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.
SUNSPOTS!
As Obama gets sworn in, he can at least take solace in that perhaps SC 24 is getting underway:
http://ncwatch.typepad.com/media/2009/01/global-warming-at-the-presidential-inauguration.html
In the meantime, he’ll have to shiver through inauguration.
I wonder if he’ll mention GW!
Let’s all hope it’s 5°F in DC on Jan 20!
“that the lack of wind has caused the country’s wind farms to grind to a halt when more electricity than ever is needed for heating, forcing the grid to rely on back up from fossil fuels or other renewable energy sources. “
What tickles me is that they continue to pretend that there are significant “renewable” energy sources. Solar isn’t going to work very well in winter when nights are longest and sun angle is lowest.
Again, the nuclear technology we already have with recycling of fuel would end this problem. In this economy we could use some construction projects that actually add something to the economy.
“but can anyone tell me how you generate high pressure over the dark arctic in winter? ”
Air aloft radiates its heat into space and cools. As it cools, it sinks generating an area of high pressure.
Saturday night in central England, still cold. Warmer weather has been promised ‘tomorrow’ since around wednesday. It has not arrived. Strangely the forecasters have not noticed this mistake, and continue to forecast it for tomorrow. Funny how they don’t explain what happened to yesterday’s forecast.
G Alston (10:36:23)
“From what I could tell that which COULD measure correctly was showing -80. There’s a pic to that effect.”
Alcohol thermometer will!
The temp that the article reported was -78F which just happens to be precisely -60C, which is exactly what the NWS reported in its State summary…in Fahrenheit!
There was no -78 reading: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/climate/index.php?wfo=pafg
“Make that precisely -76F”
Not that the UK Met. Office does any better with its predictions (sorry projections)…..
Hardly surprisingly really, since they are still wedded to Mann’s “Hockey Stick” on what is their “higher educaion” webpage. See
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/education/higher/climate_change.html
I have sent an email asking them to explain its veracity, but I am not expecting a reply anytime soon 🙁
The Met Office is run by propagandists these days. Mitchell at the Met Office and Jones at its offshoot, the Hadley Centre. Not much honest science there then.
Ok boys and girls we’ve all had our fun but have any of you got an idea what might be happening in the deep ocean currents. My view is we will see a continuing cooling of the Arctic oceans but a weakening of the La Nina.
Next summer in the northern hemisphere should be fair bit cooler than the average of the last eleven years and the +20/-20 tropics to be more or less neutral.
Either way I doubt i could stuff things up as badly as the UK Met Office or the CPC.
“The Met Office seasonal forecast predicted the cold start to the winter season with milder conditions expected during January”
In magic circles that’s called “covering all the outs.” In other words, no matter what happens, just take credit for it. Once you’ve mentioned all possible outcomes it’s simple enough to say: “See that cold spell I predicted just showed up a week early or see that warm spell I predicted just lasted a week or so longer than even I thought.” Such is how 90 % accuracy figures are constructed.
Amusingly I issued this prediction for the UK in late October:
“On balance I think the coming winter will be colder and drier than the long term average, possibly by a surprising margin but too much depends on the winter jet stream which can be very unpredictable in Western Europe.
Last winter was, as they say, warmer than the average here and in W Europe. However that was during a colder N Hemisphere winter overall.
What happened was that the plunges of cold air over N America distorted the jet stream which then approached us persistently from the South West bringing frequent flows of mild air.
Since the recent global cooling trend has intensified since last winter I suspect that the jet stream will this year push more often into the Mediterranean thus cutting off the supply of warm air to us. IF that happens (no guarantee) then the Greenland and Scandinavian high pressure cells will affect us more than for many years past and give us persistent cold”.
As to the mechanism which I believe is involved in driving global temperatures please see here:
http://co2sceptics.com/news.php?id=2499
Many good points here.
But at what point will, or can, this tremendous AGW fraud trigger the all out, blowback attack it should be under today?
Something is missing in terms of what the populous could and should do when the governing establishments perpetrate such global scam.
At this point there should already be many IPCC casualties facing consequences for their manipulations.
Something has happened in societal evolution that enables such a massive growth in corrupted governance and policy making.
It seems we humans, (the little people?, peasants?) have lost the ability to deliver a 21st Century revolt, lynching, tar and feathering.
Figuratively speaking of course.
IMO there should be dire consequences for this AGW crime.
So I guess the shorter question is,
“How do we begin to really punish some of these perpetrators”?
Or when?
Has anyone noticed the latest from Mauna Loa?
2008 CO2 increase of just 0.24 – lowest since their records began.
Is a cooling ocean absorbing more CO2?
Or does it mean anything at all?
I barely noticed the ‘what is the red dot’ link (near ‘Actions” above) that takes you to: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/10/what-is-the-red-dot
I can tell you from personal experience that if they have that sensor near black asphalt in Arizona it will be ‘way hot’. I still remember the summer I was in Phoenix and they shut down the airport because the asphalt was melting in the sun at somewhere over 126 F or so… The air temp is hot enough, but when the air is just laying there, asphalt gets sooooo hot in the desert.
