For the third straight summer, the UK Met Office has forecast hot weather using their state of the art computer models. Summer 2007 and 2008 were complete washouts, ranking as two of the most miserable, rainy summers on record.
Summer 2007 – a wet season
Wet summer could end with a bang
29 August 2008
Forecasters at the Met Office are predicting that that final day of the summer could end with heavy rain and thunderstorms affecting some parts of the country this weekend … … Within the UK some local rainfall records have been broken, especially across parts of Northern Ireland and Scotland where flooding severely affected road and rail transport. Provisional rainfall figures show that Northern Ireland had its wettest August since 1914 .
The current summer isn’t looking much better. Here is the forecast from UK Weather Online.
Do you want summer?
Issued: 0900hrs Friday 5th June 2009
Duty forecaster: Simon Keeling & Captain Bob
If you’re requiring rain you’ll be in luck, if you’re wishing for summer, then perhaps don’t hold your breath!
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Ah, can’t resist….
Mae (02:32:49), you might try either Halifax Seeds or Vessey, both in Canada and stock some seeds for shorter growing seasons.
King of Cool
“Watched the FA Cup Final 30 May 2009 played in over 40 deg C:
http://blogs.mirror.co.uk/fitness-lifestyle-guru/2009/06/were-chelsea-more-hydrated-tha.html
Have I got something wrong here or is the new Wembley Stadium a greenhouse?”
That was the pitchside temperature – measured directly in the sun with a thermometer placed directly on top of a piece of dark red ashphalt or rubberised material (not even on grass). It’s a bit like the way they measure temp in F1 – where they refer to track temperature as being 45C when the air temperature is 28C. Important if you are trying to get your tyres to stick to the road – irrelevant for weather or climate.
The Met Office can’t even get short term forecasts right, never mind those in the long term. For instance, on Saturday evening they predicted my area was going to get persistent heavy rain all day on Sunday. As it turned out, there wasn’t a single drop of the wet stuff (it was actually quite sunny all day) and it hasn’t rained here at all for about a week. If they can’t even get basics like the simple northerly movement of a 300-mile wide cloud band right a mere 12 hours before the event, then there’s absolutely no hope for them.
I’d love to see how they come up with their weather predictions given their legendary inaccuracy. It’s probably a lot like how the US Treasury decide their next fiscal move with a headless chicken as depicted in the recent South Park episode, ‘Margaritaville’.
Aron – They used to do something very similar to that in Albert Dock, Liverpool every day on the ITV programme ‘This Morning’. Until 1996, meteorologist Fred Talbot would run around a floating map of the UK whilst crowds gathered to see if he’d fall in the water when he leapt over to Ireland. On one occasion, a streaker swam up to and climbed onto the map during his live forecast.
The Met Office should get one of these:
http://bsornot.whipnet.net/images/redneck/redneck.weather.station.jpg
Michael Fish needs to pay particular attention to the last one…
Mitchel44 (05:55:22)
thanks, will definitely check those out.
Btw our growing season can be quite long, oftentimes plants survive in the winter that would die off on the continent due to the mild winters (of the recent past?) but we just don’t get enough sun hours. Some plants, though outperform even the highest expectations – in my old garden I had an “Iceberg” rose which flowered non-stop from May 2001 until January 2002 but the number of blooms/fruit is usually smaller for me than for my father’s garden in mainland Europe.
I wonder how Met O compares to Piers Corbyn…….
anecdotal, but from my personal observations::
1. In the southern fruit belt of British Columbia, golf courses opened a full month, or more, later than usual. The cherry trees were a month behind in flowering. Most fruit trees and vines had not developed any leaves, by the end of April.
2. Cherry trees in Bosnia, in the upper levels, were a month behind in blooming, according to locals.
3. It snowed in western Canada two weeks ago.
4. We have had FROST for the last several nights, and some species of trees on the golf course, are just STARTING to grow leaves.
Perhaps its just me, and like Joe Joe Btfsplk, I am forever trapped under a snow storm.
5. It snowed on me, in middle March…in Oklahoma.
I don’t understand why there is a drip drip of posts like this on WUWT that firstly tried to rubbish a forecast for the summer before it had even begun and now, even thought we’re not even part way into summer. One thing for sure, it’s not propaganda….
I’ll judge the Met Office summers forecast at (wait for it….) the end of the summer when the figures are all in. Why can’t we all do that?
Fair point Peter, but perhaps you are forgeting two things:
1. talking about the weather is an integral part of the British psyche, and the Met Office’s forecasts are fair game for that reason alone.
2. the alarmist’s computer models (and the Met Office’s) have been consistently predicting warmer winters and summers for a number of years, and observations clearly show the converse. Meanwhile we are all expected to cough up significant carbon taxes, on the completely unproven hypothesis that if we don’t, the planet will experience run-away global warming and sea level rises.
