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 can you blunder when you are never wrong? The press won’t criticize these guys. The politicians are relying on these guys to justify the massive government growth. Anybody with a degree in “Climate Science” can’t get jobs unless they hype the apocalypse.
The only one who can stand a chance against them is reality itself. Fortunately mother natures is doing a fantastic job of that.
I wonder if POTUS’s plane will be allowed to land during the 20″ snowstorm predicted for DC starting right now.
I live in SE England and awoke this morning to eight inches of the white stuff. Many Americans may not realise just how rare such events are in southern England but our climate is temperate enough that precipitation nearly always falls as rain. It would not be uncommon for snow to fall on one day and disappear the next day, usually in mid to late January.
I’ve been living in this area for 12 years and this is the first year that I can remember snow fall as early as this. (Obviously that isn’t a scientific analysis). We had very heavy (for Kent) snow in February 2009, probably the same amount as last night.
It’ll be interesting to see how the rest of the winter pans out. Hopefully it’ll warm up until our central heating is fixed.
Dodgy Geezer (13:51:09) :
@Leon Brozyna
“…If done properly you can create the impression of working at a well thought of government agency, say MI5, or Scotland Yard…”
Umm – not exactly. Leon, I don’t know if you live in the UK? The Met Office may be famous for incompetentence and pretending the globe is warming in order to keep their jobs, but the Security Service are famous for lying to get us into the Iraq war, and pretending there is lots of terrorist activity to maintain their jobs after the Cold War finished, while Scotland Yard are famous for shooting people in the streets and then claiming it was all a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
—————-
Well said…
And the next thing the skeptic community need to ask themselves is: “why are we being lumped in with tin-foil-hat-wearing nnn conspiracy theorists”… Oh dear, we may now be, not enemies of the state, but enemies of the planet (even bigger crime). Bigger concentration camp.
Dragged away for denying climate change?
Possible?
Does history repeat itself?
Are you an enemy of the planet? Where are your papers?
Where are your carbon credits?
Arijigoku (12:34:48): The current blizzards were accurately predicted by Piers Corbyn at Weather Action:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piers_Corbyn
Corbyn began recording weather and climate patterns at age 15, constructing his own observation equipment, and obtained a degree in physics at Imperial College London.
Imagine if only a fraction of the AGW money had been used to large scale systematic and detailed scientific studies along the lines of Piers Corbyn? I mean, let us assume that such 1 year forecasts actually are possible under certain conditions using the proper observation equipment and supercomputers – it would be a shame if we did not get there wouldn’t it? If we further assume that we go very deep into far below Maunder Minimum, then such forecasting techniques, assuming that they are not science fiction, would be of major importance for mankind.
“The Copenhagen Outcome”
Obama: Non-binding deal on climate reached
President Obama announces a climate change accord at the Copenhagen submit, but admits it’s non-binding
accord = consensus ?
Deal or no deal, the greens say it`s a greenwash.
Given the importance of keeping Global temperature rises to less than 3C then surely we can achieve this easily at minimal cost.
One, re-site monitoring stations to rural locations and two, ban Climate Scientists from boiling, oops homogenizing, the raw data!
Problem sorted. Next. Clean Water? Now that’s a bit trickier.
I saw on the news that a volcano in the Philippines is about the erupt – how much will that cool things off?
Read, on EuReferendum, about the “carbon mafia” which is spending so-called “green funds” on such delightful, carbon-busting projects as one of the largest coal-fired power stations in the world.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2009/12/controlling-money.html
“President Obama announces a climate change accord at the Copenhagen submit, but admits it’s non-binding
accord = consensus ?”
The only words that matter are the following . . . .
“U.S. will not be legally bound by anything that occurred here today.”
DaveE (10:42:16) :
“I wish the buggers would forecast a COLD year!”
If they did that and got it wrong people would not become so angry. ‘Disaster’= cold in UK because over 20,000 people die each year from cold related deaths.
Sean (10:55:14) :
“They are doing everyone a great service by revealing, in spectacular manner, the quality of the predictions (scenarios?) made by global circulation models.”
I was thinking roughly among the same lines in that the yearly weather FARCEcast offers skeptics an opportunity to skewer the GCMs.
