The Met Office brings doom to a place near you
On Thursday, the Met Office launched its new report on global warming, UK Climate Predictions 2009 otherwise known as UKCP09. This is based on the output of Hadley Centre climate models that predict temperature increases of up to 6°C with wetter winters, dryer summers, more heatwaves, rising sea levels, more floods and all the other catastrophes that one would expect from similar exercises in alarmism.
What makes this report different from any of its predecessors is the resolution of the predictions that the Met Office is making. They are not just presenting a general impression of what might happen globally during this century, or even how climate change could affect the UK as a whole. They are claiming that they can predict what will happen in individual regions of the country. Apparently there is even a page somewhere on their website where you can enter your postcode and find out how your street will be affected by global warming in 2040 or 2080, although I’ve failed to find it.
All this is rather unexpected. In May last year, I posted here and here about a world summit of climate modellers that took place at Reading University. On the agenda was one very important problem for them; even the most powerful super-computers that have been developed so far are not capable of running the kind of high resolution models that they claim would allow them to reduce the degree of uncertainty in their predictions and also make detailed regional predictions that policy makers would like to have so that they can build climate change into infrastructure planning.
Here are a couple of excerpts from the conference website:
The climate modelling community is therefore faced with a major new challenge: Is the current generation of climate models adequate to provide societies with accurate and reliable predictions of regional climate change, including the statistics of extreme events and high impact weather, which are required for global and local adaptation strategies? It is in this context that the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) and the World Weather Research Programme (WWRP) asked the WCRP Modelling Panel (WMP) and a small group of scientists to review the current state of modelling, and to suggest a strategy for seamless prediction of weather and climate from days to centuries for the benefit of and value to society.
A major conclusion of the group was that regional projections from the current generation of climate models were sufficiently uncertain to compromise this goal of providing society with reliable predictions of regional climate change.
My emphasis
http://wcrp.ipsl.jussieu.fr/Workshops/ModellingSummit/Background.html
Current generation climate models have serious limitations in simulating regional features, for example, rainfall, mid-latitude storms, organized tropical convection, ocean mixing, and ecosystem dynamics. What is the scientific strategy to improve the fidelity of climate models?
http://wcrp.ipsl.jussieu.fr/Workshops/ModellingSummit/Expectations.html
This was summed up by Julia Slingo (at that time Professor of Meteorology at Reading University, who also chaired part of the conference) in a report by Roger Harrabin on the BBC News website:
So far modellers have failed to narrow the total bands of uncertainties since the first report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1990.
And Julia Slingo from Reading University admitted it would not get much better until they had supercomputers 1,000 times more powerful than at present.
“We’ve reached the end of the road of being able to improve models significantly so we can provide the sort of information that policymakers and business require,” she told BBC News.
“In terms of computing power, it’s proving totally inadequate. With climate models we know how to make them much better to provide much more information at the local level… we know how to do that, but we don’t have the computing power to deliver it.”
Professor Slingo said several hundred million pounds of investment were needed.
“In terms of re-building something like the Thames Barrier, that would cost billions; it’s a small fraction of that.
“And it would allow us to tell the policymakers that they need to build the barrier in the next 30 years, or maybe that they don’t need to.”
If, since the conference, several hundred million pounds had been invested in producing a new generation of supercomputers, a thousand times more powerful than the present generation, and the Met Office had already developed and run the kind of high resolution models which were so far beyond the scientist’s grasp just a year ago, then I suspect that this might have seeped into the media and I would have head about it. So far as I am aware, the fastest supercomputers are still a thousand times slower than the modellers considers necessary for credible regional scale modelling of the climate.
So I wondered whether Professor Slingo had anything to say about the Met Office’s new report, and googled accordingly:
“Through UKCP09 [UK Climate Predictions 2009] the Met Office has provided the world’s most comprehensive regional climate projections with a unique assessment of the possible changes to our climate through the rest of this century.
“For the first time businesses and other organisations have the tools to help them make risk-based decisions to adapt to the challenges of our changing climate.”
In an article headlined, U.K. Says New Climate Forecast to Cut Long-Term Planning Risks on the Bloomberg website:
Until today, projections didn’t distinguish between the likely consequences of climate change in the southeast of the nation compared with the northwest, for instance. “We can attach levels of certainty,” Julia Slingo, ….. told reporters today in London.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=ae6gM9bGo2Jw
So what’s changed since last year? Well one thing is that Julia Slingo has a new job. She has been appointed as Chief Scientist at the Met Office. So far as I know, the limitations that lack of computing power place on the accuracy and resolution of models are just the same.
