LONDON (Reuters) – Next year is set to be one of the top-five warmest on record, British climate scientists said on Tuesday.
The average global temperature for 2009 is expected to be more than 0.4 degrees celsius above the long-term average, despite the continued cooling of huge areas of the Pacific Ocean, a phenomenon known as La Nina.
That would make it the warmest year since 2005, according to researchers at the Met Office, who say there is also a growing probability of record temperatures after next year.
Currently the warmest year on record is 1998, which saw average temperatures of 14.52 degrees celsius – well above the 1961-1990 long-term average of 14 degrees celsius.
Warm weather that year was strongly influenced by El Nino, an abnormal warming of surface ocean waters in the eastern tropical Pacific.
Theories abound as to what triggers the mechanisms that cause an El Nino or La Nina event but scientists agree that they are playing an increasingly important role in global weather patterns.
The strength of the prevailing trade winds that blow from east to west across the equatorial Pacific is thought to be an important factor.
“Further warming to record levels is likely once a moderate El Nino develops,” said Professor Chris Folland at the Met Office Hadley Center. “Phenomena such as El Nino and La Nina have a significant influence on global surface temperature.”
Professor Phil Jones, director of the climate research unit at the University of East Anglia, said global warming had not gone away despite the fact that 2009, like the year just gone, would not break records.
“What matters is the underlying rate of warming,” he said.
He noted the average temperature over 2001-2007 was 14.44 degrees celsius, 0.21 degrees celsius warmer than corresponding values for 1991-2000.
(Reporting by Christina Fincher; Editing by Christian Wiessner)
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Fred (19:44:44) :
FTA: “…Currently the warmest year on record is 1998…”
I thought 1934 was the warmist year on record? At least we now know how the warmist will respond to continued cooling. It will be described as a unimportant bump on the long term road to an ever hotter world
From the GISS Data (US Only) 1934 is still right up there.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.lrg.gif
At the global view – 1934 disappears… Maybe only a US feature.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A.lrg.gif
Allan Morgan
“In October I saved each 5-day forecast and checked, not for accuracy, but the number of the 4 overlapping days that were changed each successive day. I am too lazy to do the sums, but the answer is in the range 2.5 to 3.”
I vote for 2.718281828. (:-)
It occurs to me that if the Met Office change 2 or 3 of the 4 overlapping days of a 5-day forecast (these were local forecasts), then they will count not the number of correct forecasts made, but the number of days correctly forecast, having had several attempts at each one.
Ed Scott
2.718281828? Do you think they know that much math?
This can become very, very funny.
According to the latest NOAA ENSO status report we’re back into a La Nina, which, according to NCEP ensemble forecasts, is expected to last through at least the first half of 2009. And once an El Nino or La Nina is established, it can be predicted months ahead with quite good skill. La Nina automatically means cooler temperatures, hence it seems unlikely that 2009 will be very warm …
So, also bearing in mind current solar activity, if 2009 does end up in the top 5 or 10 warmest, presumably you’ll have to accept that factors such as CO2 are driving temperatures up.
With the combination of all the ‘cooling factors’ that everyone appears to think are now in place, I’d be expecting to see regular negative anomalies in all records.
nell08 passes on a comment from a friend in the Met office. Wonder if he/she knows that the Met office is one of the UK Government’s assets that they are looking to sell off into “private” hands like they did with Quinteq and other scientific quangos.
It’ll be interesting to see how the forecasts may/may not change if/when the Met office is sold…depends on whose private hands get their mitts on it. If it’s a mate of Professor Jones we’re definitely doomed to hear a lot more hot air (sorry, global warming) predictions.
Maybe we should all have a whipround, buy the Met office for Anthony to run (if he fancies an extended sojourn in the expected warmer UK this year) and save the UK economy all at the same time….what do think fellas? Answers on a postcard to Gordon Brown, 10 Downing Street, England.
I would really appreciate it if someone would fint the MET office’s 2007 and 2008 predictions.
Doesn’t it look like La Nina conditions are reasserting themselves in the equatorial Pacific?
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/climo.html
Look at those barbs of darker blue, which have even broken through the pool of warmer anomalies west of the Ecuadorian coast that persisted all through the summer and fall and no doubt had the effect of pulling hurricane tracks to the southwest, i.e. into the Gulf, this past season.
The SOI has not yet responded, although the mates at the Long Paddock site seem to have been On the Beach for the past few days. Quite understandable.
MattN (05:04:06) :
See braddles (04:50:00) for an updated summary
I’ve described the issues with digging out old Met forecasts in
John M (08:04:16) :
Here is the Jan 2007 report/forecast.
wayback met2007
You’ll have to live with a press release for the forecast for 2008. I can’t find the summary report, even on the Wayback Machine.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2008/pr20080103.html
John Finn (04:14:56)
If the sun remains in it’s sleepy state and if La Nina conditions prevail then I will have to concede that other factors may be driving the climate including CO2. However only if 2009 is warmer on the average of the 5 warmest years in the last ten.
Nooo! Anomalies are derived from specific dates. It depends on those dates whether or not what you are measuring falls above or below the anomaly line.