I wonder if MMTS units are considered to be as unreliable/inaccurate as the Davis Vpro supposedly are at very low temps:
http://livingintok.wordpress.com/2009/01/09/and-for-those-who-need-proofminus-80-degrees-f/
Richard Sharpe (09:09:35) :
The British are also getting a valuable lesson in just how useful wind energy is …
You’re singing to the choir mate.
I seem to remember the Met Office failing to predict the icy start to winter until AFTER the event, when I was telling everyone it was gonna be a brass monkeys Winter back in Summer.
They used to laugh but they don’t now. 😀
DaveE.
Tom in cooler than I like Florida (08:54:32) : The Met Office says “Met Office seasonal forecasts are expressed as variations from 1971-2000 averages”
Oh well spotted Tom. Met Office “correctly forecast” my foot! – especially with that troublesome alteration Steve Goddard noticed,
from
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.
to
Last month proved to be the coldest December since 1996, with the average temperature at 3.1C (38F), compared with the long-term average of 4.2C (40F) for the first part of the month.
Now here’s the real European evidence. Serious snow in Milan? Marseille? Keep it up please dear Sun – but not for too long!
Slightly OT, but I regard these two pieces that should have been peer-reviewed, published and praised as really important missing info – part of why we’ve been misinformed for so long.
Peter Taylor (10:24:39) : Cornwall just had a visit from a Snowy Owl!
Well, since the UFO hit the wind turbine in frosty Lincolnshire, perhaps Hedwig is bringing us a message.
I live in the Pacific NW and the weather has been strange here.. Slams us with massive snow fall then warms enough to turn the entire countryside into a wet mess. It has been very unusual weather, but trust me, its not warm:)
I think its time for the sun to start kickin up a fuss and for the ocean currents to go neutral. A couple years of normal solar activity and no ocean current to blame for the non rising temps and GW will be dead. It will take just a few years of absolute normal to kill that movement.
I have been dismayed a bit reading this site lately. We have to be careful not to turn chicken little ourselves. Screaming the ice age is coming the ice age is coming is no more responsible then the people we dislike who scream hot tipping point.. I think people would be best served if we could just show that the earth has a variable climate and if you dont like it, wait long enough .. it will change:) Its no disaster and not even really scarry.
When that happens we can go back to dealing with real problems and the world may become a nicer place overall.
Lucy Skywalker says, in part:
It is not much good pointing out a paper if you don’t provide a link to the paper.
It is 08:40pm in Pembrokeshire and the temperature is 8C. Four days ago at this time it was -7C. There has been little or no sun over that period. This global warming is terrible!
(umm.. the wind changed from northeast to southwest 🙂 )
Steve H. (11:23:49) :
But at what point will, or can, this tremendous AGW fraud trigger the all out, blowback attack it should be under today?
I can’t tell you when, but I can tell you how to know it’s started… Watch “The Tonight Show”. When they start doing regular jokes about something, it’s dead meat. As soon as the AGW failure jokes are getting big laughs, we can begin the celebration… I did see one such joke on Letterman, so we’re “warming up” for it 😉
On my daily constitutional walk around the neighborhood a week or two ago I made an AGW joke with each person I met. Not One failed to laugh. Not One supported AGW. It was a very cold day…
Something has happened in societal evolution that enables such a massive growth in corrupted governance and policy making.
Actually history is full of such folly, it’s just not been climate related. From witch hunts to Russian genetics to Aryan psudohistory to the Chinese Maoist system. What was unusual was the (short) century or two of rational western thought. I hope we can retrieve it before it is lost completely.
It seems we humans, (the little people?, peasants?) have lost the ability to deliver a 21st Century revolt, lynching, tar and feathering.
Figuratively speaking of course.
IMO there should be dire consequences for this AGW crime.
Patience grasshopper, patience… It takes time to sharpen the knives…
Figuratively speaking; of course…
I give it 5 to 10 years max. After the first 3 winters like this one, folks will be shouting Bull at any more AGW nonsense. At 5, they will be rioting if the politicians haven’t moved on. Politicians are in the business of getting in front of the parade and claiming to have led it. Frozen folks will be having one heck of a parade toward warmth.
Just remember, to the average person: 1 is a fluke. 2 is a pattern. 3 is a trend. 4 is a certainty. 5 is Truth.
We are presently at 2 and getting colder.
People don’t remember things well, or long. They don’t handle long term lag times or cyclicalities well. This worked for the AGW thesis when PDO and sunspots were pushing for warming. Now this ‘long knife’ cuts the other way… So patience. And humor.
If you’re verifying CPC for December, why not assess their December outlook instead of D-J-F? The December outlook doesn’t verify all that well but at least you’re apples:apples.
That Mauna Loa number is “Jaw-Dropping.” I can’t wait to hear all about this.