From The GWPF and Dr. Benny Peiser
Met Office Apologises For Wrong Forecast – And Makes Another One
Warm Bias: The Met Office’s Disastrous Track Record
Met Office apologises for warning of ‘dry spell’ before wettest April on record. —The Daily Telegraph, 29 March 2013
For February and March the range of possible outcomes is also very broad, although above-average UK-mean temperatures become more likely. —Met Office forecast, 20 December 2012
Sub zero temperatures, snow, blizzards, gale force gusts, school closures, traffic chaos that just about sums up March 2013. The Met Office has confirmed it looks like it could have been the coldest in the UK for 51 years. —ITV News, 28 March 2013
If you want a laugh I recommend reading the Resilience Of England’s Transport Systems In Winter, an interim report by the DfT published last July. It is shockingly complacent. Rather than look for solutions to snow-induced gridlock the authors seem intent on avoiding the issue. The Met Office assured them “the effect of climate change is to gradually but steadily reduce the probability of severe winters in the UK”. –Daily Express, 3 December 2010
Which begs other, rather important questions. Could the model, seemingly with an inability to predict colder seasons, have developed a warm bias, after such a long period of milder than average years? Experts I have spoken to tell me that this certainly is possible with such computer models. And if this is the case, what are the implications for the Hadley centre’s predictions for future global temperatures? Could they be affected by such a warm bias? If global temperatures were to fall in years to come would the computer model be capable of forecasting this? —Paul Hudson, BBC Weather, 9 January 2010
Britain will be colder than parts of Greenland this Easter with temperatures plunging to an Arctic -10C (14F). Though the clocks go forward tomorrow night, marking the start of British Summer Time, there is no end in sight to the bitter weather. This has already been the coldest March since 1962, the Met Office confirmed yesterday, and the fourth coldest since records began. –Lianne Kolirin, Daily Express, 29 March 2013
The Met Office three-monthly outlook at the end of March stated: “The forecast for average UK rainfall slightly favours drier than average conditions for April-May-June, and slightly favours April being the driest of the three months.” A soul-searching Met Office analysis later confessed: “Given that April was the wettest since detailed records began in 1910 and the April-May-June quarter was also the wettest, this advice was not helpful.” –Roger Harrabin, BBC News, 28 March 2013
The [Met Office’s] probabilistic forecast can be considered as somewhat like a form guide for a horse race. It provides an insight into which outcomes are most likely, although in some cases there is a broad spread of outcomes, analogous to a race in which there is no strong favourite. Just as any of the horses in the race could win the race, any of the outcomes could occur, but some are more likely than others. — Met Office chief scientist Prof Julia Slingo, BBC News, 28 March 2013
It all makes perfect sense to me. When the Met Office makes a statement, the opposite is true. So the earth is cooling, their models don’t work and they are pretty useless at forecasting. Now I understand what they told John Beddington. —Schrodinger’s Cat, 29 March 2013
“She says last year’s calculations were not actually wrong because they were probabilistic.” So, using Slingo logic, the statement “The Met Office is probably a criminal waste of money” is not wrong. —David Chappell, 29 March 2013
In both winter and summer, year on year temperature variations in recent years are pretty normal, or even low, when compared with the historical record. Could it be that the UK’s Chief Scientist, Sir John Beddington, is overreacting to the events of just one year, or is not aware of the historical facts? It is difficult to understand how a top scientist could make such basic errors, but it is hard to come to any other conclusion. Coming hard on the heels of Environment Agency head, Chris Smith, making unsupportable claims about convective rain without first checking, it appears that facts no longer matter to our public servants. –Paul Homewood, Not A Lot Of People Know That, 27 March 2013
Complaining about the weather has reached epidemic proportions in northern Germany this “spring.” And with good reason. With Easter just around the corner, meteorologists are telling us this could end up being the coldest March in Berlin and its surroundings since records began in the 1880s. —Spiegel Online, 28 March 2013
No one seems upset that in modern Britain, old people are freezing to death as hidden taxes make fuel more expensive. Instead of making sure energy was affordable, ministers have been trying to make it more expensive, with carbon price floors and emissions trading schemes. –Fraser Nelson, The Daily Telegraph, 29 March 2013
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Is Monty Python in charge here?? Just wondering.
