More on the wettest April in 100 years in the UK

It was also the coldest since 1989
=================================
Impossible, warmer air holds more moisture………………………………/snark

As so often with otherwise baffling political decisions in the UK, the EU lurks in the shadows:
“We’ve seen a perversity creep into UK policy where, instead of dealing with local water shortages by increasing storage capacity, government is preventing these shortages from being resolved, and is then seeking to reduce consumption. Now we see where this is coming from.
“In order to come to grips with water scarcity and droughts”, says the commission, “the first priority is to move towards a water efficient and water-saving economy”. What the commission decided, the UK government has adopted.
(…)
Basically, price is to be used as the primary tool of water management. No longer is it the function of water companies to provide adequate supplies of clean water at minimum cost. The task is to reduce demand, thereby saving energy and reducing carbon footprints.
Of course, if water becomes too plentiful and there is no need for rationing, extreme water-saving measures could not be implemented and consumer resistance to price rises would be difficult to overcome.
Therefore, in implementing EU policy, it has become government strategy deliberately to maintain a climate of shortage, and an atmosphere of crisis. The consumer is being given the choice between standpipes and higher prices, which makes paying more seem a better option. But it is an artificial choice, engineered for doctrinal reasons rather than necessity.”
More at:
http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=82616

I should have said in my above post that despite the heavy rain we are still going to be subjected to water restrictions for at least months to come because, despite massively increased need for water in the South East, not least because successive governments have refused water company proposals to create extra reservoirs since the 1970s.
The reasoning behind the otherwise baffling refusals (of course hidden from the electorate) is EU policy.

It appears to be the wettest drought on record. Oh that nasty CO2 did it again!!! :-))

Don’t worry. in a few years you will be able to review the MET website and will learn that they had hit the nail on the head. Just a bit of adjustment is needed.and it will be done quite carefully. A bit of retroanalysis by the MET will show that rain fall was quite as heavy as reported and the predictions will be moderated to fall in line. Then they will announce ‘the model’ was right again.

October will mark the 25th anniversary of the Met Office becoming a national laughing stock.
Thanks a lot, Michael Fish!

Grant @ 9.18am
Taking your notion a step further, the Met Office should demonstrate their forecasting confidence by ‘running a book’ themselves on the outcomes.
That way, either they abandon politics and return to scientific method, or we get the opportunity to bankrupt them!

Strange, the dust in those pictures looks almost like water. Must be a mirage. The East Anglia Desert is well known for mirages.

At the moment I am living in the UK but usually live in Australia. The UK Met Office appear as pro AGW as does the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) in Australia. Both routinely predict global warming associated scenarios which don’t eventuate. Professor Tim Flannery, the Australian Climate Commissioner, famously stated in 2007 after aa prolonged that the East coast of Australia would never again have full reservoirs. Needless to say since then the reservoirs have been overflowing due to very heavy rain all along the East coast during the last 2-3years. The current Met Office forecast for May is “The Met Office predicts the first two weeks of May are likely to stay ‘unsettled’, with the prospect of chilly weather, more heavy rain and, in Scotland, snow”. How does this gel with their earlier forecasts? What really annoys is that these dodgy forecasts of drought and higher than average temperatures are seized on by politicians and the MSM to put the frighteners on the gullible. When these dire predictions don’t eventuate however, there is never an apology or better still a retraction, by the politicians, the Met Office, Tim Flannery, Australia’s BoM or the MSM.

My understanding of the generally accepted temperature trend over the last few decades is of a general rise up until 1998 followed by a leveling off. We are occasionally reminded by the MSM that the three hottest years on record occured since 2000, this is consistent with a general rise followed by a flattening out because the flat part of the graph wouldn’t be dead straight but slighty wavy, so the little humps would create those hottest years.
Non of this coincides with my, admittedly anecdotal, real world experiences. I can remember the hot summers around the turn of the century, there has not been a hot summer since then. I can recall a trip to Scotland when I saw the first snow that I had seen in years. I can also recall 2010 when I spent hours, at home and at work, shovelling tons of the stuff. In my little bit of the world it has definately become colder since 1998. Is the UK some strange outlier, getting colder while the rest of the world stays warm?

