Note: UK atmospheric scientist John Kettley, is formerly of the Met Office and the Fluid Dynamics Department at the Bracknell headquarters.
JOHN KETTLEY: Awful August has delayed this year’s harvest but global warming is not to blame
Last updated at 3:21 AM on 24th August 2008
Atrocious: The terrible August weather has delayed the harvest but global warming is not to blame
Atrocious weather has seriously delayed the harvest this year – by now oil seed rape, barley and oats should already have been gathered.
The delay could mean either a loss in yield or drop in quality, with a subsequent fall in income for farmers for the second year running.
But this is not a symptom of so-called ‘global warming’.
These conditions are not unique and are more like the poor August weather Britain saw during the Twenties and Sixties.
It is more likely a stark reminder that the warming trend we recorded in the last part of the 20th Century has now stalled. Globally, 1998 remains the warmest of the last 150 years.
Of course, we have seen very hot months in the UK recently, but we should be under no illusion about global warming.
We are not suddenly about to be catapulted towards a Mediterranean climate. We are surrounded by water, with the vast Atlantic Ocean to our west, while the jet stream and gulf stream will forever influence our daily weather and long-term climate.
So, this year’s Sixties-style August has seen bad weather in many places.
Northern Ireland suffered particularly from serious flooding last weekend, but it has been the cumulative affect of cool, wet and dull conditions which has really hampered farmers’ progress.
For every loser there are always winners.
Lerwick in Shetland has largely stayed north of the rain-bearing jet stream and in the past week alone saw almost 40 hours of sunshine.
Further south, mainland Scotland was not so blessed, as storms brought 2in (50mm) of heavy rain to many places, including Edinburgh, on Wednesday and Thursday.
There will be more rain for the west of Scotland in the next few days, but at long last much of the country can look forward to a change in fortune.
Late August should see warm picnic weather – which I think will last through September, in line with recent years.
As allways Anthony, thankyou so much for your efforts, its very appreciated!
August has been awfull in Denmark too (!) Cold and rainy, i think we will beat all time rain records for August.
I just want you to see the ice growing north of Baffin Island, check the picture in this entry:
http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/isudtyndingen-af-polarisen-her-i-2008–d13-e337-s40.php#post_7288
Vast areas has frozen over in no time. Is this normal for August??
OMG!
“But this is not a symptom of so-called ‘global warming’.”
Heresy!
Everyone just knows that everything on, over, and under the earth is caused by global warming.
Okay – sarc off – wouldn’t it be nice if we were to more often start seeing such a more skeptical outlook of the politically correct view of climate change with such phrases as “so-called ‘global warming’?”
Love the dry humor! It is unfathomable that many accredited scientists and quote on quote brilliant individuals deny the existence of Global Warming and dismiss it as a naturally occurring phenomena that we as humans have nothing to do with. If Global Warming doesn’t exist, than neither does ice cream. When are we going to address issues, rather than saying, “I’ll be dead by the time that happens,” or “It’s not my problem,” or “There is nothing I can do about it”?
His biography is amusing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kettley
One of my sons is camping at the Reading rock festival. I believe it’s still raining there!!
As for next winter, I dread to think what it will be like with only 13 days of gas storage in the UK and the Norwegian pipeline leak scare.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7575197.stm
U4H (00:28:53) : If Global Warming doesn’t exist, than neither does ice cream.
Observational and experimentation proves the existance of ice cream thou 😉
U4H:
Isn’t temperature variability within limits a ‘given’? As they say. Where is the actual data [independently reviewed] that says temperatures have exceeded the ‘envelope’?
Instead of using garbage in/out computer predictions, none of which actually work, try looking at historical records from Royal Navy ships logs over the last 500 years and Medieval Monastic weather reports and get the Greenie Garbage out of your brainwashed skull.
Rum and raisin and double chocolate chip ice cream for me!
PS “Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities have increased the proportion of the atmosphere occupied by carbon dioxide by one-ten-thousandth part since 1750 (Keeling & Whorf, 2004, updated).”
Which means you can’t do anything, that will affect in the slightest, the climate of this Planet. Greenie Hysteria notwithstanding.
My link above was erased by mistake, heres a new one:
http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/isudtyndingen-af-polarisen-her-i-2008–d13-e337-s40.php#post_7289
It shows the vast areas freezing over north of Baffin Island in no time right now.
