CRU's forecast: UK winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event"

Yep, Winter ice to be replaced by Summer ice 😉
DaveE.

One of the IPCC 2001 reports told under ‘Global Climate Projections’:
“Cold episodes are projected to decrease significantly in a future warmer climate. ”
and also:
“It is very likely that heat waves will be more intense, more frequent and longer lasting in a future warmer climate.”
Next weekend, another special heat wave will hit the East Coast.

Snow or no snow for today is weather. Snow or no snow over a period of years is weather pattern variability. The fact that London is not known as the Aspen of Britain is called climate. Whether it is two degrees warmer or colder in London’s climate, will not turn it into the Sahara Desert or Aspen.
Such knicker twisting!

Yes, it’s been cold in the UK for a few weeks, but here in my part at least we’ve seen very little snow. We have had a freezing rain event of some note (for us) but this winter is far from some white Armageddon.
I think Dr Viner and the article is (like all the science) broadly right. Over time snow will be seen as being more and more exceptional – for weather enthusiasts in the UK this spell of weather this is indeed an exciting and unusual event, pointing out that reality. Of course it wil still snow in the mountains, and Scotland but in lowland England much less so.

Almost Certainly – What does that mean?
Met Office
5 March 2008
A significant drop in global average temperature in January 2008 has led to speculation that the Earth is experiencing a period of sustained cooling.
A brief look at the graph depicting January global average temperatures reveals large variability in our climate year-on-year, but with an underlying rise over the longer term almost certainly caused by man-made emissions of greenhouse gases.

Pamela Gray (00:42:55) :
Thumbs up for you Pamela.

I don’t recall where I saw the cartoon, but I’m sure UK residents will identify with the illustration of those stuck in traffic due to heavy snow. The caption a simple pep rally cheer of: What do we want? – Global warming – when do we want it? – NOW!!!

We have a number of joke organisations and businesses over here in England, and the Independent newspaper is one of them – complete rubbish.

Why do you think that Anthony keeps posting G. P. Bear goes to Washington? Can he not tell by the lack of comments that nobody is interested? That and the river thing post kind of tells me that some people may get posted if their donations are sufficient enough. Just saying.
Reply: That is one of the silliest suggestions I have ever heard and you should be embarrassed for having made it. ~ charles the moderator.

“this “very rare and exciting event” happened in London last year also.”
As well as earlier this year in February
“South-east England has the worst snow it has seen for 18 years…”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7864395.stm
Pics:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7864521.stm

Average global climate change is just a man-made abstract construct, which has some meaning when looking at the history of events, but because of deterministic chaos, no value when looking more than a few days forward.
Climate/weather are only experienced by an observer locally in the current split-second of time we call now.

“Piers Corbyn is the only one to get it right.” Well, yes according Piers that’s right… According to everyone else, those who monitor the ‘accuracy’ of his forecasts, he’s just a fine self publicist and arm waver.
“No model on a super computer, just physics and common-sense.” slight problem, Philip, he’s usually gets it wrong – or rather his language is so over the top what with his ‘catastropic floods’ here and ‘record’ everything else there every month, it’s obvious he’s mostly wrong and just shouting.
“Save millions: scrap the Met Office, Hadley Centre and CRU.” Work for Piers do you you 😉

Joe Romm over at CP is melting down:
“JR: Thanks. I don’t understand what the Politico is doing, really. Why can’t they just do a straight story? The truth is plenty interesting, even if not black and white.”
Strange things are happening as people are learning the real truth. Progressive truth is starting to disintegrate before their eyes.

I like one of the comments at the bottom of the 20 March 2000 article from alexcj38.
“Hello? Charles Onians in 2000? Don’t ask me to explain but I’m posting this back to you via a time warp from December 2009. Yes, the future! You probably won’t believe me and will think I’m mad or joking, but get this. Britain is suffering its second extremely cold winter in a row – we have enough snow, ice, frost and freezing fog to cobble dogs with (whatever that means.) Far from being “a very rare and exciting event”, snowfall has become a major hazard in this country twice this past year – and we haven’t even got to February 2010 yet. Also (again you will probably think I’m joking) but the CRU has just become a liability to climate science – leaked e-mails and files have revealed a web of deceit and manipulation that threatens to undermine the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming itself. I urge you to pull this article immediately, as it will become a laughing stock in years to come. Charles? Hello? Hello? … Rats, I’m probably too late.”
Mal

Anyone compiling a list of failed AGW predictions? AGW scare storys often have time parameters of 10,15,20 years. Since they started making runaway warming claims back in the 1980s, many of these failed predictions are ready for havesting. Time to look through all the AGW articles from the ’80s and early ’90s.

