While England basks in a winter wonderland, with more on the way, and bookmakers are now slashing odds on a white Christmas (The Times reports “The odds on a White Christmas fell to match the lowest price ever offered at 6/4 today”.), it seems like a good time to review the Met Office forecast for the coming year.
The Met Office is forecasting 2010 to be the warmest year ever, due to El Nino. The moderate El Nino we have now appears to be weakening, with additional weakening in the next few months.
The Met Office did the same kind of forecast in 2007, right before the temperature dropped more than 1C. The UAH (Channel5 LT) temperature has dropped this past week and is the closest to the 20 year average it has been in six months. With these factors in play, has the Met Office has made a serious blunder with their current high visibility forecast? Is it a repeat of the now famously wrong Met Office BBQ summer forecast?
See the 2007 Met Office forecast here:
4 January 2007
2007 – forecast to be the warmest year yet
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.
Each January the Met Office, in conjunction with the University of East Anglia, issues a forecast of the global surface temperature for the coming year. The forecast takes into account known contributing factors, such as solar effects, El Niño, greenhouse gases concentrations and other multi-decadal influences. Over the previous seven years, the Met Office forecast of annual global temperature has proved remarkably accurate, with a mean forecast error size of just 0.06 °C.
See the 2009 (for 2010) forecast here:
Climate could warm to record levels in 2010
10 December 2009
A combination of man-made global warming and a moderate warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean, a phenomenon known as El Niño, means it is very likely that 2010 will be a warmer year globally than 2009.
Recently released figures confirm that 2009 is expected to be the fifth-warmest year in the instrumental record that dates back to 1850.
The latest forecast from our climate scientists, shows the global temperature is forecast to be almost 0.6 °C above the 1961–90 long-term average. This means that it is more likely than not that 2010 will be the warmest year in the instrumental record, beating the previous record year which was 1998.
Here are some video’s from England that give some idea of the snowstorm:
How about we have a bet on the arctic sea ice level for Jan 1st 2010?
I bet 13.1 million sq KM.
They (Met Office) forecast Bar-B-Q summers for the last three years, not just 2007, but 08 and 09 as well. None materialised. With the CRU-gate revelations the Met- Office figures are in tatters.
Meanwhile, the weather seems to be returning to how it was in my childhood in the UK, i.e. nice but not spectacular summers (except 1976) and fun snowy winters. Climate change?? Global warming??? No, just part of a repeating natural cycle.
Oh, and another thing, Piers Corbyn IS doing a lot better than the Met office these days!!!
I love it how they use the term “very likely”.
“it is very likely that 2010 will be a warmer year globally than 2009.”
Very likely appears to be their favourite new measure of (un-)certainty. It is a travesty they don’t know what is going on, but “very likely” is just fine.
So, if 2010 is not warmer than 2009, then “very likely” wasn’t really very likely.
And the same is then true for global warming “very likely” caused by greenhouse gas emissions.
Super computers for forecasts = “bad forecasts faster”
I make an annual habit of looking at their forecast. They invariably predict one of the warmest years on record. If an ice age is in progress, and London is buried in ice, that’s what they will forecast. Sooner or later, they will be on the money.
Jean Parisot (10:12:19) :
“(E)ventually inducing hysteria without results is going to create some significant negative public feedback.”
And what would that look like? A loss in “belief” in AGW perhaps?
Could be its already happening.
UK Met is the blackjack player that just keeps doubling his bet after every loss.
This may put a damper on the Met office’s prediction for 2010.
Of course this is not needed for them to be wrong again, since these guys really don’t have a clue what the weather will be for more than a few days into the future, much less the climate. The “Big Lie’ needs to be repeated often and with many flavors to keep it propped up.
Sorry, I don’t know how to embed videos.
The Twelve Days Of Global Warming. M4GW
To be fair, November and early December were very mild and very wet in the UK. Sure, this cold snap of a week will adjust the December figure toward the annual mean, but the start of winter was anything but cold.
Of course, one of the hardest winters of the 20th century, 1947, was snowless up to New Year.
We await with interest what gives, but the Siberian cold air has certainly spread across Western Europe currently.
Snow before Christmas has occurred 5 times in the SE of the UK in my life that I can remember – 1970, 1979, 1981, 1984 and 2009. Anyone in the UK with a better memory than mine, please add any other years you can remember!
Even a blind squirrel finds a nut occasionally
I wish the buggers would forecast a COLD year!
If they did, I’d actually go out & buy Summer clothes in the sales! 😉
DaveE.
Don’t they predict the ‘warmest year ever’ every year? I mean eventually they’ll be right.
How is 2009 the 5th warmest “ever”? There was a cold winter, and a non-summer across most of the US. There was snow places that hadn’t seen snow in eleventy billion years world wide. The only place that looked warm last year was siberia…hmmmm
To a betting man, a person (entity) that is always wrong is every bit as valuable as a person (entity) that is always right. By that measure, the MET is very valuable.
Our own NWS office -Pendelton,Oregon, has missed long range too.though I
suspect some of the more seasoned forcasters have resorted to the good old,
“Partly to mostly with a chance of..” to cover the bases. I see that arctic air up in Ak and BC as a cold dagger pointed at the lower 48-and soon.Nino or not…
Can someone through some truth to this?
Mann gets an OpEd piece in WashPost
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/17/AR2009121703682.html
With their knowledge of probability, I wouldn’t mind playing these Met Office folks at Poker.
crosspatch (10:02:35) :
Same with weather. Always forecast for the worst.
Very true. Years ago one of our local weathermen also covered Saturday morning wrestling. They filmed it at the tv station. The forecast was to be partly cloudy one fateful Saturday morning, but instead it rained. Well, the rain ruined some guy’s fishing trip, so he drove down to the tv studio, waltzed right in & punched that weatherman right in the nose. Wrestling viewers thought it was part of the script.
If only he had predicted rain. True story, by the way.
I’m sorry to say, but I really hope that next year’s El Nino is a weak one, because then the game will be truly up. If the following La Nina is anything like we had in 1999 or 2008, then the bedwetters, to use Lord Monckton’s turn of phrase (How is he by the way, any update?), will be forecasting the next ice age.
At least they’ll stop brainwashing our kids into thinking that breathing out is killing the planet. Hopefully by that time too, a proper alternative analysis of global temps will be in place, and then we can start putting the science back in it’s rightful place.
Anthony you mention:-
The UAH (Channel5 LT) temperature has dropped this past week and is the closest to the 20 year average it has been in six months.
In all the excitement recently you may have forgotten:-
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/17/pielke-sr-hypothesis-on-daily-uah-lt-records/
I have been watching & waiting with baited breah for nearly 6 months for this temp to reach the average to hear what Roger Pielke Sr has to say when it does.
Anyone suggesting the MET Office should lay low and not make their predictions for a while, please reconsider. They are doing everyone a great service by revealing, in spectacular manner, the quality of the predictions (scenarios?) made by global circulation models. Please do all you can to make certain the MET Office continues with the practice.
Joe Romm on Climate Progress announced November 2009 was the warmest November ever. His anouncment was made on November 24 before the data was out. Who needs records? They are busy and can make them later.
Forecast for Winter 2009/10
“For northern Europe, including the UK, there is a 20% chance of a colder winter, a 30% chance of an average winter and a 50% chance of a milder winter.”
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/seasonal/2009/winter/
“An update to the winter forecast will be issued in December. A monthly appraisal of the winter will start in early February 2010.”
An update? Hang on I’ll just have a look outside.