U4H, it isn’t unfathomable that many accredited scientists and quote on quote brilliant individuals deny the existence of man made Global Warming. It’s less tangible than ice cream. A lot less. It’s more like denying the existence of God, no proof for either, but he’s got better provenance.
Instead of crying “when are we going to address issues” why not elaborate on what YOU are doing.
Many on this site are already going out of their way to save energy and resources, purely because it makes economic sense. However, pouring money into a carbon offset black hole, sticking up useless windmills or sacrificing our economy and prosperity for unproved theories is madness.
If the photo of the two girls had been in black and white it could be me 35 years ago. It really is cold and wet here. Brrrrrr.
Is the tide turning ?
There is a lot of kicking and screaming to come no doubt.
Good man that John Kettley.From here in Yorkshire.No nonsense.
It’s hibernation hysteria.
===============
One line in the report caught my eye:”Of course, we have seen very hot months in the UK recently…..”
Well, I live on the south coast of England and that’s news to me. My perception is that the weather – particularly in summer – has been getting consistently cooler. As far as I can recall the last ‘hot month’ was a few years ago.
Last year, after a warm April, the summer, from May to July inclusive, was remarkably cool. I often wore a sweater and even resorted to putting on the central heating a few times. This summer wasn’t quite so bad, but it’s been very cool nevertheless, apart from the last week of July.
I think the last heatwave was about four years ago. We’ve also had snow for the last four winters, something almost unknown over the previous decade or so.
Of course, two cold summers does not add up to global cooling. But when you look at the global temperature graphs for the last ten years and then at the blank face of the sun, it makes you wonder….
Chris
Slightly off topic, but no discussion involving John Kettley is complete without it being pointed out that even meteorologists can become cult superstars.
JK was immortalised by the ‘Tribe of Toffs’ in their catchy, offbeat 1988 song ‘John Kettley is a weatherman’. Half a dozen other weather-persons were also name checked alongside numerous other C-list personalities, though factual information suffered somewhat for the sake of the rhyme of the lyrics.
To raise a wry bemused smile on a cold grey August day (here in the UK at least), click at top rightish here:
http://www.last.fm/music/A+Tribe+of+Toffs/_/John+Kettley+(Is+a+Weatherman)
Lyrics here:
http://www.debbieandstephen.com/toffs/lyrics.htm#John%20Kettley%20(Is%20A%20Weatherman)
Socio-cultural-historic contextual framework here (will probably still be gibberish to anybody who didn’t live through 1980s UK):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A4008638
It never cease to amaze me how simple pieces of written english can be so misread or misinterpreted. John Kettley was a popular BBC/Met office meteo’ some years ago and being a tyke was well known for his clear, precise forecasts. Sometime during his spell with the met & BBC he contributed to a global warming programme programme given a weather forecast for a year and month (winter month) sometime in our future. I remember the max day temp being 8°C as opposed to the then ave max of 6°C. Well we haven’t reached that yet and probably won’t this century.
Now John being John I think he is saying that the last 2 british summers were not a SYMPTOM of global warming but of the recent drop in “global” temperatures resulting from, PERHAPS, the recent La Nina. That should not be controversial, after all even Hansen’s famous adjustments have shown a decrease in global temp over the past year. He also says that “global warming has stalled”. That means that he thought that global warming WAS REAL” but that in recent times it has not be obvious in the temps quoted by all the major monitoring organisations, inc GISS.
I hope you and John and others of similar ilk will continue to broadcast their knowledge in the same reasonable, well measured tones of John’s article. AND great sense of humour.
Come on folks for U4H it is unfathomable that scientists question, which is all one needs to know about U4H.
For the second summer in a row the farmers in this area are having difficulty finding a few warm sunny days to harvest their hay and silage. Last year some farmers had to wait until August the 30th, and this year I kow of one farmer who has not cut any grass yet, maybe it will rot in the fields.
I am reminded of reports of 1315 -1317 when the peasants starved because excessively wet summers stopped the harvests. These two wet summers were a prelude to thirty years of cool weather
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1315-1317
“There was one catastrophic dip in the weather during the Medieval Warm Period that coincided with the onset of the Great Famine. Between 1310 and 1330 northern Europe saw some of the worst and most sustained periods of bad weather in the entire Middle Ages, characterized by severe winters and rainy and cold summers.”