Time the Met Office manned up and admitted that factoring AGW into its models have trashed their credibility and useability of forecasts recently. Since the summer of 2007 every single seasonal forecast has been badly busted, a record that would be incredibly impressive if they were seeking to do so.
Politics has infested every part of the weather and climate bureaucracies in the UK, and AGW religionists keep popping up in key roles.
Meanwhile I look outside my window in one of England’s largest cities, and see we still have ice/snow cover from way before Christmas. 13 days and counting of consecutive snowcover! The roads and pavements are like ice rinks, and councils on the back of Met Office mild forecasts did not stockpile enough grit or salt.
They said this winter would be milder than average thanks to their AGW models, and yet we’re over 2c below average.
They should hang their heads in shame.

You want Monbiot in all his glory ?
Here he is, spilling the beans: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/dec/14/climate-change-battle-redefine-humanity
Couldn’t be plainer !

‘Gtrip’ please do feel free to post the independent analysis of PC’s forecasts you have. Presumably you can thus prove the claims PC makes?
Oh, and btw, I’m only telling it how it is. PC’s forecasts a littered with over the top language.

Met Office records show average days of snowfall here:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/averages/ukmapavge.html#
You can see the average for 1961-1990 and also 1971-2000. There is a noticeable difference.

This is what the Met office said last february -that snow was a rare event ne’er to be repeated in the UK. That goes against what independent forecasters said in October, who, looking at the historical trend, predicted snow for the uk on the basis that harsh winters in the tend to occur in clusters, regardless of whether we’re in a cooling or a warming trend. (Much like summers – which tend to be cool in the uk over the past several years, yet blisteringly hot during the cooling trend of the 70’s)

This is _obviously_ an attack by snowmen that were paid by Big Oil!

3 X 10^7.
WUWT.

gtrip (01:15:34) :
Why do you think that Anthony keeps posting G. P. Bear goes to Washington?
Because it’s funny.
I’ll take “AGW Hysteria in 2005” for $100, please, Alex…

Werner Weber (00:37:03) :
One of the IPCC 2001 reports told under ‘Global Climate Projections’:
“Cold episodes are projected to decrease significantly in a future warmer climate. ”
and also:
“It is very likely that heat waves will be more intense, more frequent and longer lasting in a future warmer climate.”
Next weekend, another special heat wave will hit the East Coast.
Well, to paraphrase Monty Python’s Flying Circus, it is rather “stating the bleedin obvious!” One does not need to be a rocket scientist, or even a climate scientist to make a claim like that, surely? We are in an interglacial, the last one 125,000 years ago was warmer than today, (IPCC SPM AR4 so it’s official) & as I understand it, so was the one before that. So surely that doesn’t take computer models or scientists to make a suggestion that we shouldn’t be surprised that the planet could warm up a little more before the next ice age cometh? After all we could be on borrowed time! Having been using the holidays to catch up yet again on epsiodes of BBC’s wonderful Earth Story hosted by Aubery Manning, in which beneficial Carbon Dioxide is mentioned in every other sentence, one cannot help but wonder what all the fuss is about from a scientific perspective, but what a difference when you insert the political perspective! True the good programme is on a digital channel at mid-day & unlikely to be watched by the majority, it is too dull & not enough rip-roaring action is going on & tales of who’s sleeping with who & have they had falsies inserted, or is their horoscope similar to yours, far more important than the history of the planet I dare say!
Oh, & hasn’t the good Dr Puchauri been a busy boy over the last few years, building his millions & his empire using the IPCC to do it with his Big-Oil connections deeper than Exon’s ever has been? Visit EU Referendum for an overview. Looks to me like he has been using a few “useful idiots” of his own.
For me, Piers Corbyn may be self-promoting, but if he doesn’t do it who precisely will? We’re all in the same boat there. His forecasts do seem to have a reasonable degree of accuracy, certainly in the long-term department, but then again it may depend upon who is setting the parameters for accuracy & long-term! So far he’s doing better than the Met Office, & that surely hurts the official channels. What he does say tho sounds like rational common sense, something that left the BBC, the MSM, & these shores manny years ago. It must be so frustrating that with £Ms of taxpayers’ dosh being spent on hardwear & softwear & they still get it wrong over long-term, & even short-term forecasts. No mention of snow & ice was made by the Met Office more than a few days before it happened, no change there then. Yes it’s time for the privatisation of the Met Office & the BBC to be put on the political agenda at once. BTW, the “long-term average” of 1961-1990 temperature is utterly derisible in terms of Earth Story & climate.

