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
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?
_________________________________________
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).
.
** 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.
.
‘Perry’
Second thoughts: you suggest that the politicians responsible for the UK’s disastrous energy policy should be locked out in the cold this weekend. I suggest that they should be locked up, or if we are feeling charitable, sectioned under the Mental Health Act.
Is there an interpreter on this thread who can help me out with the following Met Office 3 month forecast? What language is it? What does it mean? Thanx.
tadchem says:
March 29, 2013 at 8:31 am
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’?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
How about a decade or so? You can see the snowfall between the years 1979 to 1995 was a lot less that that on either side. Fall (October) snow fall for the Northern Hemisphere: graph and for november “Data were provided by the Global Snow Laboratory, Rutgers University. The Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent during November 2012 was above-average, ranking as the fifth largest on record for the month, and marked the fourth consecutive November with above-average snow cover for the hemisphere…. The autumn season (September-November) snow cover extent was above average, and ranked as the 10th largest (37th smallest) in the 47-year period of record.”
Hudson Bay Ice growth as of December vs last five years. Graph
A look at Greenland temperature and snow accumulation during the Holocene GISP2 Ice Core Graph
They can ‘adjust’ temperatures but it is a bit hard to ‘adjust’ snowstorms. People tend to notice when you predict warm and there is a blizzard outside. Heck it was 25F (-4C) yesterday in NC, in 2010in the first week of April we had temperatures of 91F (37C) and yes that is a min and max comparison but the Daffys noticed and just started to bloom today. BRRRRrrrrr
The difference between (1) individuals committed to the science rather than (2) individuals committed to the organization (corrupted by commitment to a cause) …
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I drove down the Thames [4 up] at Old Windsor to Runnymeade and returned in my Mini Cooper ‘S’ in March 1963, the Thames having been frozen since January. Nothing new here….. At least we had many coal fired power stations and coal fires to keep us warm. 🙂
Come on Thorium Salts and raise your highly efficient/safe head and plenty of Shale Fracking too. The huge oil reserves in the near Atlantic will help too. Oh No! Cameron wants us to use wind and solar power – Doh!
Ian W says:
March 29, 2013 at 9:16 am
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….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
link and do not forget the Liverpool Care Pathway.
There is one person who always gave accurate weather forecasts. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMAt8ZXqtbc
How can the Met Office claim that Climate Change will “steadily reduce the probability of severe winters” at the same time as others claim that Climate Change causes extreme weather?
Someone has got it wrong….
Harry Trent says: “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.”
Are you sure you won? The UK is currently ruled by a coterie of unelected oligarchs from a European city starting with B. Look carefully, and you’ll see that your present government has all the qualities of a puppet regime.
Breaking news!
30,000 people could have died this past UK winter due to climate change.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/383823/Deaths-up-by-30-000-in-big-freeze
The last story from the post was the Telegraph which pointed me to Radi-Aid for Norway. Funny stuff.
http://youtu.be/oJLqyuxm96k
jorgekafkazar says: March 29, 2013 at 10:51 am Yes we are certain we won the second World War, but we also know that our politicians lost the following Peace.
This amounts to tyranny considering the economic and budget conditions in the UK. How many years did they put up with it before the Magna Carta was forced through?
Cooling is warming. Effect is cause. Freedom is slavery.
From global warming to climate change to extreme weather events and now cooling is the new warming
ralfellis says:
March 29, 2013 at 10:17 am
……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).
It is called ‘Common Purpose’ a network that hides in plain sight. Happily implementing Agenda 21 for the UN. If you google “common purpose” and a politician’s name – you will almost always find they are linked.
You can tell when a group has been ‘assimilated’, words like ‘sustainable’ start appearing.
