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.
Pierre Gosselin (02:04:33) :
Brian Johnson,
“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!”
Thanks to this blog, I was able to make this prediction 9 days ago:
“There is a sudden stratospheric warming event happening right now, and it will cause a slowdown and reversal of the polar airstreams soon. This will lead to cold siberian easterlies over europe and greenland/arctic easterlies over the northern US and Canada. I’m off to Spain for a weeks climbing and wild camping. Take care all, and wrap up for the impending severe cold spell coming in another week or so.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/4432426/Snow-Schools-airports-motorways-and-railways-all-closed.html
September/October last year I was telling anyone who’d listen, that winter 2008/09 would be cold and snowy in NW London, because the berries on the holly tree were being stripped at a furious rate by 3 or 4 fat pigeons that were alighting on the branches and gorging themselves on what was the heaviest crop of berries I have seen in 12 years. The berries were all gone before Xmas.
This morning it’s seven inches on the decking and I’m now relaxing with a cup of coffee toasting my toes in front of a fire at just before 11 a. m. local time. As there’s more snow on the way tonight, I feel justified in anticipating some mulled wine this afternoon, after a gentle walk around the neighbourhood. It’s great being retired.
Perry
Ah yes, so it does, I see it’s more up to date than the NOAA and IRI sites I visited.
So hopefully Aus will return to normal soon – I’d hate to see our neighbours getting all flustered, particularly when the cricket is going the way it is… 😉
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).
Here near Toowoomba it is positively cool. So Melb. is getting the hottest temps for over 100 years – meaning 100 years ago it was even hotter. Fact is, a high has sat stationary over the Tasman Sea for many days, the cool air right here is blowing out over the hot inland, heating up, and going down to Melbourne. The most demonstrably local phenomenon one could imagine.
One correction to my post: norm period for the seasonal forecast is 1971-2000. Anyway, there is no sense to judge the outcome of the forecast before the end of February.
Is this the UK or China, who will pay the pensions.
Government green guru Sir Jonathon Porritt calls for two-child limit
One of the Government’s leading environmental advisers, Sir Jonathon Porritt, has called for British couples to have no more than two children to stop the planet becoming overpopulated.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/4424856/Government-green-guru-Sir-Jonathon-Porritt-calls-for-two-child-limit.html
EU and Green envy at China-style restrictions on family size.
Jonathan Porrit, who chairs the government’s Sustainable Development Commission (he has also been leader to both the Green Party and Friends of the Earth in the past) has been giving his eye-swivelling misanthropy an outing.
“I am unapologetic about asking people to connect up their own responsibility for their total environmental footprint and how they decide to procreate and how many children they think are appropriate,” he opines over at the Sunday Times.
“I think we will work our way towards a position that says that having more than two children is irresponsible. It is the ghost at the table. We have all these big issues that everybody is looking at and then you don’t really hear anyone say the ‘p’ word.”
Mr Porrit’s own two children must be delighted to know they are “appropriate” – even though they remain an environmental blight of course. What a guilt trip to lay on your kids.
Mr Porrit is a patron of a charmless and unpleasant organisation known as The Optimum Population Trust.
This delightful outfit wants 43 million of us to disappear before Britain reaches its “optimal” population of 17 million. So you can imagine what they think of any new arrivals.
Each baby, these miserablists have claimed, “will, during his or her lifetime, burn carbon roughly equivalent to 2½ acres of old-growth oak woodland – an area the size of Trafalgar Square”.
THIS IDIOT IS AN ADVISER TO THE LAME DUCK UK LABOUR GOVERNMENT, WHAT HOPE IS THERE.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/bruno_waterfield/blog/2009/02/01/eu_and_green_envy_at_chinastyle_restrictions_on_family_size
OT but must put this one up, a plus for the UK.
James May together with Open University has done a programme on new energy possibilities being developed – very watchable and intelligent. 6 days left to catch.
Richard Heg (02:34:17) :
Amen!
The Under Secretary of State for Defence and the Minister for Veterans, currently Kevan Jones, is the individual charged with directing and overseeing the Met Office on behalf of the Secretary of State for Defence. The ultimate responsibility and accountability lies with the Secretary of State for Defence, currently the Right Honourable John Hutton MP.
The above is the corporate statement by the Met Office. It is government owned and funded and therfore it is not independant which is pretty clear from any reading of their web site.
The Chairmain is Robert Napier formerly chairman of the World Wild Life Fund he is one of new Labours Boys also.
I caught one of the James May programmes yesterday, quite impressive using a solar concentrator to melt steel. I wasn’t so sure about the underwater “tide turbine” using a pair of large, twin blade aircraft-like propellors to generate power, I hope any passing cetaceans or large fish can avoid such obstacles.