During a rather bad-tempered interview on Thursday evening’s Newsnight, Kirsty Wark asked Hilary Benn, the UK Environment Secretary, why local authorities were being told to use the Met Office predictions as a template for infrastructure planning when their report had not been peer reviewed and the authors had postponed publication of information about the methodology that they had used. She also told him that there was considerable concern among other climate scientists about the Met Office’s research.
Myles Allen made an appearance on the programme warning that local authorities should be very wary about planning infrastructure projects on the basis of climate models unless they were very sure that the science was robust.
Mr Benn parroted the usual mantras without addressing the questions, and looked as though he would have much preferred to be elsewhere.
She’s worked with Phil Jones and John Mitchell. Need one say more.
Great News! I have found the page on the met office website which tells me what the weather will be like in 2050 compared to 2009 in the South East of England!
Average rainfall up 1mm from 748mm to 749mm
Average Winter Rainfall up from 204mm to 237mm
Average annual temperature up from 10 degrees to 12 degrees C
Average warmest day up from 30 to 32degrees C
As we live in the driest part of the UK I think the extra millimetre will be most welcome if a little hard to notice, bet we still have hosepipe bans though!
Still perhaps the average temperature going up 2 degrees may stop so many people in the UK dying of the cold, which is a national disgrace.
In fact contrary to the the news as put over by the BBC and others it all seems rather positive. And there was me thinking the weather would be like the south of France or Spain.
Aron (11:49:18) :
Distributed computing , that’s how they came up with this
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/climateexperiment/whattheymean/theuk.shtml
skb:
Thanks! I’ll try to have a look at it, but the dropdown list labeled ‘sector’ on the registration page doesn’t include ‘blogger’, although it does include ‘Multi-sector’ and ‘Non-sector Specific’.
Let’s look on the bright side.
This is obviously Met Office/UK govt posturing pre Copenhagen. Are there any climate modellers who think their models can really even produce regional models, yet alone get down to 25km gridded squares?
The fact Myles Allen, currently of the ‘trillionth tonne’ fame. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7242/full/nature08019.html is sceptical says, well, tons!
I noticed Vicky Pope didn’t just say there was uncertainty in the models, but uncertainty in the science.
the escape hatch is being unbolted.
The Telegraph’s new environment guru got so far up my nose with his analysis piece on this that I threw caution to the winds and actually wrote them a letter.
No sign of it so far so I’ll post it here (if you think it’s appropriate; otherwise I’m sure you’ll use the scissors on it).
“”For Geoffrey Lean to cite the 2003 heatwave as conclusive proof of impending global catastrophe — which is what he appears to be implying — is disingenuous at best and downright dishonest at worst.
Climate is a non-linear chaotic system and any one weather event is indicative of nothing but itself. August 2003 was a freak as were similar events in 1990, 1932 and 1911. The figure of 35,000 deaths which he quotes as attributable to that event appear to come from a report in the New Scientist, based on data from the Earth Policy Institute which is an environmental pressure group and can hardly be said to be an objective source. Neither, it would seem, is the Met Office whose forecast for this summer looks like being wrong for the third year in a row but which claims it can accurately predict the weather 50 years into the future. Forgive me if I feel disinclined to believe such nonsense.
But if this single event is indeed the forerunner of more extreme heatwaves to come, can Mr Lean perhaps explain what we should make of last winter’s extreme events across the North American continent with record early snowfalls, record snow cover, record late frosts, record low temperatures (a situation which continued into the southern hemisphere at the start of their winter) none of which appeared to be of interest to the so-called climate scientists whose alarmist pronouncements (the result of further tweaking of their already dubiously constructed computer models) become more frenzied by the day?
Or have we reached the stage where any unusually warm event is to be trumpeted as evidence of runaway global warming while unusually cold events are to be ignored or dismissed in a whisper as “just weather”?””
O/T
tallbloke , did you ever own a “Wedge” ?
“from that representing all that we know about the uncertanty in the science of our model, we’ve then also combined that with information with information from 12 internationaly known models from around the world which have been used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We’ve taken all of that and produced probability information combining it with 11 regional models that we’ve run to provide detailed information for the UK, and to produce statistical informatiion about the risks of climat change in the future.”
Er, how? The different models tend to treat different variables differently (which is why they are, well, different.) And each of those models makes different starting assumptions. So how do you blend them? Do you average them? Or take median projections or pick the one whose predictions you like best and use it as a base line?
And, just for fun, how can you “take all that we know about the uncertainty of the science in our model” and do anything at all with it? You might usefully take what is actually certain (colder in winter than in summer, colder the further north you go – that sort of thing) and work with that; but uncertainty is about what you don’t know and about what, within the parameters of the model you are working with and the data you have, you cannot know.
