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.
Have been out on a leafleting exercise today in East Devon, UK, about 5 miles from the coast of the English Channel. We were trudging through some 3 inches of uncleared snow in some parts, the snow fell two nights ago and there is a very slow melt. The Met Office has forecast rain next week so expect more snow!
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.
Article at the London telegraph states that the UK has 4 days of gas in storage. So much for their long term planning advice. 🙂
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/gas/4944782/Britain-has-only-four-days-of-gas-left-in-reserves.html
Also in the same edition there are complaints that the Met office reports are dissuading people from holidaying in the southern counties of the UK. Attention is drawn to how the Met office pitches its reports:
Three years ago the Met Office issued new guidelines in attempt to make forecasts more relevant and uplifting for the thousands of people who watch them.
Forecasters were told to use “generally clear outlook” instead of “occasional showers” and “isolated storms”.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2481464/Devon-tourist-chiefs-say-gloomy-weather-forecasts-keep-away-visitors.html
Myself, of late I find that if I subtract 2 deg. from the latter days of their five day forecasts it makes for a better fit come the day.
Also noting of late that the BBC reports have taken to using a slide showing the measured and average when the temperature is above the average but don’t recall this particular presentation when the temperatures were consistently below average over the recent previous weeks where such references were very restrained IMO.