From Dr. Benny Peiser at The GWPF
Questions Over Met Office Rain & Drought Predictions
The forecast for average UK rainfall slightly favours drier-than-average conditions for April-May-June as a whole, and also slightly favours April being the driest of the 3 months. With this forecast, the water resources situation in southern, eastern and central England is likely to deteriorate further during the April-May-June period… This forecast is based on information from observations, several numerical models and expert judgement. —Met Office 3-month Outlook, 23 March 2012
Seventeen counties in South West England and the Midlands have moved into official drought status, after two dry winters have left rivers and ground waters depleted. The news comes as the Environment Agency warned that the drought could last beyond Christmas. While rain over the spring and summer will help to water crops and gardens, it is unlikely to improve the underlying drought situation. —Environmental Agency, 16 April 2012
There’s evidence to say we are getting slightly more rain in total, but more importantly it may be falling in more intense bursts” — Julia Slingo, Met Office, 3 January 2013
The frequency of extreme rainfall in the UK may be increasing, according to analysis by the Met Office. Statistics show that days of particularly heavy rainfall have become more common since 1960. The analysis is still preliminary, but the apparent trend mirrors increases in extreme rain seen in other parts of the world. –Roger Harrabin, BBC News, 3 January 2013
In the wake of the “more rain and more intense rain” story, Doug Keenan sends this graph of England & Wales rainfall records for 1766-2012. Let’s just say the trend towards more rainfall is not obvious. As indeed is any trend towards less rainfall, which is said to be more likely by the UK Climate Impacts Programme. –Andrew Montford, Bishop Hill, 5 January 2013
Suddenly, after a wet year, which naturally the Met Office failed to forecast, they have reversed their customary fiery slogans to “Après nous le deluge”. Their antediluvian joy has given way to postdiluvian melancholy. They appear to have difficulty with the concept of random sequences of events, such as the precise positioning of the jet stream, and the fact that they produce apparent patterns and records. It was primitive man’s inability to envisage an effect without human cause that gave rise to much of religion. Of course it would have been most impressive if they had predicted all this a year ago, but they did not. Their predictions are as changeable as the weather and the only constant is the putative cause. –John Brignell, Number Watch, 3 January 2013
The Met Office continues to suffer from its recently acquired pretensions about climate. Careless remarks about BBQ summers and snowless winters and droughts in the UK have all been followed by Mother Nature failing to comply with their wishful thinking – the wishful bit being their hope that their faith in the power of CO2 in the system, or at least in computer models giving it a powerful effect, can be relied upon. –John Shade, Bishop Hill, 5 January 2013
My take on all this is that the alarmists are just getting desperate, spinning any weather and data to suit the CO2 thesis. Remember that the record annual rainfall for England is still less than the average annual rainfall for Scotland, hence if the average track of the jet stream is a little further south than usual then England gets a fair bit more rain. It has nothing to do with the alleged warmer atmosphere having more potential to store H20; if it was why did north-west Scotland have a drought in the spring and early summer? More bollocks from the Met Office. The UK weather and climate is determined by the track of the jet stream (and moderated by the Gulf Stream), and CO2 has feck all to do with it. –Lapogus, Bishop Hill, 5 January 2013
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At least we can be comforted by the fact that senior management in the UK’s Met Office continues to draw its bonuses.
The Met Office’s long term weather forecasts are so inaccurate and laughable that no one really takes any notice of them anymore, which is exactly why we can trust their peers’ long term climate forecasts.
The models cannot lie!
/Sarc off.
Christopher Booker wrote on this back in December.
http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=83443
Interestingly, the Environment Agency page he’d posted, has had its link “disappeared”!
http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/news/138916.aspx%22
So much for their predictions of “Hotter, drier summers & warmer, wetter winters”
Google that phrase & you’ll get ~446,000 references, the majority from Local Government webpages.
In Antifragile, Taleb warns us off experts/forecasters without skin in the game, without doxastic commitment, without cost for being wrong. He also denigrates academics “teaching birds to fly.”
In between expeditions snorkelling through my garden to check how the recommended drought-resistant plants are doing, I found this:
http://www.clickgreen.org.uk/research/trends/123682-how-global-warming-will-change-the-face-of-uk-suburbs.html
“Britain’s suburbs will need a radical overhaul to cope with the effects of global warming, which will include decades of drought, soaring temperatures and violent storms.”
Good timing chaps. Oh, the joys of ivory tower ‘research’ projects! Have you considered jobs talking complete boll*cks at the Met Office?
Is this not just another example of what seems ot becoming more and more obvious; that the sort of certainty that the IPCC cliamed was true with respect to CAGW, in it’s previous four reports, is now being proven to be wrong on the basis of empirical evidence? The leaked copy of the AR 5 shows that the SPM still contains the usual IPPC claims that “the science is settled”. Is not this failure by the Met. Office merely another example that, with respect to CAGW, the science is far from settled?
Maybe if they had another more expensive computer and bigger bonuses ( not related to performance) they could make better worse predictions with co2 as the forcing agent. Please send more money for us to get the right message across.