I’m also most embarrassed by the UK public’s inability to deal with a bit of weather!
A few inches of snow and we have public transport grinding to a halt, “Extreme Weather Warnings” issued and every school shut!
coldest january in 22 years in Switserland.
http://www.meteoschweiz.admin.ch/web/de/klima/klima_heute/monatsflash/flash200901.html
Coldest jan for the Netherlands in 12 years (just like december)
http://www.knmi.nl/VinkCMS/news_detail.jsp?id=45193
(2 degrees C below normal)
[Snip. Steven, abortion discussion does not belong on this thread. This is your second warning not to bring religious/moral issues onto this blog. There won’t be a third warning. If you want to discuss science, technology, weather, and climate issues, you are welcome to post on these issues. – Anthony]
Mary, exactly how many twenty year intervals have you observed to make that claim? Exactly.
Boston (dbTechno) – A volcano in the state of Alaska called Mt. Redoubt, appears ready to erupt. Officials in the state are keeping a very, very close eye on the situation that could very well spark out of control at any time.
Slideshow: Volcanoes TOKYO – A volcano near Tokyo erupted Monday, shooting up billowing smoke and showering parts of the capital with a fine ash that sent some city residents to the car wash and left others puzzled over the white powder they initially mistook for snow.
Mount Asama erupted in the early hours of Monday, belching out a plume that rose about a mile (1.6 kilometers) high, Japan’s Meteorological Agency said.
Alan, thanks for that link to netweather.tv – excellent site.
Those downplaying this UK winter storm are burying their heads in the snow. Even the BBC have just said this is the heaviest snowfall for 18 years – and it’s only just started, so what records will be broken by the end of it still remains to be seen.
And this cannot be fobbed off as just ‘weather’. The UK climate has been deteriorating for a couple of years now and this current storm is just part of an unusually cold winter so far and there is surely more to come. Recent winters have been mild with the occasional cold spell; this winter has been cold with the occasional mild spell (but even then with below average temps).
Of course this is likely just the first of the cold winters to come, so we’d better get used to it again.
Both record cool and warm happens in different locations every year. Always has and always will. The thing I think is so strange about the “Global Warming” crowd is that they point out one, ignore the other and call it science.
The Porrit article just goes to prove what a lot of us believe about the hard Green movement. Read Melanie Phillips over at the Daily Mail for a spectacularly hard hitting comment. If you look at AGW / Ocean Acidification and all the rest of the big global scares through the Green lens, you will see who is driving them and why.
Flanagan (00:46:43) :
I had the vague idea that GCMs were predicting windy and wet winters for Northern Europe and very dry summers for Southern Europe.
You seem to have quite a few vague ideas. GCM’s come up with a broad range of them too.
Can someone confirm this?
Maybe you could before you come back? I doubt if anyone else is going to go on a haggis hunt looking for it.
My forecast issued in October:
“On balance I think the coming winter will be colder and drier than the long term average, possibly by a surprising margin but 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 than average 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 then the Greenland and Scandinavian high pressure cells will affect us more than for many years past and give us persistent cold.”
Flanagan: (regarding baselines)
Compare it with the baseline of the bronze age? or each of the 4 previous interglacials which all saw higher temps than the current one???
Your 1950 baseline comparison is useless as it all depends where you choose a starting point. Just because we are at the top of the temperature hill doesn’t mean we are still going up it! Even when temps start to decline, we are still at above average temps but the overall temp has not been rising past 1998 levels. According to the ghg model (CO2 accounts for at least 60% of forcings) the decrease in temps over the past 10 years COULD NOT have happened, and thus reality disproves these models.
I suggest you desist with your arrogant remarks and pointless arguments, perhaps create your own blog if this one fails to live up to your expectations.
Bob D:
The cricket is going fantastic! The Proteas are back on top! 🙂
Hi,
1) Someone said few posts back that UK MET will publish spring(?) forecast in later February. I found this:
Seasonal forecasts – indications for the next three months
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/world/seasonal/
2) I called it Great Highs Band around the North Pole:
http://meteorology.lyndonstate.edu/data/web/upperair/jet/nhemjetp.gif
It is the first time I saw “European High” connected with “Greenland High” over “warm” Atlantic. Perhaps the GHB will develop into something bigger and will “flood” lower lattitudes with polar air?
Regards
The whole country is grinding to a halt because of a bit of snow. Of course the Met Office and government have told us we’ve got global warming and what mild winters we are going to have, so nobody is prepared anymore.