Folks, I take real issue with the word “anomaly” being used – we have no idea what “anomaly” means in the context of our climate system we still don’t understand. Call me stupid, call me late for lunch, but words are important, and this one just doesn’t fit with our extremely limited knowledge. Additionally, it skews peoples perceptions of what is “natural” or “in the range of “normal”.
With that, I believe that when you look at how the word is used, it is clearly one weighted to support the AGW theory – re, that “the Earth naturally maintains a constant average temperature” (directly from Dr Spencers website). I know it’s a term used by all the climate reporting agencies, but it plays right in there with an AGW agenda. But if they adopted an ISO type convention, it would have to go away……I hate that word “if”.
Off soap box……it’s a little one, and probably collapsed under my weight…if in fact I stood on it…..
John Finn said:
More likely that the energy was hanging around in the oceans, which are still giving it up.
Of course, since that’s the only conceivable explanation, how silly of us. Even though there’s no evidence that CO2 has ever done so in the past, but we mustn’t let facts get in the way…
Mark Mudgett (08:23:21) :
The others, well, they have been educated beyond their intelligence level.
Every so often there is a gem… What a marvelous description:
~”education > Intelligence”.
Tight. Accurate. Insightful and informative at the same time.
Thank you sir, for a gift of wisdom.
When history proves the Met, et allia, wrong again, what will the next crisis be that will be used to gain power and money?
My guess is that it will be either one of a) Population size / resource scarcity issues or b) need to stabilize financial systems and “regulate” all money systems and flows due to financial collapse (just around the corner… don’t look!)
Whatever it is will be indistinct, hard to measure, scary, and long duration.
Andy_stun UK (11:02:29) :
Luckily, the pub is almost certainly warm. The missus, kid, 2 dogs and 4 cats wish everybody a splendid new year.
They let you take the 2 dogs and 4 cats to the pub to warm up? I’ve gotta get over there!
P.S. Any chance of a summer in England at all next year?
Yes, August 10th between 1pm and 4pm has a 20% chance… be sure to bring your brawly for the summer rains. 😉
(My mother was from England and told me something like this once about summers where she grew up…)
Jeff Alberts (11:46:01) :
I’d challenge anyone anywhere to forecast weather a WEEK ahead with any consistent accuracy.
Careful! If I remember the statistic correctly you can be 95% accurate forecasting weather in Phoenix Arizona with something like “Sunny and clear, hot in the afternoon.” every day of the year. The sad thing is that most weathermen in Phoenix do not get 95% accuracy… they keep wanting SOMETHING to happen!
John Finn (04:14:56) :
So, also bearing in mind current solar activity, if 2009 does end up in the top 5 or 10 warmest, presumably you’ll have to accept that factors such as CO2 are driving temperatures up.
Several things:
1) There will be a time lag. I don’t know how long, but prior sunspot / climate charts lead me to think it will be about 10 years for full impact. While all the waters cool there will be some places colder and some still warm (or maybe warmer if a strong wind drives warm air to the poles for cooling… like the East Coast of the U.S. when the West was freezing…)
2) It can be lots of things other than CO2 (i.e. we’re crossing the galactic plane centerline, don’t know ocean ridge vulcanism levels, exactly what IS the impact of all those asphalt surfaces and roofs? etc.) I’m not willing to attribute causality by elimination.
3) Warmer based on thermometers run by whom and with what ‘adjustments’ to their attitudes? By a fictional averaging method where a colder west gets averaged out by a less cold (but not hotter highs) East? With a constantly changing ‘adjusted’ past? No thanks. Straight time series, unadjusted, for ‘many’ locations, trend lines computed, then compared.
4) I’m not so arrogant as to think we know everything about climate. It is quite possible that there is something we don’t understand where lower solar output could cause an oscillation that would make a brief up, prior to a plunge down. Ignorance of one thing is not proof an another… and on geologic scales ‘brief’ could be years, decades, centuries, …
I will grant that a cold sun and hot planet is certainly cause to question ‘the sun did it’ as causal theory. Not eliminate, but strongly question.
With the combination of all the ‘cooling factors’ that everyone appears to think are now in place, I’d be expecting to see regular negative anomalies in all records.
Then you would be wrong.
It’s a highly variable chaotic system so expecting ‘all records’ to do anything will fail. I would expect to see somewhat more irregular negative anomalies in some (maybe many) records, perhaps with the number increasing slowly over about a decade+ time scale.
Given a 30 year PDO and a 180 (ish) year solar cycle you can make a decent guess that it takes about 15 years and 90 years respectively for the cycles to turn. Then you have to un-Fourier these cycles onto each other to get the net today… And this ignores the 1500 year Bond Event cycle and …
Get the point? You seem to think we ought to know what to expect. I’m pretty sure we don’t know what to expect, but we can measure our ignorance against what the world really does and maybe learn something.
Lol, I know you’re being sarcastic, but I wouldn’t call those “forecasts”, but guesses that are likely to occur. Not much better than saying it will be brighter in the daytime than it will be at night.