Guest post by Steven Goddard
25 September 2008
The Met Office forecast for the coming winter suggests it is, once again, likely to be milder than average.
Seasonal forecasts from the Met Office are used by many agencies across government, private and third sectors to help their long-term planning.
The meteorological winter is over, and the official results are in :
The UK had its coldest winter for 13 years, bucking a recent trend of mild temperatures, the Met Office has said.
The average mean temperature across December, January and February was 3.1C – the lowest since the winter beginning in 1995, which averaged 2.5C.
Peter Stott, of the Met Office, said despite this year’s chill, the trend to milder, wetter winters would continue.
He said snow and frost would become less of a feature in the future.
….
The Met Office added that global warming had prevented this winter from being even colder.
2009 is expected to be one of the top-five warmest years on record, despite continued cooling of huge areas of the tropical Pacific Ocean, a phenomenon known as La Niña.
2007 is likely to be the warmest year on record globally, beating the current record set in 1998, say climate-change experts at the Met Office.
Just checked, window thermometer shows ZERO degrees celcius, external guage on central heating boiler reads +1C. March in Milford Haven! My house is less than one hundred yards from the harbour. Still too dark outside to see any ground frost.
LOL… I like that dart board… almost as accurate as my Ouija board… 😉
Seasonal forecasts are also released in Norway, based on ECMWF models, possibly the same as the UK forecast. The forecast for December to February was quite a bit off in Norway as well, but temperatures were still well above the 1961-90 average.
Oslo summary:
Forecast: -1.0 C
Actual: -2.8 C
1961-90: -3.8 C
The warmest winter on record is +0.7C (1988/89).
Every year the Met office says it will be the warmest year on record, or near.
Every year I say it will be about the same as last year.
Every year I am more correct than they are.
The Met Office costs £83m per year.
I’ll do almost anything for a bacon sandwich.
Where’s the justice?
It’s now light in the mildest part of the UK, the south-west, and we have another dusting of snow.
Of course the Met Office knows that weather is not climate: “The fact that 2009, like 2008, will not break records does not mean that global warming has gone away. What matters is the underlying rate of warming – the period 2001-2007, with an average of 14.44 °C, was 0.21 °C warmer than corresponding values for the period 1991-2000.” So the underlying rate according to the Met Office is only based on the last 18 years. Is that cherry-picking or not?
almost as accurate as my Ouija board…
Penn and Teller did a “BS” on Ouija boards. They were VERY accurate. Even when the “subjects were blindfolded” . . .
UNTIL he left them blindfolded – and turned the Ouija board upside down!
What a hoot!
It looks like the Met are following a trend line rather than using any real science. If the past number of years have been mild and we are under the influence of AGW then obviously it is going to be mild.
Hmmmm, let us not confuse weather with climate…as we are looking at their climate forecasting, how did they do over a longer term and global area? Their forecast for the average global temperature of 2008 was 14.37C. The actual outturn was 14.3C. Alarmists!
In fact Over the nine years, 2000-2008, since the Met Office has issued forecasts of annual global temperature the mean value of the forecast error is just 0.06 °C.
Or, to put it another way … Bullseye!
and in Ireland:
“Mean air temperatures for the season were a little below normal for the 1961-90 period at most stations, but it
was slightly warmer than normal near Atlantic coasts; here, it was the coldest winter for eight years, while it
was the coldest for between 13 and 18 years elsewhere.”
I realize this is about the UK, but in the USA the “warmest year” title has been awarded to 1934, not 1998 – just to make the point that it is hard to get the big things correct when you can’t handle the little issues well.
Likewise, when you miss seasonal forecasts time after time there can be little confidence going forward 10, 20, or 100 years. A lot of good might come if the computers were shut down for a few days and folks went outside and sat on beaches, mountain sides, deserts, and so on and contemplated the dynamic Earth. Oh, sorry, it’s snowing again – maybe we can go out next month!
I guess the Met’s Xmas wish didn’t come true:
anhonestclimatedebate.wordpress.com/2008/12/24/uk-met-office-christmas-wishlist/
Hmmm.
Analogy to denial of weather facts in the UK about AWG. Pub scene in England: Folks tell you have a drinking problem and believe in global warming without any evidence.
…and you say “No sir, I am jussss fine”.
Then they catch you falling down on the street *drunk*…and they say “You have a drinking problem”…and you say no, “I am jussss reeeelleee purfecctleee fiiiine and I think Alll Gorey is correctly good and a loyaal Emerican”
…and they say, “are you sure you are thinking straight?”
So, the Met Office drunk says “evereee thin’ is jus totaleeee in lime with the “I pee cee cee” …belch ….that the global is warminggggg… uhhh…warmmmmeeing just like Hansooon sed it woooood.”
And so, the Met Office declares their foecast is correct…and some (AGWs) believe them.
And the snow falls.
Below link should work
http://anhonestclimatedebate.wordpress.com/2008/12/24/uk-met-office-christmas-wishlist/
They’ll just keep predicting ‘warm’, and then when it happens, they’ll claim reality matched their predictions! And in that case a ‘warm’ year won’t just be ‘weather’, it’ll be further proof.
Dear Met Office, mon 5th Jan 2009
Your website. I find your use of the term ‘fact’ slightly outrageous. Are you attempting to educate or dictate?