‘Stephen’ oh, yes, it is unusual (these days…) to see 14 days snow cover where you are. That, surely, is the point? And, yes, this is weather not climate. If we saw a trend towards more snowy winters (which would take decades to be established) you know what? I wouldn’t, for a second, question it was happening.
Anyway, here, on Dartmoor, Devon, we’ve had a few days with a cm or so of snow on the ground and quite a bit of frost but Dec 1981 this isn’t – and it’s nothing like as cold as Feb 85. Today it’s pouring with rain and cold. That’s weather for you.

The fact is we can’t explain anything we’re reciveing. And it’s a travasty that we can’t…

Peter Hearnden
You clearlydo not know your subject(s). I suggest you go away for a little while and read the life and times of Piers C; Like the fact that he built his business on gambling against his own forecasts and that the arbitrators of his bets were the MetOff. I suggest you also might choose to disclose your locality. Might I suggest coastal, SW england perhaps. A little more thought and a little les BS would give you a lot more credibilty. Take a break!!

Sorry peter I posted before the last one appeared but that doesn’t change what I said. I friends in your area and I know exactly what the weather is generally like. I suggest that you look up the records for the SW going back to the LIA. It will give you a better idea of what you can expect in terms of climate. I love this debate about climate and weather. Climate is quoted by daily temps and yearly temps as well as other elements of the weather. So exactly when do these daily/annual measurements of weather automatically turn into climate and how will you know when the climate has justed started on a downward trend as opposed to turning down for a ‘short period’ of time and how will you know when the climate has turned up ‘for a long period of time’. Oh and yes I know the planet has warmed since the last ice age and I know it will cool before the next one.

Peter Hearnden (02:43:23) :
The point Peter, is that if you took the time to talk to people that lived through the ’30s & ’40s, you’d find that the current conditions are NOT unusual, even in the last century.
DaveE.

Well, we are certainly feeling the effects of global warming over here… right now it is -13C.
I live ~30km south of Oslo, Norway, close to the Oslo fjord and at 150m elevation. Consider the following official temperature forecast for my location for the first few days if 2010 (scroll down a bit to see the graph)
http://www.yr.no/place/Norway/Buskerud/R%C3%B8yken/L%C3%B8v%C3%A5s/long.html
Looks like the temperature will be hovering around -20C for a while…., it must be global warming. “Normal” temperature would be about -4C.
My backup of the graph
http://arnholm.org/wuwt/weather/forecast_jan2010.gif
We also got ~35cm of “white stuff” overnight between the 24-25 December so the snowblower I gave myself for Christmas was well received, and put to use at once 🙂
Usually, the months with most snow is January/February/March…

I think there’s one important point regarding the UK weather/climate. This current cold and snowy weather is not an isolated event, but rather part of a trend lasting some years.
There’s no question that, since the 1960’s, the UK climate became noticeably warmer, and some time around the nineties there was no snow at all. This warming may have been linked to global warming, but it may also be linked to the cleaner air we enjoy since the Clean Air Acts back in the fifties or sixties. Whatever the cause, it made life considerably more pleasant. But it probably wouldn’t last.
My general impression is that the UK climate has been getting colder since the early noughties. The last real heat wave was around 2003. We’ve had several cold summers. We’ve had significant snow every year for maybe the last six years. The snow appears to be getting heavier and it’s staying longer due to the freezing conditions.
Although it’s just my personal impression and it’s certainly not scientific, this cooling in the UK climate corresponds fairly well with the global temperature, which has been slowly falling for the last few years.
I certainly don’t want a warmer world. But a cooling world may eventually destroy this great delusion. It will force the climate scientists to confront a horrifying possibility: that, for whatever reasons, they have got it spectacularly wrong.
Chris