These people, led by Slingo and Harrabin are dangerous demagogues. The latter claimed a 4% increase in atmospheric humidity yet TPW has been falling as temperature has fallen.
I watched the Harrabin piece when it was shown on the Beeb. I now have to find out if the resulting boot through the screen is claimable on the insurance policy.
Sadly, despite having one of the world’s largest computer centres the Met Office ‘forecasts’ (predictions?) are often more accurate if inverted.
What? The Met Office got it wrong AGAIN? They obviously need a new, more power consuming, computer! I am just wondering when the broken record will be changed, it’s been spinning since the early 80’s!
The Environment Agency bulletin is still available in the Wayback Machine: http://liveweb.archive.org/http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/news/138916.aspx
Met Office/DEFRA predictions have consistently been for wetter winters and drier summers. In recent years, as well as 2012, the opposite has occurred.
Similarly they have forecast drier South of England and wetter North. Again the opposite has happened.
Bottom line is they have not got a clue.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/01/04/uk-weather-2012cold-and-wet/
The Met Office is a joke. A few weeks ago I was sat at lunchtime watching as 3″ of snow fell leaving the city in chaos; why? because the Met Office hadn’t predicted snow, there was an “Amber Weather Warning” for cold weather in the NE of England, no mention of snow. The snow fell from Northern Scotland to Kent along the East of the country so it was not a local quirk. Gritters and snow ploughs were not deployed so the NE was gridlocked as stranded cars blocked roads. It took my daughter 5 hours to get home from 17 miles away, 99% of this journey is on the A1.
BBQ summers, our children not seeing snow, droughts etc etc etc. This is the c**p that our taxes pay for, because they have not had the sense to change the programming of their £66,000,000 computer to tell it that there has been no GW, anthropogenic or otherwise for 16 years!
I’d forgotten that the Met forecast,in their 3 month outlook on 20th Nov, that rainfall would be below av for December.
Instead, Dec turned out the wettest month of the year.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/j/i/A3_plots-precip-DJF.pdf
Come on chaps, the Met Office is not all bad. They did a spectacular job on June 5th when they predicted stormy conditions in the English Channel would abate for the next 24 hrs as a depression reversed its track and moved S.E. On this basis, Eisenhower launched the D Day landings in Normandy on the following day and the weather proved kind. The German Met Office had predicted continuing poor weather so Rommel (Normandy Commander) had taken time off and was well away from his post when the invasion started. In the rush to get back, a British fighter plane shot up his car and I believe he was slightly wounded which kept him from command at a crucial moment.
OK, this happened in 1944 and the Met Office didn’t have any computers, thank God. The only computer in the world sat at Bletchley Park having been invented by Turing and his associates and was used to decipher German codes.
“And Now For The Weather Aftcast”
http://www.thegwpf.org/weather-aftcast/
cui bono
Thanks for that link.
We are in desperate need for ‘community cool rooms’ and shading and shelter for cycle paths it recommends….
It would be interesting to know how much the long suffering tax payer paid for this piece of nonsense.
tonyv
And don’t forget this total waste of the licence payers money
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/climateexperiment/whattheymean/theuk.shtml
Made after a succession of good summers including 2003. Remeber summer 2003 in Europe
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3536819.stm
“European researchers say last summer was the hottest on the continent for at least five centuries. “
IS anyone actually formally complaining about this? A letter to an MP copied to the Met Office would at least put the marker in…
Good to see Brignell getting a mention.
Ciao
John
England+Wales precipitation since 1766:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/pHadEWP_monthly_qc_mean1.png
No trend whatsoever, all kinds of records broken long time ago.
[.. records “set” long time ago? Mod]
I heard the state broadcaster (BBC Radio Scotland) spouting the “rainfall is becoming more intense” propaganda message on my way home from work on Thursday. I did swear at the radio I must admit. Then I thought to myself I’ll be reading about this on WUWT in a couple of days, no doubt.
It is amazing (and has been said here hundreds of times) how all the makers of failed predictions keep their jobs and never suffer any adverse consequences – Viner, Hansen, Met Office, on and on. That tells us what kind of system we are living under (hint: it’s not free and open government, by the people for the people).
The UK Met. Office make false predictions with impunity. The only requirement seems to be that each prediction must be more alarming than its predecessor. Because, rather than being held to account when their predictions are proven totally wrong, they use this fact to justify even more spending on larger computers and computer models. That, unfortunately, is how publically funded bodies operate.
As 2012 comes to and end showing no significant warming, yet another piece of Met.Office alarmism bites the dust. In 2009 they confidently predicted “that from 2010 to 2015 at least half the years will be hotter than the current hottest year on record (1998)”.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8299079.stm
With three of those years gone and with none of them hotter than 1998, according to Met.Office measures, we can call an early fail on this prediction as well.
Will they apologise for it? Well…….
It’s high time for Julia to sling(o) her hook. She is obviously incapable of performing the task she’s supposed to be paid for – forecasting the weather rather than forecasting climate doom. She [can] take a few of her fellow doomsayers along with her and good riddance.
Oops! That’s can, not can’t.