Ms Slingo was on Radio 4 (UK) this morning explaining why the Met Office forecast last April was 100% WRONG although it wasn ‘t put quite like that. I was driving the car at the time and it was the closest I had come to an accident for some time. Listening to the “Science is Settled” BBC interviewing Ms Slingo was as sickening as it can get. At one stage the interviewer when told the MO get 65% accuracy on their forecasts said, …”that’s sounds quite good actually”!
Anyway I’m aware many of you are from outside the UK so here is a link to the BBC website giving details of the programme – it’s in “time” order so scroll to 7.09am for the I/V. See the tweets as well.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01rgjj6/live
The [Met Office’s] probabilistic forecast can be considered as somewhat like a form guide for a horse race.
Surely should read:
The [Met Office’s] improbabilistic forecast can be considered as somewhat like a form guide for a horse race.
Either way I wouldn’t bet on it.
Perhaps they should have nagging doubts by now about their long term climate forecasts or do they still have the blinkers on, jumping to conclusions? Is the truth just one hurdle too many? Will they ever be first past the post? They are running in the wrong colours and the going is too soft with computer models that are their biggest handicap.
OK I’ve been pulled up before falling at the last..
jorgekafkazar says:
March 29, 2013 at 10:51 am
////////////////////////////////////////////
It is clear that the UK was the biggest loser of the war. Russia, America and Germany were the victors.
I live in the very south of England where the climate is said to be the most clement. Tonight (29th March) at 2100hrs the temperature outside is just over 2C with a prevailing wind of 8 -10 knots, gusting frequently to 15 knots and higher.
The gas pressure in the mains has dropped considerably, heating my living space is now a much lengthier and much more expensive proposition because there is a shortage of gas. The top five executives of Centrica, one of our major gas suppliers took home a total of £16.5 MILLION. Five people took over 16 million pounds while I cannot afford next month’s heating bill. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/9958231/Centrica-executives-enjoy-16.4m-payday.html
The A-hole Edward Davey, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (those two portfolios should NEVER be combined) states that increasing my energy bill is going to save me money!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9955878/Tackling-climate-change-doesnt-cost-the-earth.html
Go figure.
I’m gong long on logs. I can’t afford a generator.
Stephen Wilde says:
March 29, 2013 at 8:59 am
“As far as I know I present the only coherent overview currently available which fits observations and basic physical principles.”
I have read thousands of valid coherent views, yours is not the only one 🙂
I’ve read old scientific papers and even newspaper articles from as far back to the 1800’s that show a coherent overview of scientific observations on solar activity etc.. that fit basic physical principles and what drives activity on earth in regards to gravitational and magnetic activity, tides, weather and climate, on monthly, decadal and on large geological time scales, as I see it there has been a lot of science dismissed, forgotten or ignored from the past only to be rediscovered centuries later as having some validity. Just because the an official public Met office or large scientific institutions ignore and don’t study or implement other coherent Scientific observations preferring instead to implement their own theories and views, it does not mean this science does not exist.
I went to a strict uniformed school where we were caned and beaten daily by bullying teachers, I’ve seen and experienced first hand some horror stories of what authority figures can be like, and when they are proved to be wrong. If you proved these teachers wrong, instead of being rewarded for your effort or hear an admission, more often than not you could end up with 10 of the best sometimes even a black eye or have to spend the day enduring some kind of strenuous torture of one kind or another, teachers actually used to converse openly about effective punishments. So don’t expect Apologies or admissions from the current AGW regimes and policy makers you prove wrong, just like when corporal punishment was banned in schools the wicked that enforced it on students, will just reassuringly pretend to themselves; they were only doing their job and what they’ve been told to do and just become silent.
Slingo and the Met Office are utterly utterly useless.
The problem is the Met office and many others are trying to extract a trend from observational data that has a large amount of natural inter annual and decadal variability.
The small trend they think they observe is probably more an artefact of confirmation bias than anything to do with AGW. The UK temperature record shows no trend from 1910 to 1987 and only after 1987 does a trend appear, this caused me in 2003 to speculate to the Met office that confirmation bias was indeed at work.
