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:
The Met Office has nothing to lose.
If it really is warmer, it will be all over the news.
And regardless of how deep the snow becomes, numbers will be edited, omitted, fudged and forged to prove it is warmer.
And if it is colder beyond the ability of statistics to hide it, nothing will be reported.
Zero risk to the propaganda line.
Guardian:
Low targets, goals dropped: Copenhagen ends in failure
Deal thrashed out at talks condemned as climate change scepticism in action
Yes, yes, yes
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me
Obama goes to Copenhagen to seal the deal on Chicago olympics – bummer
Obama goes to Copenhagen to seal the deal on COP15 climate summit – bummer
you do the math
now what can we do to stop these tectonic plates from moving around ?
There is an update to that news that 3 Eurostar Trains are stuck in the Channel Tunnel beneath the English channel. (Due to the extreme cold)
There are now 4 trains stuck there. They had sent in another train to try and rescue the passengers of the 3 trains….
Oh the irony. I just arrived at my parents place in Andorra and my oldest brother is set to travel here today for the Xmas holidays. He lives in England and felt it necessary to travel to a hotel next to Heathrow yesterday evening to avoid snow issues in England today. In the meanwhile there is stuff all snow in Andorra in the Pyranees.
Could Al Baby please swing by Andorra to save the ski season before leaving Europe?
Wow. They know what the temperature was 2000 years ago? 2 million? That’s quite a crystal ball they’ve got there.
The odds on a White Christmas
I heard Joe Bastardi say Copenhagen is going to have something very rare this year—a white Christmas.
“Never make predictions, especially about the future.”
~~Casey Stengel
The “Copenhagen Accord” is:
“meaningful
“historic”
“a step forward”
“a breakthrough”
In short, it’s pretty much useless, and hardly worth the paper it’s printed on.
Not a bad Christmas present for skeptics/climate realists.
The Met Office installed at enormous expense a huge new IBM supercomputer – thanks to the UK Taxpayer. Cost? £30,000,000.
I could have sold them my seaweed based weather forecaster for half that money! Just as accurate, if not more so!
When we have stable weather ie a high pressure area over the UK the Met forecast is usually but not always, somewhere near actuality. However if conditions are unstable then they fail more often than not.
However they quote their accuracy stats and ‘prove’ that they are so much better than yesteryear. Hmmm.. I wonder if they have ‘massaged’ their raw data and where they got that idea from!
Anyway their long range forecasts have been awful and as usual adjusted after the event to look successful! George Orwell saw it coming.
NoHopenhagen was a revelation I thought. The Noble Lord, Christopher Monckton was spot on with his predictions and the Warmists proved how left of Left the majority are.
From the Telegraph:
” ‘Most of the snow is falling in East Anglia, Essex and Kent – and will continue to do so,’ she said.”
East Anglia????
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Chris
Norfolk (not East Anglia) VA, USA
Here’s a link to the Met Office’s early forecast for winter 2009/2010:
“Preliminary indications continue to suggest that winter temperatures are likely to be near or above average over much of Europe including the UK.”
And here’s a later forecast (issued 27th November):
“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.”
It’ll be interesting to see how things will have panned out by the end of February 2010…
The last time I saw snow like that in the UK was in the ’70’s, and I lived in Surrey near the Kent/Surrey parrish boundary.
I had to laugh at the coulourful language in the first clip…LOL…good old south English lingo. And the comment in the second clip, yes, a small amount of snow like that does bring the country to a halt.
TheGoodLocust thegoo
The Philipine volcano currently in eruption is Mt Mayon. Those of us with a long memory know this volcano to be one of the two tropical volcanoes that unleashed huge eruptions in 1982 and therby reputedly exaccerbated the big El Nino of that year. The other volcano was El Chicon in Mexico.
For detrimental affects I rate the 1982-83 El Nino as being worse than the one in 1998 for New Zealand. That southern spring-summer period (Sep ’82 to Mar ’83) was miserable for the wind and lack of sunlight for west coasters on both main islands of New Zealand. East coasters here suffered a prolonged drought, 18 months in some areas, which is lengthy by N.Z. standards.
The east coast of Australia experienced a very bad bush fire season as well, with many deaths on one particularly bad day. The smoke, as it often is, was carried across the 1,000 miles of the Tasman Sea to N.Z. adding to our gloomy outlook.
As an idea to how bad it was, I moved into a new house on Jan 15th (northerners think July 15th), but we didn’t have a house warming BBQ until May 1st (think Nov 1st) in 1983! The Mt Pinatubo affected El Nino of 1991 came close to a repeat of ’82, but it relented and we had 6 weeks of actual summer in the beginning of ’92.