The met office should be paid on a performance basis. Only pay them when they get it right.

diogenes says:
May 5, 2012 at 11:02 am
guys – I would be more worried about whether the water companies and the regulator rely on these forecasts when drawing up their budgets and forecasts
Too late, they do. They had a big sommet in march to discuss the drought with the UK MO, Water agencies, environmental agencies, Greepeace, WWF, FoE etc and declared a drought for the foreseeable future and hosepipe ban. Et Voilà, within a week it was pouring of rain and did not stop until now.

Wow, I missed most of May, and June altogether!

There is an old saying in the UK, which, I am sure, predates the Met. office.
Oak before ash, we’re in for a splash
Ash before oak, we’re in for a soak.
Anyone from the UK know which came into leaf first; ash or oak?

Problem is, Thames water have sold off about 20 reservoir sites and were also refused permission to build a new one in the Didcot area, being told to fix all their leaks first as they are under-performing in that area. Caroline Spelman is I believe one of those who opposed the new reservoir which will be required anyway because of immigration in the South East.
As I recall, Essex and Suffolk are classified as semi-arid with rainfall less than many deserts.
DaveE.

Carrie says:
May 5, 2012 at 10:45 am
At an annual cost of approximately £170 million, I’d suggest we buy a crystal ball instead; it would be a heck of a lot cheaper and way more accurate! A national disgrace!!

Carrie, you are not updated. You have no idea about how much a crystal balls costs these days! I am convinced that MetOffice made a vice choice to take the next best technique to but a fraction of the cost.

I’m sure they(Met Office) will provide themselves a big bonus on their ‘accurate’ forecasts…

Steven Mosher says:
May 5, 2012 at 12:05 pm
Huh?
everyone who works with a weather forecast accepts that it is not deterministic.
They issued a probabilistic forecast. That forecast included low probabilities for
both wetter and cooler.

Compared to other weather forecasters the Met Office has low skill. Its record is appalling, so much so they had to abandon long range seasonal forecasts.

It has intrigued me for years how climate scientist can be convinced that history is wrong, have 20/20 vision of the future. but remain at a total loss about the present.

Their prediction reminds me of Danny Gallivan in the old days of hockey commentary. “A scintillating blast – that went ten feet wide.”
In an ideal world the head of the Met Office would be giving an interview in the pouring rain on why this technically is a drought. And then the bus with the famous advertisement rolls by splashing water all over his Hunters.

Dr Richard North on his website http://www.eureferendum.com has been looking closely at the politics surrounding the so called drought in the UK and found a a “massive failure in strategic planning, on a par with the failure to ensure adequate energy supplies”.
Caroline Spelman, Secretary of State for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, recently decided that there was “no immediate need for (a new reservoir) largely based on the idea that people would respond to her nagging and reduce per capita water consumption”.
http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=82614
Dr North further found that: “To overcome the perennial problem of water shortages, five major new reservoir projects had been thought necessary, plus three large extensions to existing reservoirs. This was not an academic project. Outline plans had been set out in the water companies’ 25-year water resources plans prepared in 2004.”
However as a result of political opposition, “none of the five reservoirs deemed essential in 2004 – all in the south of England – have seen the light of day”. Dr North concludes, “the climate nannies are pursuing instead a policy of reduced water consumption, in line with its more general climate change mitigation strategy”.
http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=82615
Next, in a very interesting article Dr North revealed that the water shortage in the UK, “involves the EU (European Union) and climate change, with the (European) Commission asserting that water scarcity and droughts have now emerged “as a major challenge” – and “climate change is expected to make matters worse”. Using that as its base, the EU has effectively taken over water management policy”.
As a result of European Union meddling “via the Framework Water Directive”, and with the complicity of the UK government Dr North revealed that “price is to be used as the primary tool of water management. No longer is it the function of water companies to provide adequate supplies of clean water at minimum cost. The task is to reduce demand, thereby saving energy and reducing carbon footprints”. The article is well worth reading in full:
http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=82616
Your excellent post when combined with Dr North’s painstaking research show that water shortage and the threat of standpipes together with higher water prices are the result of collusion and political chicanery.

