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.
The impact of the Sudden Stratospheric Warming event is a little uncertain.
First, this event is the biggest on record.
Second, sometimes these events result in extremely cold temps at the surface about 2 weeks to 8 weeks after the event.
Sometimes, they result in very warm conditions at the surface afterward.
Sometimes there is no impact at all.
It really depends on whether the above average temps in the stratosphere can migrate downward to the troposphere and the surface or whether the warm conditions just leak out into space.
Usually, the weather stops coming mainly from the west and it will sometimes comes from the east and north instead. That is not good news for UK weather regardless of the overall impact since the warm conditions are west of the UK and the cold conditions are east and north.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/temperature/10mb9065.gif
This sudden warming everyone is going on about seems to be only happening in the bottom +- 15km of the atmosphere… available datasets higher in altitude than that show temperatures currently running at less than the same time last year : http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
Porrit
At least he has helped in a useful way
1 If you believe in AGW ( I don’t) then forget all the stuff about what what causes more CO2, freight, passenger aircraft, heating etc. It’s us humans so the easiest way to get to the EU’s fanatsy CO2 reductions is to slaugher the apporpriate % of the population.
2
Whoops backspace error
Porrit
At least he has helped in a useful way
1 If you believe in AGW ( I don’t) then forget all the stuff about what what causes more CO2, freight, passenger aircraft, heating etc. It’s us humans so the easiest way to get to the EU’s/UK’s fantasyy CO2 reductions is to slaugher the apporpriate % of the population.
2 If 1 does not work, start on our way back to the 50s or maybe 1900s by taking away electricty so that we can all go back to the dark ages.
3 Confirmed that the greens are really misanthropic fascists.
Melanie Phillips in the Daily Mail writes eleoquently on the subject today.
Cheers
Paul
dearieme to Gore: our mild, green island seems to be covered with cold, white stuff. Please advise.
Lots of discussion about temperatures and weather in Australia. This is a continent, not just a country, and weather systems operate all over it. There’s a big tropical wet in the north, 3000km away in the south it’s 40C+ and torrid, here 1500k on the east coast is the usual summer, 25-35C and cooling onshore tradewinds. 35000k away the west has its own weather system. The centre is having floodss. You cannot discuss weather or climate in Australia as if it is an entity.
We are having a typical summer, so is the south, so is the north (which means, a a bit of everything).
I should also add, last easter in Spain we got caught in the Picos de Europas for a day and a half when a late blizzard came through from the north, and again in the Spanish Pyrenees a week later. Very late weather systems according to the locals, who were hoping for global warming.
All the talk about how this is “weather” and not “climate” obscures the fact that climate varies “on all timescales.” From MJO to Milankovitch cycles, climate is naturally variable. The signal failure of the UK Met and the NOAA/NWS/CPC is to think that these natural climate cycles have been overtaken by an upward trend (warming, anthropogenically caused) that is more predictable than nature’s messy cycles. But this is dogma, not science. No one has yet found a way to extract the AGW trend from all the “noise” that nature makes in the data.
E.M.Smith:”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”
That´s right, but we must never forget to remind them, whenever they call it “Climate Change” that they used to call it “Global Warming”, and ask them where to find that “global warming”.
In 2005 two Russian solar physicists bet UK solar “expert” Dr. James Annan $10,000 that the globe would be cooler, not warmer, ten years hence. Annan should be setting aside some money.
Bob D (02:38:57) :
My understanding (I may be wrong), gathered form the IRI site, is that we are currently in a La Nina:
“As of mid-January 2009 SSTs are below-average across the central and eastern Pacific. These SSTs, which now constitute La Niña conditions, developed in early December 2008.”
It seems that we exceeded the -0.5C anomaly threshold over this period (-1.1C).
Have I got it right?
A la Nina did not form this SH summer, this is covered in this recent WUWT post http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/20/its-official-la-nina-is-back/
Hello Steven
I agrre entirely that the Mett Office has gone gung ho for AGW, however I think this started un Thatcher and now the Labour party in the UK want to use the Metto as a propaganda for AGW and gimmicks about how UKMO workwith the National Health Service to predict the weather and save lives. This is so feeble its untrue yet for agovernment whose hospital are now seen as the best place to go to contract a fatal bug like MRSA and Staph C.
I used to visit the MetO shop in Holborn London back in the seventies and those days they were emphatic they dealt with weather and not climate.
