We are almost at the half way point for the meteorological winter (December through February) and it is a good time to evaluate how the NOAA CPC (Climate Prediction Center) and UK Met Office winter forecasts are doing so far. As seen below, CPC forecast the highest probability of warmth for Alaska and the upper midwest.
Trend of mild winters continues
25 September 2008
The Met Office forecast for the coming winter suggests it is, once again, likely to be milder than average.
Their scorecard is doing equally well, with the UK having it’s coldest winter in decades, as reported by the BBC.
last month proved to be the coldest December in more than 30 years, with the average temperature at 1.7C (35F), compared with the long-term average of 4.7C (40F) for the first part of the month.
On December 12, they issued this press release:
The Met Office seasonal forecast predicted the cold start to the winter season with milder conditions expected during January
Yet the Met Office appeared undaunted by yet another incorrect seasonal forecast, as reported by the always faithful Guardian earlier this week.
In the midst of a cold snap – a hot weather warning
As temperatures stay stubbornly well below freezing, it may feel like the last issue on anyone’s mind, but the government has been warned it may need to start thinking about introducing emergency hot weather payments to help poorer households keep cool.
The cold spell caused significant problems in many areas of the country. The Government’s bill for Cold Weather Payments is expected to rise to more than £100 million
How we did
The Met Office correctly forecast the spell of cold weather and kept the public informed via our various forecasts.
My tax dollars feed these fools? This has stopped being funny. I don’t even get a warm feeling of self-satisfied smugness anymore when it blows back in their faces. I just want them to do their best to get it right, rather than doing their best to prop up an agenda.
It is turning milder over the coming week; however, there is still a good chance January will finish below average after the recent very cold snap.
The Central England Temperature for 1st-9th Jan is 3.8C below the average.
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/cet_info_mean.html
It is fair to say that the first half of winter has been unusually cold overall, and you correctly highlight that this is not what was predicted by the Met Office’s original seasonal forecast.
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Well I can tell you all that it’s much worse than that. I have long pointed out that the Central England Temperature (CET) just doesn’t seem to tally with actuality. According to that, 2008 was half a degree C WARMER than the average. This is despite us not really having a summer at all and everyone feeling decidedly chilly all year. Yet they come to the conclusion that we’re warmer than usual! But it gets worse. Currently England is freezing. Where I live in the south we had -12c one night. Today, the temperature has stayed below freezing all day. It’s been damned cold since before Xmas. Yet the CET says that the average is just -0.2! It just cannot be! As I have been saying for some time, the CET is a big fraud.
People in the UK and northern Europe should not worry about this winter.
The currently strenthening La Nina will give them a mild winter (whereas an El Nino causes a cold end to winters.) According to the Met Office and the Hadley Centre right now that is – of course completely opposite information is also available from the same researchers.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/news/lanina.html
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2008/pr20081209.html
I’ve been watching these NOAA CPC forecasts for a couple of years, and can’t say any appeared accurate. It seems like there are never any below normal predictions. I have to admit I don’t look at them for the warm months as heat isn’t a hazard here.
For the record, the Old Farmer’s Almanac was also 180 degrees out of phase for the month of December as well (at least in the Western Carolinas). Their forecast was for 4.5 degrees colder than normal, and the actual temperatures were more like 10 degrees *above* normal. They forecast snow for the entire month of December and we didn’t see a single flake.
As a Brit I love the sarcastic comments aimed at our Government and their little green friends.
Most of the people I speak to know that AGW is nonsense and we are slowly but surely seeing the Met Office talking irself into a corner. They are only being protected by their friends in the media and the politicians who have backed the wrong horse.
There is a long way to go yet but when the day of truth arrives it is going to be very funny.
Here’s a tip for my British friends: I sell dry ice. Please buy some, and place it outside your home. The dry ice will sublimate into the atmosphere above your home, thus trapping much-needed warmth.
No worries about increasing the globe’s CO2 by doing this. The UK is a fairly small amount of the Earth’s surface, and the problem is short-term. The CO2 will gently blend into the atmosphere and go undetected.
Have a go, please! Call BR-549, and ask for Billy Bob.
Sincerely,
Billy Bob.
Ed Scott:
Plus, as Mogli said in “The Jungle Book” movie, ~ “The Monkeys know it’s true because they always say it’s true.”
David L. Hagen (08:43:27) :
Life At Negative 78 Degrees In Alaska
“Day to Day, January 9, 2009 · Right now it’s cold in Alaska. Really cold. In the town of Tok, it was 78 degrees below zero yesterday.”
David,
I know you’re only copying what someone else reported but you should use a little common sense when relaying information. The NWS reports that TOK had a low temp of -60F!!! Someone mistook that as a Celsius report and converted it to F. Ach, -78F would be an all time record.