It felt cold here in Nottingham when I walked the dog tonight and looked as if it would rain again.
Evidently the asparagus crop has been devastated so far http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/9245041/British-Asparagus-Festival-cancelled-due-to-lack-of-asparagus.html I was going to give a link to Thames Water (one of the driest areas) reservoir levels but I can’t find the link anymore but they are about 98% full. The water companies say the problem is with groundwater but we shall see.

– “the Met Office Chairman, Robert Napier (formerly Chief Exec of WWF-UK),”
excuse me where the hell did that come from ? Have activists infiltrated anything else ?
So if the Met O came out against CAGW would that possibly affect WWF’s £300m/yr donation base ?
– From WikiP : “The Green Fiscal Commission set up to examine the best way of implementing ECO-TAXES .. is chaired by Robert Napier, chairman of the Met Office and former chief executive of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).”
OMG ! what an upside down world we live in

question to the mosher….what constites abnormal variation in the daily temperature record of the UK? For the month of May, I think I have come close today. It feels like we are goingm to nhave another snowfall. But Mosher with all his tools will enlighten me.

Stop calling it a drought, it is a water shortage A drought is a substantive natural shortfall of water and this is not what your summary shows..
The UK is suffering a supplier water shortage because EU/UK political influences have prevented them building additional storage capacity to match increases in the customer base. As the rainfall figures above show there is an adequate supply of raw material (ie rainwater) to supply increases in the finished product (ie cleaned tap water) should they wish to capture it..

Where I live in Wiltshire, Wessex Water take a lot of ground water. They do have reservoirs, but prefer groundwater as it is purer and therefore requires less treatment. In Wessex Water-speak, they talk about less carbon emissions, which just says to me that they use less power taking groundwater than treating reservoir water, but it makes them look good in the eyes of government climate change act reasoning. They reckon reservoirs are pretty much normal hereabouts, but the groundwater levels are low as we have had less than usual rainfall and the aquifer hasn’t been replenished. Having seen the flooded water meadows near Salisbury, it does make you wonder why there hasn’t been adequate planning to siphon off excess river water in times of heavy rainfall, but perhaps the climate change prophesies didn’t take this sort of event into account, a bit like the salinity plant in Oz, built at vast expense because there was never going to be any rain, or allowing their reservoirs to become so full they had to release water when it was already flooding downstream. I’d hate to be a water planner in this day and age, bombarded with climate change projections on the one hand and having to appease the government, while the weather/climate does everything it can to disprove the forecasts, long or short range. The local psychiatric unit close to Wessex Water’s Bath HQ is probably full of jibbering water engineers.
My garden is squelching with mud, my veg are looking very sad. The asparagus, which was all beginning to show after the warm spell during the last week of March, has virtually stopped growing it’s so flipping cold and all the more tender stuff is still in the greenhouse snugly wrapped in fleece. Cloud cover has been 100% today so temperatures have been cold and now that there are clear patches outside tonight, I expect the temperature will drop even further.
There is a Giles cartoon for 1st June with the Giles family on board a sailing boat, in their storm gear, the sky is dark and the rain is lashing down and they are celebrating ‘the 1st of flaming June’. Situation fairly normal, then!