Nowdays the very website is called ‘Weather and Climate Change’ As I’v’e said being part of the ministry of defence they are seen as a sort of Pravda to promote ideologically driven AGW.
I’d love to be at their weekly briefings as theydiscuss their models and the Climate Act passed a law November 2008.
I’d also be very interested in the politics of the Meto appoinments.
Perry Debell (03:05:45) :
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.
The same happened to my holly as well, unusually it was Ringed Doves which haven’t been much in evidence previously. For the first time in many years I had a problem finding enough for Christmas decorations.
Despite this forecast from the Met Office:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/seasonal/winter2008_9/
having read discussions on this and other blogs I have gained some kudos at home and work by forecasting a more severe winter in Derby than we have experienced for a number of years. Even if the cumulative amount of snow, so far, where I live is less than 4 inches (10cm).
thank god global warming exists or we would have snow in early feb (sarcasm)
the north west of england is getting a lot more snow, i have never felt it as cold. i remember once it snowed in may (on my birthday so i remember). that was in the late 70;s i think.
if only gore was trapped in a snowstorm. that really would make me laugh.
Alex: yes indeed. Could it be related to the AGW prediction that the upper atmosphere should be cooling while the lower part is heating?
De during the last cold spell in Britain – about two weeks ago, I drafted a 1000 word article local press on why the MetOffice had failed to predict the cold winter – or had in fact thought it would be milder than usual – but it got delayed and then the moment seemed to have passed, however, it came out today – in the Bristol-based Western Daily Press (they have a website) on a day when the West Country is under snow for the first time in 8 years since I have been here – the snow normally missed the Somerset Levels – and today they are carpeted.
It will be interesting to see how much flak I get. Or the paper gets. There is virtually no criticism of the forecasting in the main national newspapers and no reference to alternative explanations – solar cycles, jetstream, ocean oscillations.
The take up by a regional newspaper is a start!
Bet if you looked at past ‘predictions’ they would have a better record if they used a ‘random walk’, just like the Stock Market predictors.
It’s very cold, I’m fed up with snow already, it won’t stop, there’s at least an inch on the ground, I’ll have to wear my thicker soled shoes I exepct. They don’t have a flaming clue do they! Now it’s going to freeze down tonight.
I’d better get the beef stew in the Aga asap & open a bottle of wine, whoops I’ll only have two glasses or I’ll be accused of binge drinking.
Another nob of coal on the fire please, Mr Crachit!
BTW, as I type this the snow flakes are thickening again & visibility is getting worse!
atb, Devon UK (cold)
RE: Flanagan (00:52:58) :
***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?***
What is the problem? That is all near normal.
Read the following:
Australian Monthly Climate Summary: January 2009
Monday 2 February, 2009
In Brief
Over Australia as a whole, January 2009 was substantially wetter than normal, with slightly above normal temperatures. The national figures, however, disguised dramatic regional variations. Most of tropical Australia experienced a very wet and cool January, whereas in the south temperatures were generally well above normal – including one of the most intense heatwaves on record in the last week of the month – and much of the southeast was extremely dry.
Details
Temperatures:
Maximum temperatures were 0.14°C above the long-term average (28th lowest of 60 years), but every state and territory except Tasmania was in either the top or bottom 10. After a cool start to the month, the southeast became warm from mid-month onwards, and exceptionally so during an intense heatwave in the last week, which saw the highest temperature ever recorded in Tasmania (42.2°C at Scamander on 30 January), other record highs in southern Victoria and South Australia, and the highest temperatures since 1939 in many other parts of the southeast. Melbourne (45.1°C) and Adelaide (45.7) both narrowly missed 1939 records, and both cities set records for consecutive days above 43°C with four and three respectively.
Correction to last post. Last name is Machnee.
Welcome to global warming
To understand the climate, and to understand the disastrous implications of AGW, you must ignore the weather. All of it.
To cite weather patterns in making an assertion about climate is boorish and unsophisticated.
/sarcasm
10th coldest january in history in Chicago…
http://www.nbcchicago.com/weather/stories/January-Deep-Freeze-One-for-the-Record-Books.html
“Punxsutawney Phil” seems to concur with a long cold winter
Gerald
Highhest temperature ever in Scamander?
What this the Scamander where records started in 1974? If so it is likely the temperatures set in 1939 elsewhere remain the hottest.
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/climate/station.jsp?lt=site&lc=92094
TonyB