From the news archive 30 December 2008
“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.”
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2008/pr20081230.html
“Further warming to record levels is likely once a moderate El Niño develops.”
Peter,
Predicting the future is called “forecasting.” The Met Office is one of the few organisations which actually makes verifiable climate forecasts during our lifetimes. For that they are to be commended.
“Cherry trees in Bosnia, in the upper levels, were a month behind in blooming, according to locals.”
Big deal. The cherry isn’t even native to Bosnia. It was brought to Europe from Asia Minor.
Remember folks, it always rains during Wimbledon. That is the measure for everything climate change. According to the Met Office the ball boys recieved more rain on their heads last year than at any point in the “historical record”.
Aron: your
Big deal. The cherry isn’t even native to Bosnia.
No, but the locals I spoke to, ARE native to Bosnia. And they said the cherry trees, immigrants or not, were a month behind.
DR (09:01:35) :
I wonder how Met O compares to Piers Corbyn…
Well, if PC is to be believed, William Hill (the bookmaker) no longer allows him to place bets against the Met Office. Still, I expect that will all change when their new computer is up and running.. 🙂
Aron,
I was at the Wimbledon finals in 1970, for the classic five set Rosewall/Newcombe match. The weather was very sunny and hot that day.
That was also the year which England did not win the World Cup in Mexico City in 100 degree plus weather. We were in the midst of an ice age scare at that time.
Anyone else remember Gordon Banks’ save on the Pele header in the 1970 World Cup? The Beeb must have replayed it 200 times that week.
Steve Goddard (15:17:01) :
Anyone else remember Gordon Banks’ save on the Pele header in the 1970 World Cup? The Beeb must have replayed it 200 times
Yep. Jeff Astle missed a sitter in the game. It was also the year England got knocked out by West Germany after being 2-0 up with 20 minutes to go. Regarding the Banks save: There was a story doing the rounds that immediately after the save, Bobby Moore approached Banks and said ” try and hang on to it next time, Banksy”. Probably not true but Moore did have a sense of humour.
I’ve just realised that this is probably lost on 3/4 of the readers of this blog.
John,
“What a save!”
I also remember from Wimbledon, 1970 that the lawn was completely brown from the heat and drought. Too bad The (Manchester) Guardian hadn’t heard about global warming yet. They could have gotten hysterical.
My sister tells me that in Merstham, Surrey, England, it was 17c yesterday. That’s pretty cool for June.
South-Eastern Australia has not been experiencing the below average termperature that we have been seeing in the northern latitudes over the last 2 years. In fact it has been hot and dry for 15 years with recent terrible bushfires. However this might be changing now. The state of Victoria is diving into its 2nd pre-winter cold snap with still 10 days to the solstice. Last night storms blasting up from the Southwest brought precipitation at temperatures close to freezing in Melbourne suburbs. I call what I saw sleet and snow but the ABM are calling it “hail.” Melbourne would often gets a few nights per winter close to freezing, but usually under clear skies. Snow on the ground is very rare.
Some pic of the hail in the local paper: http://www.theage.com.au/national/hail-hits-melbourne-with-viciously-cold-night-on-way-20090610-c2jk.html
Temperatures 5c below average in Sydney today, and snows falling in the alpine regions, usually these temps and falls happen in July. Strewth!! I knew it felt cold today.
Bernie
Speaking with CSIRO and UNSW a couple of weeks ago (Iam an earth and environmental scientist, with some informal training in climatology, although no Im not a climatologist), the latest research (away from all this CO2 hysteria) is that the Indian Ocean Dipole is neutral and just about to swing to the negative phase which is good news for SE Aust re. rainfall. The Southern Annular Mode (SAM) also appears to migrating northwards (after a decade or so further south), resulting in stronger fronts hitting SE Aust, instead of weak ‘hits’. You get stronger fronts mixing with more moisture from warmer Indian Ocean waters, and you get more rainfall. El Nino and La Nina have minimal effect in SE Australia (ie. SA, Vic, Tas) Only NSW and Qld are majorly impacted by what goes on in the Pacific – and boy have they copped the rain this year!!
A negative IOD will bring more moisture to SE Australia and a higher SAM. The reason for the prolonged drought in this region is primarily due to back-to-to-back-to-back positive IOD events, and a northwards migration of SAM should give us stronger fronts. This week is the perfect example of when the two mix.
Early days yet I know, but all the indicators look promising for a relatively back to normal winter, and a wetter than average spring. It infuriates me when we have dimwit politicians like Wong, Garrettand Brown who know nothing about science, let alone climate science, blaming Black Saturday solely on this AGW theory for their own political gain, when natural cycles are at work. No talk of 1851 when we had a quarter of Victoria on fire after exactly the same temperature lead-up.