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.
More to John Philip’s claim of Met Office’s accuracy. If Met Office had since the year 2000 predicted for the next year the same temperature as the previous year, it would have performed remarkably better than the average mistake of 0.6C. In fact, only two of the 9 years would have been worse off – 2001 and 2008. 2002 and 2006 would have been 0.6C, the rest (5 out of 9) would have been significantly better!
HA
I get via the BBC constant weather updates and forecast from the local Met Office major manned station two miles away.
Last night the updated forecast timed at at 19:30 GMT was for clear skies and heavy rain later, by 21:00. A few minutes after receiving this update, say 19:40, I went to go out and found it was snowing and clearly had been for an hour at least.
Don’t these boys look out of the window?
Oh and the forecast for today has changed completely, not unusual.
Kindest Regards
John Philip,
What I am saying is that if you forecast the 2000-2008 yearly mean every year, you would do nearly as well as the Met Office annual forecasts. The point being that the temperature is fairly constant.
John Philip (09:54:48) :
1) “Steve – I guess we’ll just have to differ about the usefulness of comparing the mean forecast error to the standard deviation”
…
2) “I have more sympathy with tty’s point about the ‘persistence forecast’ however it seems to me that examining just 9 data points is not conclusive: the period in question is one of historically unusual stability (The Std Dev of this period is less than 25% that of the whole dataset) so a naive persistence forecast would perform well anyway. It would be more useful to see how well the forecast performs during an ENSO event.”
1) It was you who brought in standard deviation?!
2) So, a moment ago it was “bullseye” and now there’s a load of events that have prevented the bullseye?!
Here in the States we are in the throes of the coldest winter in decades! Snow in Alabama, Georgia , North and South Carolina! Temps over the last three months have averaged seven degrees f colder than normal! Last two nights the low was around 14 f, with a five inch snowpack. In March, in North Carolina! Florida has had freezing temps several times this winter. Now what again is this global warming thing, I wish it would hurry before we all freeze to death.
Jerry (Conservative in exile)
We are not being compared with scientifically illiterate creationists
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/mar/04/climate-change-creationist-denier-sceptic
“Gaia” will take care of THEM: She will freeze them to death…unless they burn some sinful and filthy (gore?) fuels.
Winter Temps Central England 1900-2009.
http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt74/MartinGAtkins/EnglandWinter.jpg
Winter Temps Central England 1978-2009.
http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt74/MartinGAtkins/EnglandWinter1979.jpg
Aron,
Why is it that the scientifically literate alarmists are normally unwilling to debate with us intellectual inferiors? You would think that they would win easily, since they are so darn smart and well informed?
Too bad we didn’t let those same geniuses spread soot on the Arctic ice cap in the 1970s, to stop the ice age which was going to kill us all.
http://www.denisdutton.com/cooling_world.htm
Chuck L. No-one seems to have responded. Let me have a try, but I am afraid you are out of luck. The temperature data is very noisy, and it is easy to find a statistical analysis technique to show that temperatures are still rising. The warmaholics can never agree that temperature are falling; it’s against their religious beliefs. I am convinced that the right stastistical techniques show that world temperatures went through a shallow maximum within the last 5 years, and are now declining. However, if you are not a really competent statistician, I suggest you stay out of the argument. You are almost certainly going to lose, until we have a lot more years of data.
“”” Chuck L (09:28:24) :
OT but i need some help. Our local newspaper ran a column by an environmentalist and they wrote
“Once again, average global temperatures are rising, with 2008 temperatures placing it as one of the 10 warmest years on record. All of the record-setting years for global temperature have occurred since 1997.”
Can one of you provide a link to the data that most effectively refutes the above? I will be writing a letter to the editor and want to have the facts I need.
Thanks “””
Well I wouldn’t sweat it; tell them that the last decade has been the warmest temperatures, but it is now cooling down; and the laws of mathematics require the highest values to occur around the maximum. For the same reason, some of the highest altitudes on earth can be found up in the mountains.
But bottom line; what has maybe peaked in the last decade is things like GISStemp anomalies, and HadCRUTanomalies.