I wonder if anyone has done an assessment on NOAA-NWS seasonal forecasts. Do they suffer from the same problems as the MET office?
PS (snip as necessary). Anthony, as wrong as the slayers have been in the past you have misunderstood the claims in your recent (no comment) article. They are talking about heat from energy transitions being radiated to space (vs. radiation from the surface). I suggest you open it to comments.
In the old days, when the Met Office was run by, y’know, actual meteorologists rather than green activists, it actually helped us win the Second World War. But these days, it’s a joke. God help us if we needed it for anything really serious other than helping to keep country keep moving.
rbabcock says:
March 29, 2013 at 8:05 am
Is Monty Python in charge here?? Just wondering.
——————
No, strangely enough, it would be less silly and more entertaining. It’s a Monty Python wannabe skit.
To paraphrase Warren Buffett’s comment about stock forecasters: “We’ve long felt that the only value of climate scientists is to make fortune tellers look good.” Except stock forecasters are right about the direction of the market 33% of the time (up, down, no-change). Climate scientists would envy that record of accuracy – if they ever stopped to look at their record. Think of how much they would improve their average if they threw in an occasional “cool spell”.
This begs the question: If a day or three of weather that runs above/below average in temperature/pressure, wind/humidity is simply weather, how many days must such a pattern persist before it can be considered to represent a ‘climate trend’? Is a whole month too much to write off as a ‘weather anomaly’, or not?
As an epistemological aside, the emergence of so much of what can only be described as ‘wishful thinking’ in weather forecasting suggests that ‘meterorologists’ are not being trained in the scientific method but rather in ‘magic.’
(Any and all witty references to Hadley/Hogwarts are invited.)
It seems almost impossible that our Met Office can be so wrong, so many times. Then it also seems impossible that just about every chief scientist, appointed by governments, can also spout so much rubbish, so convincingly. What is wrong with this great nation these days?
If only justice could prevail, but we are under the yoke of law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_Change_Act_2008
Were I in charge, I’d lock all British politicians outside their homes for the Easter period and leave them with no shelter until Tuesday. Those very few who survived would learn at firsthand, the essential importance of warmth. The scumbags are responsible for 6000 extra deaths this month.
While the experts were claiming that science has proven that the UK was headed for a tropical paradise, it instead finds itself buried deep in winter. And the ecoscammers profit with their Green Tech ventures and their NGO awareness campaigns, with money trimmed from budgets for pensioners, and the pensioners freeze.
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/uk-suffers-coldest-march-in-50-years-global-warming-to-blame/
The Met Office models appear to have no component for the changes in the speed of energy throughput caused by forcings from oceanic and solar variability of which the primary manifestation is latitudinal jet stream and climate zone shifting.
If they would scrap the numbers for CO2 forcing and replace witha new forcing element based on observations of such natural shifting they should get much better predictive capability.
At this stage they wouldn’t even need to speculate as to the proximate cause of the shifting. Just feed in a suitable number based on the observed shifting relative to what happened between MWP and LIA and LIA to date.
See here:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=6645
“How The Sun Could Control Earth’s Temperature”
In summary,variations in the mix of wavelengths and particles from the sun affect atmospheric chemistry especially involving ozone so as to alter the slope of tropopause height between poles and equator which allows the climate zones to slide to and fro latitudinally beneath the tropopause.
Such a mechanism links changes in solar activity, ozone amounts in the stratosphere hence stratosphere temperatures,latitudinal jetstream shifting with consequent cloudiness changes (no need for Svensmark) and changes in both ENSO (the relative power of El Nino and La Nina events) plus the long term modulating effect of other ocean cycles and the thermohaline circulation.