Dr. Pope should know better than to spout this educated sounding nonsense.
I have referred to this subject in earlier postings but the UK MET OFFICE is into the AGW/Climate Change Doctrine over their ears.
They not only provide data in support with IPCC directives but they also train politicians, managers and staff of NGO’s and civil servants in all facets of the scheme including how to handle skeptics and deniers.
The biggest problem we have is the fact that the entire process of presentations and meetings are performed in a closed circuits, only attended by proponants in support of the hoax. No skeptics or deniers are admitted.
You only have to visit the MET OFFICE website to find out about the training programs they offer.
So if you are wondering why it is the world is running haywire on the non existing probleme involving our climate, here you have the answer.
The UN created world wide network involving all the National Weather Services to sing the same tune.
They have the support of thousands of consulting organizations, NGO’s, foundations and communities promoting the same kind of shit.
We have the Hanson’s, the Mann’s, the Gore’s, the Clinton’s, Kerry, Biden and Obama. A bunch of Biljardairs and TV Tycoons that believe the world is going to hell if our populations grows too much.
Really sick idea’s from really sick, but powerfull people.
The irony of it all is that what the Iranians currently are fighting for in the streets of Tehran, is we are bound to lose soon if we don’t stop this charade.
I’m trying to make hay at the moment in the UK, and the Met office weather forecasts aren’t making it any easier! They aren’t able to predict with any degree of accuracy more than a day or so ahead (I need 5-7 dry sunny days to make good hay). So how they can predict 70 years ahead with such confidence beats me.
Jim H (17:29:39) :
I’m trying to make hay at the moment in the UK, and the Met office weather forecasts aren’t making it any easier! They aren’t able to predict with any degree of accuracy more than a day or so ahead (I need 5-7 dry sunny days to make good hay). So how they can predict 70 years ahead with such confidence beats me.
Jim H,
Right, you can not trust their weather forecasts and you can’t believe their long term climate predictions.
I think they suffer from a serious image problem.
Would it not be best to understand the science of the climate first and then to program the computer? If your science is correct then even a not-so-super computer could work on the data sets for a month or two and give useful results for 20 years out. It wouldn’t make much difference if I got these useful results in September or November of this year for the year 2030. But because the science is not understood: a bigger, faster, super-duper computer is going to help – how?
It’s bl..y fathersday here in Cambridge and I was promised a “barbecue summer” this year. It’s 17 C outside and overcast. Some barbecue in our woollies!
The minister for Something and Climate Change, Mr H Benn, bleated yesterday that it should now be cristal clear to the deniers that the Earth was doomed, if we did not mend our ways. Ye sinners, repent!
This stuff is a good illustration that bad science can make otherwise reasonably intelligent people say totally idiotic things.
You have to understand what is happening, politically, in the UK. The government has placed its levers of power in all the governmental and civil service institutions, and has used that influence to bludgeon people into following the government line. Nowadays, it only takes one slip of the tongue, one casual remark, and you are hounded out of your job.
From the police, to the health service, armed forces, education, local government, government scientists**, the BBC (especially the BBC), and even the met office – if you don’t tow the government line you may as well find a new career.
Thus the Met Office is just doing what it has been ordered to do – promote the Global Warming agenda or loose all that lovely funding that has just bought that new super-computer.
http://www.thisisexeter.co.uk/news/Met-Office-s-new-30m-supercomputer-help-save-lives-worldwide/article-1015148-detail/article.html
Ralph
** Here is the fate of a high-profile scientist who stood up to the government (he was about to stop the recent Iraq war).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6390981.stm
In Westminster Parliament-speak, “his life was deliberately taken by others” means, in more common parlance, “murdered” ….
>>>If several hundred million pounds had been invested in
>>>producing a new generation of supercomputers, a thousand
>>>times more powerful than the present generation
…. then you will simply get the wrong answer 1000 time quicker! Processing power has no effect on GIGO.
BTW, you will note (from my post above) that the announcement of the new Met Office computer (funded by the government) is roughly coincident with the announcement of the new Met Office Global Warming report that says we are all going to fry (a speculation in line with current government propaganda).
Point proven??
Ralph
” At the beginning of the week the Met Office were telling us that it was going to be hot and dry by Thursday, then by the middle of the week they said actually it’s now going to be the weekend, then on Friday evening they were apologising and saying it will be the middle of next week before this hot weather arrives, so quite honestly who in their right minds would believe climate predictions made by this bunch of jokers!”
” He thought he saw a Rattlesnake
That questioned him in Greek:
He looked again, and found it was
The Middle of Next Week.
