Guest post by Steven Goddard
The UK Met Office forecast last Autumn “the coming winter suggests it is, once again, likely to be milder than average. ” We have now passed the 2/3 mark of the meteorological winter, and it is time for another report card to send home. Yesterday’s press release was titled “Wintry start to February” which stated “So far, the UK winter has been the coldest for over a decade” and “Met Office forecasters expect the cold theme to the weather to continue well into next week with the chance of further snow.”
The UK is expecting the heaviest snow in about 20 years tomorrow. “Snow and freezing weather threaten to shut down Britain Arctic blizzards are set to cause a national shutdown on Monday as forecasters warn of the most widespread snowfall for almost 20 years.” “Now is the time you’d expect to see the daffodils coming out but we’re not expecting them for two or three weeks at best if it warms up.“
So why is this important? Climate is not weather, after all. The Met Office is one of the most vocal advocates of human induced global warming, and they have gotten into a consistent pattern of warm seasonal forecasts which seemingly fall in line with that belief system. Is it possible that their forecasts are unduly influenced by preconceived notions about the climate? It is worth remembering that London had it’s first October snow in 70 years this past autumn.
Or perhaps they know exactly what they are doing, and are just having a several year run of extremely bad luck with their long term forecasting.
Update from London.
It is now 5am. Looking out from FatBigot Towers I see all roads, houses and gardens under a good two inches of snow with more falling all the while. It is arriving from due north and at a shallow angle. The real stuff is predicted to arrive in ten to twelve hours’ time.
What a glorious sight for those of us who enjoy seasons and find winter incomplete without at least a day of heavy snow.
Back in the Autumn I was down at my little place in the country one weekend and spent a while chatting to a local farmer I’ve known all my life. He didn’t predict the weather for this winter, he said what it was going to be. There was no prediction any more than we predict that the day after Tuesday is Wednesday. The old country folk always know because they have seen it before and the little they haven’t seen they heard about from their parents who also passed on what their parents told them. Their knowledge covers more than 100 years and throughout that time they couldn’t afford to be wrong because their livelihood depended on it.
Any number of computers and any amount of number-crunching cannot compete with actual knowledge, even if those possessing the knowledge cannot explain the processes causing the phenomena they know about.
I was told by the old farmer that the winter would be the harshest for a decade. He didn’t know why, but he didn’t need to know why, he only needed to know it. He knew it because the hedgehogs were very busy, stocking up on food to prepare themselves for an early hibernation. That’s it, just that. It was all he needed to see to know it would be a cold winter.
The real truth of the tale, of course, is that the hedgehogs knew it would be a cold winter. $140million for research into hedgehog intuition? No, I thought not.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this just normal La Nina behaviour for the Australian climate? I.e. wetter in the north and hotter in the south?
Effects of El Niño/La Nina on world weather We’re still in a La Nina, aren’t we?
Will the current run of high temps in Australia counter the cooler weather in the Northern hemisphere so that the ‘global temp’ still works out to be increasing?
Adelaide and Melbourne are breaking records for highest temps and longest run of 40C+ temps (it was 46C in Adelaide last week).
We have our ‘scientists’ now warning us that 50C is possible in the future. Of course they do not specify how long into the future, degree of certainty or that they will resign whatever government paid positions they hold if they are wrong.
December 2008 Middle England was the coldest since 1996.
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/cetml1659on.dat
It’ll be interesting to see the January numbers.
Your right Bob D it is just normal weather, no indications of climate change however that doesn’t stop Tim Flannery or Penny Wong predicting doom and gloom. Wong’s job depends on it and Flannery has made lots of money and has achieved the notoriety he so desperately craves. The Rudd government has the support of the public to raise a carbon tax to save the planet. How many governments have their citizens begging to be taxed more?
Tis a great shame that our national radio announcers say nothing of the irony of “Global Warming”, at the same time they deliver the news of impending heavy snow fall & ice & cold with typical BBC stoicism, as if all is normal & the good old British ruggedness will see us thro’! More tea chaps, it’s jolly chilly hereabouts?
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/temp_maps.cgi?variable=maxanom&area=nat&period=daily&time=latest
averaged over all australia, temperatures are close to “normal”.
the southeast australian heatwave can hardly be accounted to global warming, when it is not even an australian wide anomaly.
All of this talk about Melbourne and Adelaide being so hot. I live in Brisbane in the subtropics and our summer is just normal . Actually a lack of hot days this summer. Just look at the map of Australia and you will see that Melbourne and Adelaide are pimple sized spots considering the size of Australia. Australia is almost the same area as the United states.