As far as I know I present the only coherent overview currently available which fits observations and basic physical principles.
Perhaps Anthony would like to dust off my ‘New and Effective Climate Model’
initially published here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/06/a-new-and-effective-climate-model/
Leif was the primary objector but his protestations are looking less and less likely to be valid.
Some components need revision in light of more recent observations but overall it is holding up well.
At this point I think it’s fair to call Met forecasts a contrarian indicator.
The US should take notes from what the UK has become. This is the fate of fallen empires. The worst is not losing the empire, it’s the dimwits that dominate what’s left of it two generations down.
At this point I think it’s fair to call the Met a contrarian indicator.
While all the comments about the lack of skill of the Meteorological office are valid, I find one area that is totally unacceptable:
In the UK “ someone dying of the cold every seven minutes during winter and since 2003 250,000 UK citizens have died from the cold.
http://thegwpf.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c920274f2a364603849bbb505&id=2aa0382cdb&e=c1a146df99
And not one UK politician cares enough about these deaths to have even raised a question in parliament. Indeed, precisely the opposite they are all pushing past each other in their eagerness to raise the costs of fuel at every increasing rates, subsidize expensive inefficient ‘green energy’ while closing down fully operational cheap coal power generation and attempting to tax the remainder out of business.
They are not deranged this is a deliberate uncaring policy, and given the lead time for creating new energy generating capacity it will become far worse in the next 5 years and that is irreversible.
However, the UK politicians are not alone – who said: “under my plan electricity prices will necessarily skyrocket”?
It would appear that our political ‘masters’ [sic] have a Malthusian intent.
‘Perry’
Well said. The Climate Change Act was originally going to have a carbon reduction target of 60%, which was bad enough, but 80% is just plain ludicrous when the UK contributes well under 2% of world carbon emissions, which have been rising at 3% per annum. That was Millibrand, then Cameron and the Lib.Dem windmill huggers proclaimed that we will have the ‘greenest economy ever’.
The result: we are decommissioning coal fired generators as I write, and gas supplies are so low that unless we can quickly discharge the cargo of a liquified gas tanker on Milford Haven TODAY, we will virtually be out of gas. Meanwhile, the sudsidy farmers get rich and a great slice of our population cannot afford to keep warm!
Instead of trying to cut carbon dioxide emissions back to what it was in the eighties it would be cheaper to cut back the budget for the met office to what it was in the eighties and while that is being done also the budget for weather related grants. ( On second thoughts it might be easier to cut the co2 emissions. (sarc.))
On BBC Radio 4 this morning I heard Julia Slingo, the Met.Office Chief Scientist, defending this forecast. She said that the UK was suffering a drought when the forecast was made and so it was justified on the basis of the ‘precautionary principle’. Wow! I understand that it may be prudent to take actions on the basis of the precautionary principle, but to make a forecast? This suggests that a Met.Office forecast is more influenced by what politicians find acceptable. A throwback to the Oracle at Delphi perhaps?
HadCet in March-to-date (the 28th) is one of the coldest March’s in UK history.
There are only 19 of 355 years going back to 1659 which are colder.
Kind of a shocker chart here keeping in mind there were major volcanoes etc at different times going back this far.
http://s16.postimg.org/y4afpe891/Hadcet_March_Temps.png
Hadcet data here.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cet_info_mean.html
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cetml1659on.dat
I live in the UK, anybody who uses the BBC 5 day weather forecasts, which are basically based on the Met Office forecasts, will have noticed that quite often they can’t even get the next 24 hours right and the forecast will have changed before the 24 hours are up.
I know weather is very hard to forecast but you would expect them to get it right for 24 hours.
The 5 day forecast obviously changes quite a lot during the 5 days.
“Is a whole month too much to write off as a ‘weather anomaly’, or not?”