I received a polite letter from them, ignoring my point and assuring me their robust modelling indicated that I would soon be enjoying a UK climate similar to the South of France. I resisted the temptation to order the sun awnings, and instead ordered a full set of Berghaus Artic Explorer clothing, it has come in useful!
Errors such as these prove the Met Office needs a more-expensive computer.
Resourceguy says:
March 29, 2013 at 11:42 am
This amounts to tyranny considering the economic and budget conditions in the UK. How many years did they put up with it before the Magna Carta was forced through?
*
YES! I was wondering that very thing, and I’m Australian.
Sparks.
All good points and I do draw on historical stuff but there is little or nothing in that old material which closely links the component features of the climate to latitudinal shifting as a negative system response to any forcing element other than mass gravity or insolation.
Nor has anyone else suggested that the degree of jetstream meridionality can account for global cloudiness variations without having to involve the Svensmark hypothesis or magnetic field variations. Changes in the gradient of tropopause height between equator and pole would be enough for that and changes in the balance between ozone creation and destruction at different heights (as recently observed) will do the trick.
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?
Uh, Mr. Stroud, Britain stopped being a “great nation” long ago. Ms. Thatcher notwithstanding. The “science” of the Met Office and UEA being simply symptomatic of a much broader decline in the rigor of day to day expectations and performance. The US is rushing to join you.
Perhaps freezing the elderly is the UK gov’t strategy to control the cost of National Health. Coming soon to ObamaCare near you.
If the model forecasts cooler, average or warmer conditions with just a slightly higher probability for warmer, then the forecasters should be honest enough to say that their models are unable to give a useful forecast. For some reason, “we don’t know” seem to be very dificult words.
Much of northern Europe seems to have experienced an unusually cold March this year and snow still covers most of eastern Europe. It will be interesting to see the temperature maps in a few days.
Perhaps they should look at their own data!
I posted this on the Speccie which I cut from here:
Statistics from the Met Office Central England Temperature Record from the year 2000 onwards show:
2000 – 2012 annual trend figures: -0.7°C
this is equivalent to almost all the agreed global warming since 1850
2000 – 2013 winter months December January February trend: -1.5°C
this is equivalent to twice the agreed global warming since 1850
After I posted this I thought that, you know, perhaps I should check. . . .
So I went here: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/data/download.html
Downloaded Monthly HadCET Mean.txt, double clicked it to open it in Excel and after some messing about, the negative trend is quite clear from 2000, maybe later today I’ll play with it and see if the negative trend is even older.
” You have to, of course, with probabilistic forecasts, look over a large number of events and we do that and on about 65% of occasions we do give indeed very helpful advice,” Ms Slingo told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“Likewise, I did also emphasise that there was also quite a chance that April would also be wetter than normal but in the context of where we were at that particular point as a country I felt it was right to emphasise the risk of dry conditions continuing as a precautionary principle.”
The Met Office explained it this way: “The probabilistic forecast can be considered as somewhat like a form guide for a horse race.
Well, she does not specify the criteria of what constitutes “very helpful advice” and there are a million ways to rig the statistics to back up that kind of vague and non-falsifiable claim, but taking it at face value that means they are slightly ahead of flipping a coin to make whether predictions.
“I did also emphasise that there was also quite a chance that April would also be wetter than normal “. As you would do if you used a coin flip to make predictions.
Race horse form guide ! LOL . Probably about the truth.
I know several people who spend their lives in the bookie’s following every horse’s fart. They don’t seem to make any more money than my grandma who has a flutter once per year.
It will be interesting to see whether their hit rate goes up now they are using a model that does not show hysterical global warming. I think they may be in with outside chance.
I’ll call Ladbrook’s later to see what the odds are 😉
The long term forecast for the next three months currently reads: “For April below-average UK-mean temperatures are more likely than above-average. For April-May-June as a whole above-average temperatures are weakly favoured. However, there is still a significant chance that this period will be colder than it was in the majority of the last 10 years.”