Take your passage: ‘Concentrations of CO2, created largely by the burning of fossil fuels, are now much higher, and increasing at a much faster rate, than at any time in the last 600,000 years. Because CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the increased concentrations have contributed to the recent warming and probably most of the warming over the last 50 years’.
Much higher? please quantify, otherwise it sounds like guesswork. Burning of fossil fuels is a tiny fraction of global CO2 levels, not ‘created largely by’. Faster rate? How fast? ‘Probably’??? I thought this was supposedly a FACT! Please take this word out (probably) and let’s see where you stand.
Perhaps you should focus on real science rather than reguirgitating fashionable scientific fads that make the weather seem more exciting. Lucky for you, you won’t be around in 100 years to find out how absurdly wrong you are. The reason? Human error in being unable to objectively consider something that affects self-status.
Please forecast the weather, not how we should live our lives.
–
Reply: 05 February 2009 13:12:49
Martin Kidds enquiries@metoffice.gov.uk (I noted no restriction to share info on this email)
Thank you for your e-mail of 5 January 2009 regarding the ‘climate change facts’ on the Met Office web site. I apologise for the delay in replying to you.
The issues you raise and many others have been comprehensively addressed in the scientific literature and so I do not propose to respond to all of them when the information is already available in the public domain. Instead , I would refer you to the web site of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) who have produced a detailed list of FAQs at http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html and the Met Office Hadley Centre publication “Climate Change and the greenhouse effect: a briefing from the Hadley Centre” which is available to download free of charge at http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/pubs/brochures/.
Thank you once again for your interest and for taking the time to contact the Met Office. http://www.metoffice.gov.uk
Seems all the cold has been kept north . We have had a mild winter in Athens Greece, with two bouts of cold (0 low 8C high) one in December and one in February. I watch out for the cold spells because I make a delicacy cold “pastourmas” that needs meat to be hanging out to dry, and one needs cold weather for this. Managed to make a lot in February, but it took all the month, because there were southern winds blowing which bring warmth ( 8 to 16C).
Presently spring entered on time on March 1st with lovely weather. Today it will be 8 to 20C. We usually get another bout of cold in March ( “March is a scraper and a furious log burner”, is a local ditty). I hope it comes, otherwise April will be cooler than usual, and usually I start swimming end of April ( 23C in daytime).
I would say this weather is normal for the region, a bit on the warm side.
Lucia has a very interesting post that shows the models are way off on actual temperatures, and report only anomolies and trends. The graph with absolute temperatures of models and Gistemp are here:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/temperatures_absolute.jpg
The post is here:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/fact-6a-model-simulations-dont-match-average-surface-temperature-of-the-earth/#comment-11051
But what everyone seems to be missing is that there’s something VERY wrong with the stations that record that very winter temperature. http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/graphs/stations2mean_2009.gif I have highlighted this with Anthony, Junkscience and the Met Office itself. I’m still waiting on the Met Office for a reply.
Agree about the Met Office. Mid (and probably long) term forecasts are worse than useless. There is, though, a slight cause for concern.
This ‘cold’ winter has resulted in a huge amount of comment, but the final UK winter average temp of 3.1 deg is within a whisker of the of 3.27 deg – which is the average winter temperature for the whole of the 1961-1990 period. .
The last 10 years CET average was 10.45 degrees C.
2008 was 9.96 degrees C
Hence 2008 cooler by 0.49 degrees C
2009…
January (last 10 years) 5.27 degrees C
January 2009 3.0 degrees C
January temp cooler by 2.27 degrees C
February (last 10 years) 5.15 degrees C
February 2009 4.1 degrees C
February temp cooler by 1.05 degrees C
March (last 10 years) 6.72 degrees C
March 2009 6.5 degrees C (current)
The above shows that the current temperatures are COOLER than the 10-year average. Even if a 20-year annual average is calculated it still comes out at 10.24 degrees C – so the 2008 figure is 0.28 degrees C lower than the 20-year average. The fact is that 2008 was a ‘normal’ year for temperature in England.
forget co2 as a cause of climate change
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=5441
Has anyone else noted that the BBC weather site has now removed all the global maps? This was a useful source of temperatures globally and helped arrest ridiculous fatuous propaganda, particularly concerning ice when temperature maps for Canada/Alaska repeatedly implied -30 or below?
There are two reasons for this: lack of money or political interference. The latter is more likely as BBC Worldwide has just been told to mind out for making too much profit!
So find a new source of global weather UK citizens!
Second: winters in the UK. They were very cold in the 1960s, very mild in the 1970s, cold in the 1980s and variable in the 1990s. The 2000s have been very mild until this year.
There is a cycle in there. But it’s not PC to talk about it.
Maybe this site should start doing so?
“The UK had its coldest winter for 13 years” yet more proof global warming is a hoax.
– the period 2001-2007, with an average of 14.44 °C, was 0.21 °C warmer than corresponding values for the period 1991-2000.” So the underlying rate according to the Met Office is only based on the last 18 years. Is that cherry-picking or not?
Not really – because 1991-2000 was warmer than 1981-1990 which in turn was warmer than 1971-1980
Here’s a tip, forecasters: If you say next year is going to be like this year you’ll be right more often than
you are nownot.