Possibly El Nino related, January 1997 and the 1998 are the only two Januaries of the past 30 years where we have seen snowfalls in the mountains around here. This would be the equivalent of July snowfalls in northern locales. February still remains the only month of the year NOT to record mountain snowfalls in my area of N.Z. March 4th 1983 and 2006 are the earliest snowfalls in the last 3 decades. The gap from Dec 30th, 1982 to March 4th, 1983 of 64 days is the shortest span between two snowfall seasons in the same period.
To sum it up mate, it would not be good for Mt Mayon to go ballistic again, or for any other tropical volcanoe to join in!
Here’s hoping not.
Coops.
A little OT, but in Australia last week there was a debate on ABC national TV between Prof Ian Plimer (author of “Heaven and Earth”) and George Monbiot (who seems to be a non-scientist environment reporter for a little read paper named something like “Gourdian”.)
Monbiot kept pressing Plimer “Will you state unequivocally that you believe the temperature of the globe has fallen since 1998?” or words to that effect. Over and over, interrupting like pesky reporters rudely do.
Ian kept on going back to periods like the Miedieval Warming period and the different ways that temperature can be measured, or supposing that George would not understand a scientific reply, but would not give a straight answer.
It was hilarious. Here was reporter George being subjected, before a large audience, to Ian’s own method to “hide the decline.” It’s ok with George if climatologists “hide the decline” and get caught out in emails – but it’s enough to work George into a lather when he is the one from whom the decline is hidden.
On debating skill, Plimer 10 , Monbiot 0.
Discalimer: I have known Ian for 30 years and have read his book “Heaven and Earth”. And we are or were both corresponding members of the Australian Skeptics Inc. And his book is largely correct and relevant (no two geological types would ever admit to having completely “settled” science – the discipline is too mature).
P Wilson (15:39:34) : hmmm. I recall that even the Met office are jealous of Corbyn getting it right as much as they get it wrong, and complain that he won’t release his secret model to them… He won’t divulge until they discard co2 theory
This is so entertaining. WUWT has so many amusing comments, I am enjoying a good moring coffee here in -10 C Norway with 10 cm new snow – reading all the witty remarks here is just like a “feel good movie”.
Sure if Corbyn has been playing with weather and climate forecasts since he was age 15, no wonder he may outperform the most expensive forecasts by UK Met Office.
I have downloaded the temperature data from the met office for RAF waddington near where I live in the UK. the yearly averages I have worked out from them remain fairly flat until the late 1990s and then start increasing after that.The winter temperatures show a greater increase than summer temperatures which still remain fairly flat.Could the increase in temperature be caused by an accelerated urban heat island effect due to the housing boom at this time?
Met Office forecasts warmest year ever. I would like to place a bet on that – but,
before I part with my money, I would like to know who is going to be holding the measuring tape. Surely we are no longer going to pay any attention to results that in any way depend on input from CRU?
approximately occurred area hypothesis
Trains stuck in Channel Tunnel due to cold weather…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8421875.stm
Took the family out to a friends birthday party last night so the house was empty overnight. Just spent the last two hours thawing out frozen cold water pipes in the kitchen extension, first time I’ve ever had to do that in the twelve years that we have lived here!
The UK is cold and if anybody tells me that it would be colder if it wasn’t for AGW they can go get ……….
Fred from Canuckistan . . . (11:12:03) :
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 🙂
Fred,
I am in North Carolina USA, and I am way ahead of you. I have my horse drawn sleigh, cross country skis and chains for my truck… All of which I have used here in balmy NC. I am presently watching it snow…
HadCRUT3 11-2009: +0.46 °C. Rank: 5/160
Warmest November in this series was in 2004.
Average last 12 months: 0.43 °C
http://junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Warming_Look.html
“KeithGuy (15:47:14) :
The Met Office just gave me a hot tip for the 1.15 at Haydock…
‘King of Confusion’.
Any takers?”
THOUGHT YOU MIGHT LIKE TO KNOW. IT’S JUST BEEN CALLED OFF BECAUSE OF THE COLD WEATHER.
Don Penman (02:18:07) :
I have downloaded the temperature data from the met office for RAF waddington near where I live in the UK. the yearly averages I have worked out from them remain fairly flat until the late 1990s and then start increasing after that.The winter temperatures show a greater increase than summer temperatures which still remain fairly flat.Could the increase in temperature be caused by an accelerated urban heat island effect due to the housing boom at this time?
From my own recollection it’s clear to me that winters really were warmer in the late 90’s and early to middle 2000’s, but have cooled again since.
I think this was due to the jet streams moving further north, and now moving south again.