Noway in hell are either of those things representative of the average global temperature; which we currently have no reliable method of measuring; and if we could it has no relevence to the climate question; is the earth gaining or losing total energy. Thermal fluxes have no simple relation to either local or average temperatures.
George
This is an analysis of the changes in the nature of each month for CET since 1660. For the overall tiny impact that has had on CET temperatures since 1660 please refer to my post 6-38-05
My comments refer right back to the start of the graph in the 1660s linked here
http://cadenzapress.co.uk/download/menken_hobgoblin.jpg
January
Generally past years are cooler than the 1990’s which was just 0.10C warmer than 1730’s and 1920’s
Overall the monthly figures are dragged right down by the very cold little ice age which covers most of the period from the 1660’s to around 1880
February
As above with 1730 cooler by .10 1860 by .2 1870 by .3 and 1920 by .2
March
As above but 1730 cooler by .6 1920 by .8 and 1930 by .9 i.e. one of the greatest changes in any month (other than winter Dec-February inc)
April
1990s cooler than 1940 by 0.7 1860 by .3 and 1730 by .2 otherwise broadly similar
May. 1990s cooler than 1660 by 0.3 same as 1720 and 1730 cooler than 1800 by 0.3 same as 1820 and 1830 cooler than 1830 by .10 and 1910 by .3 otherwise broadly the same
June
1990 same as 1980 1970 and 1960
Cooler than 1960 by .4 1950 by .2 1940 by .3 1930 by .4 1890 by .4 1870 by .1 1860 by .1 1850 by .3 1840 by .3 1830 by .6 1820 by.4 1800 by .2 1790 by .2 1780 by .8 1770 by .7 1760 by .1 1750 by .4 same as 1740 cooler than 1730 by .7 1720 by .9 1710 by .3 same as 1700 and 1680 cooler than 1670 by .3 and 1660 by .3
Overall June has become a much cooler month
July 1990 cooler than 1730 by .4 1750 by .5 1760 by .4 1770 by .4 1780 by .4 1790 by .4 1800 by .4 1870 by .5 1930 by .4
Overall July has become a rather cooler month
August
1990 was cooler than 1930 by .3 1770 by .5 and 1700 by .3
Overall August has become a little warmer.
September
1990s cooler than 1720 and 1730 by .2 and 1740 by .1 It was the same as 1930 and cooler than 1940 by .2
Overall there was little difference
October
1990 cooler than 1960 by .4 and .4 warmer than 1900 1850 1830 1820 1730 1660
Overall October has become a little warmer
November
1990s cooler than 1970 by .2
Overall this month has become distinctly milder
December
1990 cooler than 1980 by .5 1970 by .6 1950 by .2 1940 by .1 1860 by .1 1820 by .3 1730 by .3
The month has become a little milder
Temperatures have fluctuated considerably throughout the period with months often changing their ‘traditional’ characteristics.
Generally winter months have become milder than the winters of the little ice age period (not surprising!) this brought the overall averages for the year sharply down. November has also become distinctly milder and March much milder. July has become rather cooler whilst June is distinctly cooler, other months show limited difference.
The early 1700’s were remarkably similar to the current period but the warmth was over a more extended period and came from a lower base. In this respect average temperatures have barely changed in in nearly 300 years from pre industrial times. Many other periods have been fairly close in warmth to the modern era but again the little ice age winters knocked the annual averages down somewhat. The 1820’s .1900’s 1920’s and 1930’s were also notably warm.
It is difficult to come to any other conclusion than that the changes in 350 years have been very small-fractions of a degree.
Tonyb
Chuck L. That’s odd, I just had to do the same for my local paper. An environmentalist wrote an article there too – and I corrected him. Simply ask him when the last peak in global temperature was. Was it:
a) Last year
b) The year before
c) Eleven years ago
Then tell him to send his answer to the 1998 competition. It gets the point home, believe me. It is true that warmest years are clustered since then http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/nhshgl.gif – but that’s not the whole story. Obviously with 1998 being a peak, subsequent years WOULD be still high (temps wouldn’t plummet). But what will really hurt him is that temps didn’t continue to rise – as expected. In fact, they’ve fallen since that peak. So it’s a completely spurious argument to say that “ten warmest years”. The question is, have temps continued to rise? No, they have not.
