guard to the met office; at least you could eat it whilst huddled round the fire for warmth. A huge amount cheaper too.
That’s the problem with fudging (adding warming trends), cherry picking source data and statistical butchery of data (to get hockey sticks). Any model you build on this might as well have been constructed on blancmanche foundations.
Then you add climatologists (they are not worthy of being called scientists) that play with the parameters of models that they don’t understand in order to get apocalyptic ‘forecasts’. The models being written by incompetent hacker-monkeys, not engineered. (ref Harry read me file).
And on top you add politicians hijacking the subject to add mountains of taxes, laws and inappropriate technology to the crumbling edifice. “We’ll save you” say the PPE graduates.
As an atheist, even I am tempted to thank ‘god’ for the hacked emails.
The guy who did that deserves the Nobel prize for services to science. While you’re at it, take Gore’s off of him. Even watermelons must see the depth of the fraud, theft and incompetence inflicted on us plebs.
You warmistas should be ashamed of yourselves, why not retire in disgrace right now?
It is quite simple, any temperature forecast should be multiplied by -10. Just change one string in the model software and Voila!
That Dave Britton guy just flat out lied to them… a bald faced liar. He says one thing and the facts show the opposite…… In my book…. That’s called lying.
The taxpayers need to have these useless, thieving bureaucratic departments shutdown and the government funding and grants for all climate science, environmental programs and renewable energy, stopped.
The taxpayers are being virtually enslaved by a parasitical bureaucratic elite that think they have a right to everyone else’s money, time and productivity….. Time it was stopped.
What they meant is this:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/MetOff.htm
(just reverse whatever they forecast)
They just can’t get it right, and wont admit they’re ever wrong. Reminds me of the forecasts for a red hot summer every year, which fails to materialise. Last year we were all supposed to paint our houses white to protect us from the unbearable heat! In England! Yeah right.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1184563/Now-Government-wants-paint-houses-white-beat-global-warming.html
Well if the tall forehead types that run the MET are too stupid to know that this Interweb thingy never forgets and always remembers what was published just a few months ago and too ignorant to believe they can bluster and lie their way out of theri abject failure to provide an accurate forecast then they deserve to canned.
Fire the lot of them –
Charge 1 . . . Incompetence
Charge 2 . . . Fraud
Charge 3 . . . Lying
We used to keep criminals busy doing Public Works . . . the Dufus Brigade running the MET should all be given shovels and put to work clearing snow at Heathrow for a few weeks.
Its a case of what do believe what the AGW fan club states or you own eyes.
Obviously the science behind the AGW is to promote the fairy tale agenda. The AGW agenda requires that believe that somehow limiting CO2 will help the world in any manner.
As the feedback (cloud cover increases when the planet gets warmer rather than decreases) is negative rather than positive the planet will warm less than 1C due to a doubling of CO2.
Further more, CO2 increases in beneficial for the biosphere. The biosphere increases in size and productivity when CO2 levels are higher. Commercial greenhouses inject CO2. Plants eat CO2. Plant growth rates and yields increases for CO2 levels up to around 2500 ppm. CO2 is at the lowest level in the last 500 million years. (since life appeared on the planet.)
We are at the end of the interglacial cycle. There has been 22 glacial/interglacial cycles. The interglacial cycles have all ended abruptly. The biosphere expands and is more productive when the planet is warmer. Rainfall increases when the planet is warmer, as 70% of the planet is covered with water.
Send better chicken entrails soon!
Or more money now, I like to think some met office boffin is on the bat phone to Cameroon and huneyloon saying “they’re on to us gov, the game’s a bogey, deploy plan 10:10 while you still can” or words to those effect.
The Met has reported instances of snow where I live and where I work (a fair distance apart) in this second bout of bad weather. Unfortunately, it has not materialised at either location, but we have been very cold. I would dispute the pinpoint accuracy myself. But maybe I am expecting too much?
Denial ain’t a river in Egypt, there Met Office, they ought to hire Corbyn…
“An Engineer says:
December 22, 2010 at 8:35 am
Speaking as a Brit, I must say that the Met Office are a joke with regard to their long term forecasts. Met Office short term forecasts (1-2 days) are in general reasonable, but to be honest not much more accurate than can be gleaned by looking at the surface pressure charts, tapping ye olde barometer and looking out the window. Some of their forecasts for prolonged heavy rain have been way off the mark and the scary warnings of extreme weather events are coming thicker and faster than all this global warming induced snow we’ve been having for the last three years. Reading some of the recent Met Office statements in the media makes me wonder if there is a portal to an alternative universe located somewhere in Exeter.”
Spot on, Engineer. I have said this here several times that the Met Office dish out warnings of heavy rainfall like confetti and then we might have an hour of drizzle. I am convinced this is all part of their extreme climate disruption scaremongering.
Hey ho, off to Yorkshire for Christmas from the south-west. Usual journey time 4.5 hours. Have a bet with my husband that it’ll take 7 hours. Will gladly cough up if I’m wrong. Son has managed to change his flight into Heathrow to Manchester. I think BA were happy to accommodate him given the chaos at Heathrow.
Happy Christmas everyone. Here’s to the end of global climate disruption (whatever) in 2011! Cheers!
I don’t know the rules of cricket, but in baseball it’s “three strikes, you’re out”.