Frank L/Denmark
“It shows the vast areas freezing over north of Baffin Island in no time right now.”
Not sure what it is you are looking at. Here is a comparison of Western Arctic including the North Pole:
First from July 31, 08, the second from August 23, 08
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims_gif/ARCHIVE/AK/2008/ims2008213_alaska.gif
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims_gif/DATA/cursnow_alaska.gif
It looks like the Arctic is going through its normal melt throughout the region.
Then again I am not sure what that got to do with a cold English summer.
When he says “so-called global warming” he obviously means so-called man-made global warming, since he follows it by saying “These conditions are not unique and are more like the poor August weather Britain saw during the Twenties and Sixties.” Thus, it is proof that climate change is natural, continual, and cyclical.
Then he says “It is more likely a stark reminder that the warming trend we recorded in the last part of the 20th Century has now stalled. Globally, 1998 remains the warmest of the last 150 years.” Again, climate change is natural. No man-made imprint, or at least none of any consequence.
Bravo for scientist John Kettley.
U4H: You’ve been brainwashed by AGW pseudo-science. Welcome to the world of science.
Stephen Richards (04:53:26) :
“I hope you and John and others of similar ilk will continue to broadcast their knowledge in the same reasonable, well measured tones of John’s article. AND great sense of humour.”
OMG!
Did I misread this?
Or is this a warmist pleading for “reasonable, well measured tones” ???
And HUMOUR?????!!!!
Was Al Gore’s movie a comedy because he actually INTENDED it to be?
Global warming anxiety ebbs and floes with the weather.
A good heat wave or warmer than normal conditions for awhile and the warmers from the global warming community and the media whip everyone into the new level of global warming anxiety.
Even politicians get caught up in it as almost all new climate change policies come out during some period of warmer than normal temperatures.
A cool wet summer and suddenly everyone is questioning the theory again.
I have been watching the UK weather patterns all summer long, courtesy of the ECMWF (European Center for Medium-range Weather Forecasts)
http://www.ecmwf.int/products/forecasts/d/charts/medium/deterministic/
The storm track has lain right along 45 to 55 degrees latitude virtually the entire summer, with the UK right under it, getting hit with one storm after another.
Since the beginning of summer, the pattern has been predominantly “high-amplitude,” (much more north-south wind flow than west-east), with a strong tendency for large low-pressure systems to form over the Atlantic between the UK and Greenland, then move over the UK with cold winds and showers.
At the moment, the upper-air flow is more “zonal” (west to east winds), but the ECMWF forecast for the week upcoming shows the flow quickly returning to pattern, with another large, windy, wet low north of Ireland by Monday week.
The “high-amplitude” flow pattern is typical of negative-phase NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation), and, if it continues into winter, suggests frequent episodes of “blocking” – large high-pressure systems that “block” the storm track, tending to keep the UK under entrenched Scandinavian or even Siberian cold air for extended periods.
I have experienced these sorts of winters in the UK, and they do become tiresome after just a couple “blocking” episodes.
Many in Britain pride themselves as being the greenest of the green, and I wonder how “Global Warming” (sorry, how un-PC of me – how “Climate Change”) will be spun, should Britain have a winter like, say, the legendary British winter of 1963.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_1963
John-X (09:10:17) :
‘”Since the beginning of summer, the pattern has been predominantly “high-amplitude,”’
Sorry, didn’t mean to imply that this pattern started at midnight on the summer solstice. It began much earlier.
Mr. Kettley will most certainly feel the heat of the AG WARMongers when they tie him to the stake and light the fire. The only question is, will they send his widow the bill for carbon offsets?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1556805/It's-all-April's-fault.html
“In September 1954 the editor of Weather, the Royal Meteorological Society’s house magazine, wrote:
“At the end of a summer whose coolness and wetness have provided subject matter for cartoonists and ideas for advertisers, it is now possible to recall that there have been such summers before.
“Situated as we are at the downwind end of the Atlantic, this summer’s weather is not so unlikely that atomic explosions, flying saucers, or condensation trails … need be invoked in explanation.”
But I expect that man-made CO2 will be so invoked.
In the Southern Hemisphere, and in particular Australia and New Zealand, this August will be the coldest in a long time, perhaps since records began. It might just push the media to a ‘tipping point’ and then the whole AGW house of cards comes down.