‘The one thing I regret,’ he said,
‘Is that it cannot speak!’ ”
–Lewis Carroll
Curioser and curioser!
‘Dr Vicky Pope – “We’ve taken the Metoffice Hadley centre as the basis for our projections and we’ve created 400 different models from that representing all that we know about the uncertanty in the science of our model, we’ve then also combined that with information with information from 12 internationaly known models from around the world which have been used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We’ve taken all of that and produced probability information combining it with 11 regional models that we’ve run to provide detailed information for the UK, and to produce statistical informatiion about the risks of climate change in the future.”
” He thought he saw a Garden-Door
That opened with a key:
He looked again, and found it was
A Double Rule of Three:
‘And all its mystery,’ he said,
‘Is clear as day to me!’ “
Ed Zuiderwijk (02:55:29)
When you say Cambridge are you refering to the UK variety?
The average for June is 19.4C for Oxford
The last 4 weeks have seen temperatures well in excess of this.
in fact the 1st 5 moths of the year compared against 1961 to 1990 average are:
j -0.55
f 1.75
m 2.25
a 2.67
m 1.88
Cambridge must be a cold miserable place in your mind’s eye!
Moths = months!
ralph ellis (03:40:15) :
What paranoid Britain do you live in!?
There was plenty of MSM documentaries questioning the death of the scientist. He would not have been able to stop Iraq, (Blair was under control of Bush).
Are you suggesting that there is not one of the 10s of thousand civil servants not willng to blow the gaff on false evidence, lies, funding irregularities of the met office and all the others.
Piffle! If someone is willing to sell the papers the story about a few million GBP in false expenses (clearing moats, clearing creepers, and £0.01 phone calls) then I am absolutely certain that there is a queue waiting in thre wings to sell their “met office are liars and criminals” stories that you suggest are true.
Some Met Office Publications of Interest:
How British measurements should be made:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/library/factsheets/factsheet17.pdf
Analysis of central England Temperature record
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/publications/HCTN/HCTN_46.pdf
Uncertainties in the Central England Temperature series 1878-2003 and some changes to the maximum and minimum series Hadley
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/publications/HCTN/HCTN_50.pdf
For readers of this blog unfamiliar with the utterances of theUK government and its sponsored organs, please note that they have become, with rare exception, little more than unprincipled charlatans. The Met Office fit neatly into this category because their primary interest is not aimed at trying to explore the underlying science so that it can actually improve our understanding of climate. Instead it routinely cherry picks its way through the data to create scary scenarios that suit its headline grabbing agenda.
Like parliament, the Met Office has brought itself into disrepute, which is profoundly sad as they have some first class talent. Capable people poorly led as is the norm for modern Britain.
It just occurred to me that Bill and Aminadjab have a lot in common.
Different systems, same maniacal worship of authority as represented by the status quo. Same claims that official acceptance of the status quo is “proof” that anyone in opposition must be insane or criminal.
Hey bill, notice how that’s working out for Aminadjab these days?
When the government tells you there’s nothing to worry about, that’s when you should start worrying!
>>>Are you suggesting that there is not one of the tens
>>>of thousand civil servants not willng to blow the gaff on
>>>false evidence, lies, funding irregularities of the met office
>>>and all the others?
I am. Most people, including many of those who are robotically mouthing the Global Warming mantra, are merely keeping their heads down in order the keep their jobs.
http://news.scotsman.com/immigrationandrefugees/Home-Office-whistleblower–sacked.5205333.jp
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3609386/Its-all-over-when-the-whistle-blows.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1173208/Home-Office-whistleblower-sacked-leaks-Tory-MP.html
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Politics/Damian-Green-Leak-Christopher-Galley-Civil-Servant-Sacked-For-Handing-Documents-Over-To-MP/Article/200904415268721
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article410114.ece
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article444819.ece
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4161/is_20070121/ai_n17146081/
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article2804407.ece
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1141979/JAMES-SLACK-Who-restore-sanity-madhouse-21st-Century-policing.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2004/jan/09/pressandpublishing.broadcasting
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-452477/Police-order-shopkeeper-remove-golliwogs-window.html
http://www.christianvoice.org.uk/Press/press019.html
.
I could go on and on with quotes, but you get the idea; freedom of thought and speech are being systematically terminated. It is easy to intimidate the civil service, the police and the masses, if you can use the power of the state to arrest and sack people.
P.S. I am not a Christian, nor am I anti-gay, but I include the last item to demonstrate how petty the arrests and intimidation have become. A previous generation would have laughed and ridiculed a deranged (from my point of view) preacher, but now they are arrested and prosecuted. Moral – keep your mouth shut and head down, because you are next.