The key distinction is that Climate is what is observed in the lab models, whereas Weather is what happens if one absentmindedly strays outdoors.
If I’m careful, and never look out of the window, I expect to remain pretty safe from “Weather”.
The Met Office have got it down to a fine art now. Separately, yet simultaneously, make a “forecast” for every possible set of conditions (plus some impossible ones), to occur at some time in the future. Then when the due date arrives, deprecate and ignore the raft of “wrong” predictions, and shoehorn the one that has the least bad fit into a “forecast” for whatever Weather might prevail at that time.
All of this forcasting incompetence (deliberate incompetence) has a high cost, that we all pay for in delays, inconvenience, prices and taxes.
For instance one ‘right on’ low standards airline believed the Met Office’s prediction of a 7 degree warming, and the CRU’s prediction of no more snow – so they only ordered 3 days-worth of deice fluid. This was in 2010, the first of our hard winters, and the airline did not fly for three days at the end of that snowy week. Likewise, London Heathrow was forced to close down for several days in 2012, because of a lack of deice equipment – they only had 30% of the equipment used by Amsterdam Schiphol.
All of this has a cost of course – and we pay for it.
Mind you, you could also envoke the laws of Evolution here. Companies and authorities who are so foolish that they believe the Met Office’s forcasts (which are amplified and disseminated by the Biased Broadcasting Corporation), will go bust, while more rational and realistic organisations will thrive and prosper. In the latter case the answer is obvious – don’t use London Heathrow during the winter.
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Until the Thames freezes and they hold another festival, no one is going pay attention…
“Met Office continues to drive forward research on long-range forecasting”
http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/met-office-continues-to-drive-forward-research-on-long-range-forecasting/
Please give me twenty billion pounds so I can give you wrong information two weeks earlier. The met office motto.
The GWPF were right on the button when on the 21st December 2010 it called for an independent inquiry into the Met Office’s winter advice.
Peter Stroud says: March 29, 2013 at 8:38 am
It seems almost impossible that our Met Office can be so wrong, so many times. Then it also seems impossible that just about every chief scientist, appointed by governments, can also spout so much rubbish, so convincingly. What is wrong with this great nation these days?
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The problem is the politicisation of authority, and a general take-over ofnthe levers of power by pipe-dream career politicians (who have never done a real job in their lives). Not sure if you have noticed, but we now have:
Police superintendents who hapily prosecute thought crimes in line with political policy, but let career criminals go free.
Archbishops who give sermons that could have been written by the government, and fail to maintain their own organisation.
Health officials who not only abide by government policy, but sue anyone who disagrees.
Chief scientists who spout government policy, rather than science, to the grave detriment of science as a whole. **
Local councilors who spout government policy, even though they know their area will suffer as a result.
(There are many more examples.)
It seems to me that there has been a wholesale abandonment of critical thinking and honest argument. And I am not sure the reason for this. Yes, people don’t want to jeopardise their jobs, but neither did those in authority in decades gone by.
And lower down the food-chain people are still willing to put their careers on the line. The UK health system sacked and muzzled some 600 employees, so they could not tell the truth about the woeful standards of care. So 600 brave and honest citizens, were muzzled by a handful of government place-men (and women), who were prepared to sell their soul to the devil.
But actions like this do not suggest mere financial gain as a motive – they smack of an insideous ideology that these people are upholding. But if it is an ideology, rather than greed, it is quite a widespread ideology (worldwide, no less).
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** Do you remember that daft bird who was head of the WHO, who declared a worlwide flu pandemic after just a few deaths of dubious provenance in Mexico? Talk about a deliberately fabricated scare story. This was right up there with Global Warming, except the situation was not sustainable over much shorter time-scales. It is very difficult to maintain a ‘world pandemic’ scare story, when nobody had died for three weeks. Unfortunately, the Global Warming scam will take decades rather than weeks, to play out.
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