Re: Steve Berry – “According to that, 2008 was half a degree C WARMER than the average. This is despite us not really having a summer at all and everyone feeling decidedly chilly all year.”
There is not necessarily a contradiction here.
The average CET for June-Dec 2008 was 11.43C
This is 0.2C below the June-Dec average for 1961-1990 which was 11.63C.
It’s just that due to a very mild Jan and Feb and very warm May, Jan-May 08 was 1.4C above average. (Cold snap in April notwithstanding). Hence ~0.5C above average for the year.
LOL!
“Climate models, though different in design and time scale have a 90% confidence level, as reportedly claimed by the IPCC.”
Err, that’s when solar factors are ignored.
Of course any model that ignores solar factors is only fantasy.
In Germany (Central Europe) it’s been the coldest winter in at least 12 years, possibly 20.
Indeed the summer was short.
Germany got snow last Easter.
And London got snow in October.
Germany then got more snow in November.
and this January has been cold.
Still, things are supposed to moderate a little next week.
The AGW scam is like a huge game of musical chairs. As long as temperatures rise, or are made to appear to rise, the beneficiaries of this hoax remain employed. The music has stopped. When will they be scrambling for truth?
Why not check out the UK ‘met office’ website, its got a whole section on why AGW/MMCC is “real” and just to press the agenda home they have plenty of space to attack the climate realists/skeptics going into full on attack dog/smear mode.
The ‘met office’ is supposed to be a scientific organisation and it has an illustrious history(sadly well behind it) all that is left is a hollowed out shell puking out meaningless political propaganda liberally laced with lies.
When you have visited the ‘met office’ web(lie)site you will understand clearly I think.
According to the latest computer models, Alaska will see a great amount of warming in the couple of weeks ahead, possibly even a thaw. (The cold is moving to the east coast!).
http://www.meteogroup.de/de/home/wetter/profikarten/gfs_ncep.html
– Click on Nordamerika
– then on Temperatur 2m
– and then select date
Cold is tropical…
You can say that again – snow in Marseille France!
The arctic high pressure systems that have blocked the flow of warm Atlantic air to Britain are now shifting and we expect ameliorating temperatures – but can anyone tell me how you generate high pressure over the dark arctic in winter? These ‘blocking highs’ also indicate that the North Atlantic Oscillation’s recent 25 year warm phase may be over – and hence we could expect a cold phase coincident with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation in the North Pacific – and thus, this winter may be rather representative of the next two or three decades (unless carbon dioxide saves us!).
I don’t understand why the MetOffice continually points to La Nina and doesn’t mention the NAO, or the 70 year Arctic Oscillation. These cycles involve alternate pressure patterns – with the NAO negative reversing the ‘normal’ high over the Azores, low over Iceland. But what drives the regular cycle?
Cornwall just had a visit from a Snowy Owl! I nearly drove down to see it today – an icon of the times, as it normally lives in Arctic tundra.
I tried that for a while, and quickly came to the conclusion that they really have no idea what’s going to happen, but will, by sheer chance, get it “right” half the time.
I travel a lot for work, and often check the forecast for the area I’ll be heading into. Here’s an example:
I traveled to Philadelphia in early December. I checked the Forecast on Saturday, which said sunny every day until Thursday when it would be a bit rainy. I flew in on Sunday. It was rainy every day until Thursday when the sun finally came out.
This is pretty typical of what I encounter. Again, I challenge ANYONE to make weather forecasts a WEEK in advance with any consistent accuracy. They never have been able to, and in spite of claims to increased accuracy over the years, I have seen none. Sure, very short term stuff is more accurate, since they can see clouds forming as they form and can then say it will probably rain in a few hours. But beyond a day or two, no better than tarot cards…
The Obama-ites will pursue the MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING agenda until they are blue in the face (from the cold winter)!
We need Al Gore to come back home to Tennessee so that I may have a record snow and cold event! 🙂
http://www.cookevilleweatherguy.com
Oldjim (08:56:41) and others in the NA, I heard on the radio the thermohaline circulation has started back up. From Woods Hole:
http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewArticle.do?archives=true&id=54347
They mention the interaction with the jet stream just of the east coast of south Greenland. I know some on the WUWT blog have wondered about the melting ice there and suboceanic vulcanism.
“just off the east coast” missed the second ‘f’ on ‘off’.
A good discussion of the BBC article here.
http://freestudents.blogspot.com/2009/01/freezing-out-facts.html
Novoburgo — “David, I know you’re only copying what someone else reported but you should use a little common sense when relaying information. The NWS reports that TOK had a low temp of -60F!!! “
Follow the links from drudge and the writer of that has a blog. In one entry she complains that the problem is that there are few thermometer units that can actually read anything below -60. Based on this, one wonders about accuracy of very low temps. From what I could tell that which COULD measure correctly was showing -80. There’s a pic to that effect.