Non-binding climate deal struck at Copenhagen
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/19/2776502.htm?section=world
And the winners at Copehagen?
The caterers.
royfomr (14:44:46) :
Given the importance of keeping Global temperature rises to less than 3C then surely we can achieve this easily at minimal cost.
One, re-site monitoring stations to rural locations and two, ban Climate Scientists from boiling, oops homogenizing, the raw data!
Problem sorted. Next. Clean Water? Now that’s a bit trickier.
————–
But yes please, let’s have a conference attended by leaders from 130 countries on how to alleviate global human suffering. That would be something. And clean water is easily achievable at low cost.
The world is insane. Totally off it. There are poor, innocent children dying out there, who could easily be saved. ‘Bout time we started behaving like a family.
Another “hot spell” causing havoc in US. Northeast
“Wintry storm causing havoc, churns toward Northeast”
TheGoodLocust thegoo (14:49:50) : I saw on the news that a volcano in the Philippines is about the erupt – how much will that cool things off?
Answer: All thats needed to account for their failed warming predictions.
The sooner the Met Office returns to short term weather forcasting the better. There is less room for error and it is less political
This adds to my “unfit to serve” list, all involved in the global warming/ carbon credit scams have rendered themselves unfit for any official office, the met office and their mates at the university need a close scrutiny. I would like to see more people asking their officials and pointing out that getting on board with this scam makes them a pariah and unelectable, see how they like that!
Much of the talk relating to AGW refers to the notion of tipping points.
I am sure that we have just passed an important tipping point, but it’s not the point at which, according to catastrophic AGW proponents, the accumulation of positive feedbacks means that we are headed towards global Armageddon.
No!
Now that the Farce of Copenhagen draws to an end, and the doomsayers have finally had their three minutes of fame, the tipping point is away from the hysteria and back towards unpoliticised scientific research. Do you remember that?
Or am I just a naïve, idealistic dreamer?
As they sign their Copenhagen deal to stop global warming Europe gets blanketed by snow. Here is the latest snow cover map:
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims_gif/DATA/cursnow_asiaeurope.gif
The French are importing power due to the cold. http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20091214-710066.html
Obama flys back to a snowstorm, “If the storm forecasts are accurate – one to two feet of snow in major cities like New York, Washington and Philadelphia ..”
and North America has a fair amount of snow too.
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims_gif/DATA/cursnow.gif
Save us, please save us from Global warming…
Regarding the Met Office’s overcasting of warm temps, it seems that’s part of their hubris – as if their forecast somehow obligates the weather to deliver the goods.
I bet the Goracle can’t do this… God is just teasing with them …. LOL
current temperature waterloo, London. 29F Its normally above 32F mi December. Cold winters tend to come in “clusters” in the UK, regardless, though the Met Office every year say that winter will be warmer than average.
In truth they don’t seem able to grasp the weather legend of their own country.
http://theweatheroutlook.com/twoforecasts/UK%20seasonal%20weather%20forecast.aspx
probably have it right judging by colder than average so far, (this goes back to October’s original prediction) whilst typically, the MET Office’s prediction at the same time is proving to be wrong, as usual.
“Posted at 06:15 PM ET, 12/18/2009
Major to historic snowstorm starts this evening”
As snow makes its approach from the south, confidence is growing that this powerful storm will eventually find itself ranked among the greats. In fact, December (and perhaps other) snowstorm records, may be about to fall throughout the area. Louis Uccellini, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction and a ‘godfather’ of snowstorm analysis, spoke to CWG this morning and said, “chances are steadily increasing for this to be a historic snowstorm.”
Will Obama’s plane be able to land? He did leave Copenhagen early and said it was due to the “weather in Washington”, which is cold, while the climate remains warm.
Kitefreak (14:59:01) :
Agree with you about Clean Water being easily achievable but, sadly, rich people already have that, are anything but malnourished and adequate medical provision is taken for granted.
It’s only the poor that have to put up with the stark reality of survival and their tax-dollars are paltry!
When Trillions of dollars are cynically thrown on the table to solve a non-problem while real problems are pushed under the same table, then millions of lives will be cheerfully sacrificed. How can they sleep at night?
Jason Smith (13:38:28)
He was right in saying that climate change cuts across political frontiers. So does the need for exercise and food.