Aron remarked that much GW hysteria in the UK emanates from the Guardian.
The Guardian’s circulation is laughable, it makes a loss every time it’s printed. The only reason it’s still being printed is its owners also own a profitable weekly.
AutoTrader.
Er….
The Met office is very suggestible. 3 or 4 days after the torrential rain in the summer of 2007, another front was heading in. The Met said, over an inch, maybe two would fall. In the event, very little rain occurred.
They said what they said, I think, because they were all excited about large amounts of rain. It’s quite childlike really. They get carried away.
The main source of excitement is Global Warming, so they constantly predict it.
The Met Office added that global warming had prevented this winter from being even colder.
Ahhh… the benefits of man made emissions of CO2 warming up the UK….
Lets just get a few things clear.
1) Seasonal forecasting is an initial value problem. It is not the same as climate change which is a boundary value problem.
2) After all the hyperbole about cold it turns out that the winter was not even 1C below the 1961-1990 average, and was right on the century average. If this is as cold as it gets we are in trouble… and the northern hemisphere had a really warm winter.
3) Media grabs are not verbatim copies of what comes out of the mouth of scientists. My experience is that the media simplify almost all interviews meaning that probabilistic information is truncated. It is untrue to say that the UK forecasted 2007 to be the hottest year on record. The forecast was probabilistic.
I wonder what you wish to achieve by making points and inferences which have such logical errors.
Ray (09:52:22) :
I can understand your impatience but it takes time for data to be collected and correlated. This is more so when station data is used. RSS MSU and UAH MSU are usually first as they only use satellite data.
Whilst we are on things British, this makes good reading:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/04/emissions-trading-carbon-price
The carbon credit trading scheme appears to have fallen victim to market forces; i.e. no one wants to buy ‘carbon credits’ nor even ‘trade’ in them. That which pretends to be our Government now wants to enforce a much higher minimum price for a ton of CO2 exhaust than the market is willing to pay.
I wonder why?
Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation dipped just into negative territory, -.007, in January…
Feb number hasn’t been posted but it should be cooler than January!
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/data/correlation/amon.us.long.data
Steve Fox. My wife and I have noticed this time and time again. It doesn’t matter what weather event hits – the Met Office says it will be the same again! Even after the recent snow, they said we had more coming in the next day. We didn’t! It’s weird to listen to. It’s as though they didn’t appreciate the volume of sun/rain/snow/wind enough, so any similar imminent weather is “going to be just as severe”. Every time! It makes us laugh.
MET Office: “The Met Office added that global warming had prevented this winter from being even colder.”
ME: “Rick W added that the global cooling trend had prevented this winter from being even warmer.”
We’re both wrong!!
Can I ask a question? OK so I will anyway..
We all agree the levels of atmospheric CO2 has increased by 20% +/- over the last 50 years. (65ppm +/-) The whole argument is over 2 questions . 1) Is Man the reason for the rise, and 2) is the rise in CO2 causing the warming trend noticed from 1970 to 2000? (about 0.3 to 0.4C)
In the last 100 years North America and central Asia have seen a marked increase in forested areas. Despite catastrophic predictions about deforestation, North America and Asia have seen dramatic shifts in forest size and density. This has caused the normal seasonal swing in CO2 to become more dramatic. Today there is twice as much flora decomposition happening from forests, and an indeterminate increase due to irrigation of farmland. Cattle are now living in parts of the country that were considered uninhabitable a century ago. Would this cause a rise in CO2 even without Man’s fossil fuel influence?
Despite a steady rise in CO2 global temperature has done anything but be consistent, with a rise for 30 years, a hiatus for 30 more, and then a rise for an additional 30, before now subsiding again. Historically CO2 has followed temperature and not lead it. Why would any observer deduce CO2 is driving the warming of the planet?
… and with regard to The Grauniad and its ‘journalists, read this column and the responses. Anthony, you come in for a couple of personal attacks!
To paraphrase; “Will no-one rid us of this turbulent scribe?”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/mar/03/climate-change-poles
The response from the Met Office Press Officer was to quote the IPCC et al.
In other words he did not have an answer.
We have been cooling for a while but they wont admit it.
Pathetic.