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:
A friend told me Tuesday, snow was forecast for this weekend. When I said it would be here Thursday or Friday, he told me he was going to turn the heating to constant on Wednesday night.
It’s something when even I am believed more than the T.V. forecasts.
DaveE.
This may be very important if true.
http://www.dnaindia.com/world/report_breaking-news-india-china-walk-out-of-climate-summit-report_1324981
The met off should also be thoroughly investigated. They too are a publically-funded member of the anti-science world socialist domination aparatchik. They should be shut down just for spending a kajillion on a supercomputer for homogenizing data,let alone making the worlds lousiest forecasts.
BBC have your Say:
Question: How are you coping with the weather?
SENT:
18-Dec-2009 15:55
COMMENT:
What weather? You mean the run away Anthropogenic Global Warming, the BBC supports and for which the science is settled? or the freezing over of northern American and Europe we are experiencing?
COMMENT STATUS:
Rejected
Well worth the license fee.
Speaking of Piers Corbyn’s forecasts, I wonder how that will change now that the Sun may be waking up finally (again)
The Solar Flux looks like it could hit 90, if the sunspot count goes way up from where it is now, then if you listen to resident solar/ocean relations expert Tallbloke and if I got his theory right, the ocean surface should become a bit colder as it goes back into energy retaining mode.
Why not? A broken clock is right twice a day.
I seem to remember last winter being cold but with not much snow here in the UK. The Met Office comment was “It would have been worse but for Global warming”. Honestly , I’m not making this up. The Met Office obviously are though.
The Met Office has long since ceased to be a scientific body. Now even its Chairman (why does a division of the Ministry of Defence NEED a “Chairman”?) is a professional environmental lobbyist.
What else should we expect? Why else was he appointed by this wretched governement we have in UK?
@ur momisugly Rhys Jaggar:
Add 1962 to your list. I was living near Newbury, and it snowed on Christmas Eve.
The thing that isn’t amusing is that the UK Highways Agency seem to believe the Met Office and don’t prepare properly. Hence three hours to go five miles today on a motorway that was mostly a sheet of ice. Temperature only minus 1 centigrade, pathetic. Of couse their website said everything was more or less okey dokey. Turned out some people had been there all night.
Rhys Jaggar (10:34:14) : 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.
Exact ditto for Northeastern US (all of US?- No November temp data on this site yet)
In the “it’s just weather” category, I just saw on Fox News that they are predicting the biggest Christmas-time winter storm to strike the US in up to three decades.
Two feet or more of snow possible over a wide area including Tennessee and New York City. They also said Washington, DC, would be the bulls-eye for the storm, with up to 14″ of snow possible.
Not sure where Al will be for Christmas.
After reading this, I thought I’d check the winter 2009-10 forecast (after all the summer 2009 one was spot on). If you navigate to the page (http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/science/creating/monthsahead/seasonal/2009/winter.html) there is a comment at the bottom which says that the forecast will be updated in November. Perhaps they were rather busy at the end of November 2009….
You folks ‘cross the pond there . . . . you folks in England . . . .keep this up and you’ll soon qualify for honourary Canuckistani status.
You’ll love playing hockey & lacrosse. So much more fun than your football 🙂
Well i´d call that normal winter weather. Lorries stuck on flat roads, the only way for that to happen is if you park with warm tires and they melt ice-pots below the wheels 🙂
What about the asteroid/fireball lightening/earthquake at spaceweather.com?
One thing I don’t know is when Met office say the “fifth warmest” is this in the adjusted instrumental temperature record or just the bare data record.
If its the adjusted instrumental record then the explanation is the adjustments made, which tend to make earlier years in the record appear cooler.
Any instrumental record is in fact a reconstruction and so has confidence limits, but they never quote confidence limits when talking about the instrumental record, but then again they are climate scentists
Seems that The Daily Telegraph is beginning to see the light.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/100020279/copenhagen-climate-summit-most-important-paper-in-the-world-is-a-glorified-un-press-release/
Couldn’t have said it better myself!
But you forgot to point out that, as late as 29th November, they were predicting “a 50% chance of a mild winter”.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1231668/Forecasters-predict-mild-winter-Britain-Prince-Charles-visits-flood-hit-Cockermouth.html
That, of course, is with the benefit of their shiny new £30 Million Supercomputer. (The same one that predicts with great confidence what the climate will be like in 2100.)
But, in all fairness, I’m sure they will staunchly defend this less than three-week old forecast. They only said “50% chance”, right?
Isn’t that about the same kind of probability you get flipping a coin?
My taxes are going to pay these prats (and for their nice index linked pensions).
I found the guy from Gravesend in Kent quite funny, I must admit. I live in Scotland near to a place where you can go skiing (I’m not going to call it a ski resort) so I/we hope for snow.
And it did look for a while in ’90’s and the early 00’s that it might be all over for Scottish skiing – for that species of sport (OMG! Another casualty of global warming! (hands waving in air)). But things are looking up lately. I know the north American and European resorts have had two good years already, but we in the UK have the maritime climate.
I’m actually keeping an eye on permanent snow patches in the Scottish hills, which may, over the years, provide some indication that things are actually getting cooler. It’s a real-world observational technique, anyway. But then I guess if you did that – a study – you’d just end up with warmists hiking up there with rucksacks full of salt to make them disappear, like the tree by the shore in the Madlives.
So the guy from Kent is just excited, and freaked out by all the white stuff and the cold. They’re just not used to it down there.
I’m not Scottish myself but I know many Scots will laugh at him for locking himself out of his house because he was so excited about the snow.
This is just a UK cultural thing. I’m sure people from Canada are less than impressed with any of us calling that a blizzard.
“Counting chickens before they’re hatched now?”
The MET Office has to make some predictions. Pre-emptively mocking them is a high-risk endeavor–they may turn out right, or not that much wrong (even if for the wrong reasons).
I wonder that a soothsayer doesn’t laugh whenever he sees another soothsayer. [Cicero]
They’ve been regularly predicting the same for the last four years. I think they work on the stopped clock theory.
That picture has me wondering.
I don’t like these new low-profile tires. I drive in a real world of curbs, rocks, and the occasional tree branch. Having the wheel rim that low is inviting wheel damage, especially with aluminum wheels.
Are they so low now the metal rim could get frozen into a puddle? Trying to dislodge ice that’s frozen around the rim edge seems a bit trickier than prying a rubber tire out.
Robert Napier
Robert is also Chairman of the Board of the Met Office. He was Chief Executive of WWF-UK, the UK arm of the World Wide Fund for Nature, from 1999 to April 2007.
http://www.englishpartnerships.co.uk/robertnapier.htm
The former chief executive of the UK WWF would have no interest in keeping Met office predictions on message, would he?.
The Met Office couldn’t forecast what time they should take lunch.
Fred from Canuckistan – already with you on the hockey thing. Sadly we don’t get it televised much over here but I did get to see highlights of the Stanley Cup final play-offs and the deciding match. Bliss. Way to go Penguins!