The only forecasts the Met Office get right are the ‘Actual’ real time Aviation forecasts! Anything else changes like the wind.
And we pay fortunes for massive computers to increase the Met Office ‘predictions’.
4 days ago there was no indication of heavy snow on their 5 day forecast page!
deleted
No spoofing of people allowed at this site ~ charles the moderator.
Justin Ritchie (19:31:50) :
I thought one of the common predicted outcomes of global warming is that the arctic melt would destroy heat current flows in the atlantic ocean, wouldn’t a cold UK winter confirm that?
That theory is based on the notion that a large flood of fresh water into the North Atlantic would stop the circulation. But there has been no such large flood of fresh water.
This cold spell is a good old garden variety cold weather cycle. There is an ocean heat / cold oscillation called the Pacific Decadel Oscillation (PDO) that has shifted to the ‘cold’ phase. This is thought to be a 30 year or so cycle.
There is also the possibility that the present near zero sunspot level (that implies a low solar output and low magnetosphere) are what’s causing the cold.
What’s most certain is that, be it sun or oscillations of ocean heat, it isn’t people making it happen. The AGW predictions were pretty much all calling for hotter. They got it wrong.
Aussie John (22:08:36) :
Will the current run of high temps in Australia counter the cooler weather in the Northern hemisphere so that the ‘global temp’ still works out to be increasing?
Adelaide and Melbourne are breaking records for highest temps and longest run of 40C+ temps (it was 46C in Adelaide last week).
We have our ’scientists’ now warning us that 50C is possible in the future. Of course they do not specify how long into the future, degree of certainty or that they will resign whatever government paid positions they hold if they are wrong.”
Aussie John – as an Adelaide resident who survived the 45.7 C heat the other day, the hottest since 1939 when it was a bit over 46C (and Adelaide was about a quarter the size that it is today), I have to wonder how they can suggest that we will all of a sudden get to 50C when the 46C record has stood for 70 years and wasn’t broken by conditions that were ideal for high temps. Our Minister for Climate Change (note, that’s not Minister Combating Climate Change, but rather FOR it, like a proponent) Penny Wong, who is sadly a South Australian, suggested that the heat we had, and are still going through, is the sort of thing we are predicted to have to endure with CC upon us. Most South Australian’s expect some heat waves in summer, its a fact of life, and conditions had been rather cool in December and the first part of January.
Aussie John (22:08:36) :
Will the current run of high temps in Australia counter the cooler weather in the Northern hemisphere so that the ‘global temp’ still works out to be increasing?
Well, you’ve just put your finger on one of the big issues in how the whole Global Warming thing is defined. There is no standard for how many thermometers to average together and where they are to be located.
Want to make the global average temperature lower? Put some more thermometers in Canada and Alaska…
So will Australia be enough to counter Britain? Don’t know. Count up your thermometers and see who’s going to win… Just don’t think that the ‘average global temperature’ number means anything real…
Nice picture of Piccadilly. We were predicted lots of snow in Norfolk. Only a couple of dustings so far. But airports closed everywhere according to the radio. School closures etc. Shame. No lessons on AGW today!
This is just normal. I remember it snowed on Boxing Day 1962 and we still had the snow in our garden in early April 1963. I am not a climate scientist so I just call it weather.
Been keeping an eye on the Arctic ice extent. Rate of increase has slowed right down. Hoping it is wind compacting the baby ice. Makes it harder to melt in summer.
If you want to contact the Met Office and let them know how much you appreciate their forecasting and expertise in climate change, then you may do so here enquiries@metoffice.gov.uk
In a post supposedly comparing forecasts to observations, you’d think you might find some numbers. But no, apparently the author thinks that the mere fact that it’s snowing means it must be colder than average.
Let’s look at the data. Someone linked to the CET. Over the whole period, the average temperatures in November and December are 6.04 and 4.08°C respectively. In 2008, the temperatures were 7.0 and 3.5 °C. Thus, the two thirds of winter so far has been, at 5.25°C, warmer than the average of 5.06°C.
Met Office-of-no-shame archive : “Over the eight years, 2000-2007, since the Met Office has issued forecasts of annual global temperature, the mean value of the forecast error was just 0.07 °C.” http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2008/pr20080103.html
The Met Office is demonstrably unable to predict even 24 hours in advance. If you want to see a demonstration of this, for something as simple and useful as whether it is going to rain while you are out for your afternoon walk, proceed as follows.