There’s a small chance that it will be heads more often than tails but there is still a significant change that it will be tails more often than heads.
Perhaps Mz. Sligo could remind us how much money was spent in order to have that level of insight.
Met Office 3-month Outlook Period: April – June 2013 Issue date: 21.03.13
The forecast presented here is for April and the average of the April-May-June period for the United Kingdom as a whole. This forecast is based on information from observations, several numerical models and expert judgement.
SUMMARY – PRECIPITATION:
For both April and April-May-June as a whole the uncertainty is large, leaving the forecast largely indistinguishable from climatology. The probability that UK precipitation will fall into the driest of our five categories is around 20% and the probability that it will fall into the wettest category is also around 20% (the probability for each of these categories is 20%).
SUMMARY – TEMPERATURE:
For April below-average UK-mean temperatures are more likely than above-average. For April-May-June as a whole above-average temperatures are weakly favoured. However, there is still a significant chance that this period will be colder than it was in the majority of the last 10 years.
The probability that the UK-mean temperature for April-May-June will be in the coldest of our five categories is around 15% and the probability that it will be in the warmest category is around 20% (the probability for each of these categories is 20%).
Nothing that more taxpayers’ money won’t fix, I’m sure.
We went to Spain for New Year 2010, on the day we were due to fly back we went to Malaga Airport to be told that our flight to Newcastle had been cancelled due to Newcastle Airport being closed. I phoned work to tell them I would not be there the following morning , and in fact did not know when we would be back to be told that there was 6 inches of snow, blizzards and the temperature was down to -9 celsius, according to one of the girl’s car thermometer. We went back to the house, where I logged on to my e-mail acccount and used the free weather facility that BTYahoo provide.The Weather Channel told me sunny spells, max 3 celsius min 0 celsius, of course the Met Office got it wrong as well. We ended up flying to Leeds 3 days later and picking up a hire car to drive home.Had I listened to the Met Office or The Weather Channel we would have had 3 more fruitless trips to Malaga and I would not have booked the last three seats on the Leedds flight
It was at this point that I realised that the data the weather forecasters provide is based on wishful thinking and flawed computer models, I have ignored the weather forecasters ever since.
Are Statisticians -> Scientists? I believe not. I think that they are just accountants/bookkeepers gone wild under the employ of the politicians/tax men!!
It has been proven that the Sun’s output has increased from 1650 until 2005. From 2005 until now, the Sun’s output has decreased. Why? Not a result such as the magnetic fields are decreasing, but what is the underlying science of the decreasing magnetic fields?
Statistically, the Sun was going to have the “largest Sunspot cycle ever” ; remember. Instead, it has been the smallest in over 100 years.
How does that saying go, “Climate Science will be correct when ‘The Thames freezes over’ “.
Shouldnt that be “when the Thames freezes over again?And in Ontario the official highs have been consistently 1 to 2 C above reality most days, they forcast +1 and freezing rain we get (thankfully) -1 and snow, 3 times in the last few weeks, thing is do these inflated “highs” go towards the average temp records for canada?
Interesting that BBC and the Economist have been letting go and getting more critical CAGW, and the UK Met Office but, even in the face of the coldest winter in over 50 years, the Guardian still soldiers on (my link here is that they no longer get mentioned). I wonder what a chart of their newspaper sales looks like these days.
The Met Office should stick to weather forecasts that can be fairly accurate at times. Anything to do with climate or longer periods than a few weeks, their bias is overwhelming any true science involved in it and the political agenda dictates it for them. This method in supporting science putting other political issues ahead of it, can only lead to failure and that has proved so.
p.s. About the Thames freezing over again would be very unlikely even in the coldest winters, where urban built-up areas around it has speeded up the river flow.
Radi-Aid For Norway
Oh, god, i like those people. Let them all be successful in their lives.
Eugene WR Gallun