Judging by the way that most weather forecasts online in the UK don’t show numbers directly anymore but, instead, rely on coloured lookup charts that were once the sole province of paint companies I’m strongly reminded of the script by the late Douglas Adams when he discusses the ‘Wheel Commitee’
After months of wrangling, this group of ‘worthies’ (comprised of a mix of telephone hygienists and PR specialists) had failed to come up with this most basic of machines.
When challenged as to their lack of effectiveness their defence comprised entirely of ‘Easy for you to say but what colour should it be’
Forget those tricky numbers that follow well-understood patterns. Weather is complicated. Climate is very much harder to predict but it proves a much more solid foundation for a long and lucrative career. Climatology is to meteorology as Sport League results are to their respective Fantasy outcomes!
Never mind that the Met Office weather models and climate models share the same algorithms or so they tell us. What matters is that they both follow the True Faith and therefore must be exempted from criticism.
Hint for the IPPC; forget about those silly numbers, so beloved of old-school scientists. They just provide ammunition for those pesky sceptics when they diverge from predictions. Go for colours instead. Who could provide numerical/statistical counter-arguments to a peer-reviewed paper in Nature that utilised colour charts? Even Steve McIntyre would have problems analysing upside down sediments with an R2 of green with a hit of red +/- a bluish tinge!

Steven Mosher says:
May 5, 2012 at 12:05 pm
Huh?
One cannot both believe that the weather is chaotic on short time scales AND criticize probablistic estimates that recognize this fact.
Actually – you can. You are trying to introduce a false dichotomy, arguing that “if weather / climate is chaotic then there is no possibility and no point in making weather forecasts; and conversely, if we find that in fact weather forecasting is possible with some skill, then we can claim that weather / climate are chaos-free”.
This is oversimplistic and deceptive. Ever heard of the Hopf bifurcation? Systems which tend to chaotic non-equilibrium pattern diverge gradually into a series of bifurcations until eventually an avalanche of bifurcations leads to the transition to chaos. But in the short term there is a “window” within which linear type analysis and prediction are possible.
Climate / weather does include chaotic / non-equilibrium pattern phenomena. However this does not meant that, armed with data on winds, temperatures and pressures in the atmosphere, we cannot make forecasts for several days ahead.

the forcast for sydney Aust 5/6/12 is for rain at hhe moment not one cloud to be seen ?

The Met Office is being left behind, it needs to get with the program.
Lengthy, “unprecedented” cold spell hits Morocco; global warming blamed
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2012/05/lengthy-cold-spell-hits-morocco-global.html

Having looked at some of the pictures, I was astonished to see that the average rainfall for April was 126.5 mm (4.98 in). In Tulsa Oklahoma in September 1971 we had 18.18 in (461.8 mm) of rain. On May 26-27 1984 we had 9.27 in (235.4 mm) within 24 hours. My recollection of that storm is that most of the rain fell within 8 or 9 hours. It was a magnificent rain storm.
Noting that the above post shows an average for NW and N Wales of about 1700 mm/year (67 in/year), but our maximum has been 69.88 in (1774.95 mm) in year 1973. I would suggest that the infrastructure in England is in even worse shape than here is Tulsa.
Donald K. Mitchell

There is no incentive to get it right, because if they get it wrong, they can get bigger computers.

Latitude says:
May 5, 2012 at 6:44 pm
“Eric Adler says:
May 5, 2012 at 5:47 pm
It is interesting that due to the warming of the Arctic, the jet stream is becoming weaker, and
meandering more, which sets up these blocking patterns that create more frequent extreme drought and extreme wet conditions.
=========================
Eric, you might check Arctic temps this year…and ice extent while you’re at it
…..Materbedwetter counts on useful idiots”
Instead of using invective, you might try to understand what is happening. The weakening of the jet stream does not depend solely on the Arctic temperature. It depends on the difference between Arctic temperatures and the temperatures of the lower latitudes. For 2011, the Arctic Temperature Anomaly (64 – 90 degrees) over the past year has been 2.32C. The temperatures for Equator to 24, 24 to 44, and 44 to 46 respectively were 0.3, 0.46 and 0.92 respectively.
These anomalies represent a weakening of the temperature gradient between the Arctic and the lower latitudes. That has been a general trend.
If you look at the global anomaly map for March, you can see the Arctic temperatures are very high over the Europe and Eastern Siberia, surrounded by a cooler region. The result of the blocking system over North America is clearly visible as a heat wave, just to the south of the cool band around the Arctic.
Useful idiots are better than useless idiots.