Go one of the regional sites. Lets pick for instance Telford. Go to the main site
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/uk_forecast_weather.html
Now pick a region from the left hand menu – you want West Midlands
Now pick Telford from the second drop down menu below it.
You will see their five day forecast for Telford in the main part of the screen. It was probably issued several hours ago. So now all you have to do is go to their rainfall radar page, which is updated every half hour, and see if it is now doing what they said it would a few hours earlier. The rainfall radar page is here:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/radar/
And you can run an animated series of shots to see how fast its moving or changing.
Our experience is that if you want to know if it is going to rain where you are, today or tomorrow, their forecasts are pretty much useless. On the other hand, get a bit closer to the event, and you can see for yourself that the rain is or is not coming towards you and how strong it is.
People have mentioned how disastrously wrong their longer term forecasts have been. Summers which are supposed to be warm and dry in the Spring turn out to be the wettest for a century. Winters which are supposed to be warm are freezing cold and vice versa. Parts of the country which are supposed to be dry are shoulder deep in water and the army is called out. Ask Gloucester. And parts that were supposed to be wet are dry as a bone.
OK, they cannot forecast 24 hours ahead, and they cannot forecast 4-6 months ahead. Can they then forecast several years ahead? Well no. They recently replaced their standing forecast of increased linear warming with one of a sort of dip followed by rise. No real reason was given, but the fact is, it was wrong. The dip is happening, which was easy to forecast since we were in it at the time. Will the rise? No idea, and neither have they.
We need to pay attention to the record. I don’t think they are unusually incompetent, its rather that we simply do not know how to do this. When a map of what is happening now is of more value to the user than a forecast based on that map, the time has come to remain silent. As for forecasting 30 years out? Forget it. Keep trying, but in the privacy of your own home. Done in public, its embarrassing.
If everyone wants to remain self-consistent, we should say that both the English and Australian current weathers don’t mean a thing. What would be interesting is a statistics of high/low records over time to check if there’s some pattern.
Nevertheless, I had the vague idea that GCMs were predicting windy and wet winters for Northern Europe and very dry summers for Southern Europe. Can someone confirm this?
Like FatBigot says let nature tell the tale as the hedgehogs seem to know what’s happening, unlike those forecasters and their fancy expensive boxes with electronics in.
And on a completely unscientific note, it’s my birthday tomorrow and almost without fail it snows at this time of year in England. Or gets too cold and we get ice. My Mum says I was 3 weeks late because of the snow in 59 and there was still snow on the ground when I finally made an appearance. From memory, it’s building all the snowmen I remember most of all and guess what….I’m going to build one today! Hurrah for global warming, I say. More snow please!
Anyway, I’m still wondering why this snow receives a complete topic (not seen in 20 years?) while South Australia, its 46 degrees, power outages and 30 or so dead is completely overlooked by our good friend Anthony?
And what about the South American drought that killed dozens of beef?
Or the quite impressive increase of global temperature in January? This would make a great post, really. The temperature increased by 1F over a few days, but I can’t see any direct reason for that. We still have la nina, solar minimum, NH winter.. So what? Do you have any opinion on this (Anthony or anyone)?
REPLY:
1. because the writer lives in Britain
2. because AFAIK, Australia’s forecasting service did not blow their forecast like UK’s met office did with their winter.
Obviously you didn’t get the topic, see tags “forecasting weather”.
And when UAH/RSS post their numbers, up or down, there will be a story. Jeez “Flanagan” get your own blog if you want to run the topics.
-Anthony
Sorry to post so often, but I do have a last question: temperatures not seen since 1997, right I do admit. But how do they compare to the 20th century average?
In Belgium January was quite cold and I was expecting a “record” of some sort. The temperature was colder than average, but no record set. Even for snow fall…
Winter was very harsh in some regions of north europe, included great britain, netherland and spain with some exceptional heavy snowfall in madrid.
Counter mediterranean region and the balcans were rather mild this winter, also russia, but a cold snap will hit eastern europe in the next few days.
Maybe Joe Bastardi’s forecast will make right
No, we are not in la Nina.
it used to be normal, this sort of winter used to come around once every five years or so, now its once every twenty years. The difference between weather and climate.
The Gulf stream is still intact, you can see its signature nicely here. http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.1.29.2009.gif
Steven Goddard (19:41:09) :
An obvious statement, was you expecting it to?