@Adam Gallon
“It’s bloody cold now! Forecast for tonight has temperature dropping to -5C in some areas.”
There is a term for that: Blackberry Winter
And on the continent, in German speakig countries it is known as Eisheilige.
There is nothing special about it being -5C in the UK or on the continent around this time of the year.
I had my b-day just very recently, and on that, my father keeps telling me for the past 40 years: ‘you know, a week after your birth, the puddles were frozen – which is about now-ish.

It must have been a poor time for the heat and drought tolerant Mediterranean plants we were advised to substitute for grass and rose beds.

J Bowers says:
May 5, 2012 at 5:57 pm
Why not? They pay their own way as a Trading Fund and make enough profit for their owner, the Ministry of Defence, to buy some tanks.
I had to correct this canard a couple of days ago, so once more with feeling.
THE MET OFFICE IS NOT “OWNED” BY THE MINISTRY OF DEFENCE!
From their own website:- “We are a Trading Fund within the Department for Business Innovation and Skills, operating on a commercial basis under set targets.” I hesitate to cite Wikipedia as an authoritative source, but it says the same thing.
I accept however that wherever it sits within the government, it’s still totally useless,

“Eric Adler says:
May 5, 2012 at 5:47 pm
For 2011,
================================
That was last year……….you post was about right now………this is 2012

Latitude says:
May 6, 2012 at 5:16 am
““Eric Adler says:
May 5, 2012 at 5:47 pm
For 2011,
================================
That was last year……….you post was about right now………this is 2012”
My post reference last years average data for the latitude bands. The map I referred to was for March of this year which showed the same phenomen – a region in the Arctic that had warmed greatly surrounded by a region at lower latitudes that had warmed less or had not warmed at all relative to the base period.
The idea that the weakening jet stream is causing blocking patterns is accepted by all meteorologists. There are 3 different studies that pinned this on the warming of the Arctic relative to the lower latitudes. The fact that the increase in temperature in the Arctic is faster than lower latitudes is a very solid trend. This does not get reversed in a few months.
Your post is an example of cognitive dissonance – a failure to accept reality because it conflicts with your opinion.

Eric Adler says:
May 6, 2012 at 6:21 am
?????
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif

Yeah, if April ends up actually being the driest month, you guys need to build an Ark….

I swear both sides of this debate are in a contest looking for the ultimate tiniest little quark-sized anomaly in some supposed “driver” to explain it all. TSI, CO2, UV, electro-magnetism, an ice-cube sized reduction in ice extent, or it could all be the fault of CP3O.
And never mind the big ponds to the right and left. They have nothing to do with anything, no affect whatsoever, keep moving along, nothing to see there.

By the way, I’ve been getting emailed multiple subscribe messages too.

Within the UK in April there were large variations. In Scotland rainfall was not particularly high while in west Scotland (where I live) we had quite a dry April. The data is all recorded at
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/datasets/index.html
No evidence here of climate change, just the usual highly variable unpredictable British weather which we all love so much.

I’m just waiting for the MetOffice to say it was the ‘wrong kind of rain’….. the brits will understand the joke…

To Myk Taylor, Minister for Drought in 1976 was not David Hume (Edinburgh Enlightenment philosopher) but Denis Howell. Highly successful in post; couple of days after appointment it started raining and forgot to stop leading to much jocularity at appointment. Old enough to remember it all.

Vince Causey says:
May 6, 2012 at 8:04 am
“Eric Adler,
“For 2011, the Arctic Temperature Anomaly (64 – 90 degrees) over the past year has been 2.32C. The temperatures for Equator to 24, 24 to 44, and 44 to 46 respectively were 0.3, 0.46 and 0.92 respectively.
These anomalies represent a weakening of the temperature gradient between the Arctic and the lower latitudes. That has been a general trend.”
If the Arctic temperatures have increased by more than lower latitudes, how is that a weakening of the temperature gradient between the Arctic and the lower latitudes?”
The difference between Arctic and Equator temps is given by TE-TA.
The Arctic is colder than the equator. If the TA increases faster than TE, the temperature difference between the 2 regions reduces.