Fears that cold weather can take lives in southern Norway.
Link (norwegian)
http://www.dagbladet.no/2009/12/29/nyheter/ver/kulde/9695957/
Health authorities (Folkehelseinstituttet) fear that life may be lost during the cold weather that is expected in southern Norway the next few weeks. Temperatures around 20 degrees below zero (Celsius) are expected in the entire southern Norway over the next three weeks.
– We can see from the statistics of death when there has been significant cold. We see an excess mortality from lung inflammation, and some will freeze to death when it gets cold, said Dr. Karin Rønning at the Folkehelseinstituttet to VG.

Hahaha…these CRU folks would help themselves by keeping their mouths shut. They lose credibility with every communique.

Pity this weakens the public support for moral and ethical change…
but that’s what happens when hitching a moral vision to a science hypothesis.
The problem is deeper. Even if the current weather was “consistent” with climate scenarios, I mean, even if we were actually in a freakishly warm winter, all that the NGOs, The United Nations, The State of the World Forum, the Optimum Population Trust, and so on… all that they would be achieving is beating people into behavior change out of fear of consequences.
To be sure, beating people into change can work—there are famous Zen Masters who “broke the arm of the student” and induced spontaneous enlightenment at just the right moment… but then it takes a Master to get the timing exquisitely right. Most students just suffer abuse for years and don’t change, get nothing from it.
If the weather was currently freakishly warm, and AGW hypothesis/theory/reality was currently receiving wide public validation, all that that would be achieving from a moral and ethical dimension, is scaring people into behaving differently. From an ethical dimension, that is no change at all.
Consider, does instigating severe punishments against criminals, merely dissuade criminals from carrying out criminal behavior, or does the existence of harsh punishments actually force criminals to search their hearts and motivate them to radically change themselves and become, in their heart of hearts, honest people sensitive to not harming others?
As we’ve known for decades in liberal and left leaning thinking, punishment does not reform people, and the threat of bad consequences does not change men’s hearts. So why take this approach with humanity and the environment? Why try to change people using a message of dire consequences? Tell me, what’s the difference with capital punishment?
Surely, what many desire is that humans, individually, in their hearts, become sensitive and caring towards humans across national boundaries, and across ecosystems. What is desired is a new more ethical human. A new ethics of global mutuality and interdependency.
The core issue, now and forever more, will be the ethical dimension of humanity and how that develops. And can I just say, this has nothing to do with any science hypothesis (nor theory, nor reality.)
It is entirely an ethical issue. If you want people to change, teach ethics, not science. Science theories come and go. There is nothing self-evidently true about AGW—like any science theory, it could be disproved one day, there are always unknown unknowns. It also only holds for scenarios far beyond the time scales of short term weather cycles. It will be 50 to 100 years before AGW can show its really-real reality. That means this generation doesn’t have to face the consequences, and the next generation might also get away with ignoring the consequences. Remember, this is the very human nature that we are so worried about changing. This is like instituting a death penalty for murder, with sentence to be carried out in not this incarnation, not in the next incarnation, but the incarnation after that. We will hang you, in two lifetimes! So don’t do it!
By separating “environmentalist” from “climate change”, you can separate ethics from science, which gives you two things: it allows you to find greater depth of honesty in ethics, and greater clarity of objectivity in science.

OT – but weather-related, and a bit surprising given the source.
http://www.thelocal.de/national/20091229-24233.html

If your predictions cover all possibilities, your predictions will never fail!
It’s a old trick commonly used by pseudoscientists.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA PI for Apollo

One of the best long term [ 2000 years plus ] historical weather sites I have come across which uses information gleaned from a very wide variety of historical writings and range of data and proxy sources is the UK’s own “Booty Meteorological Information Source”.
http://booty.org.uk/booty.weather/metindex.htm
I believe the originator of this excellent weather and historical site is or was a meteorologist.
When you read the weather /climate history of the UK on this site, it really brings home to one just how changeable and variable the weather and climate really are when looked at in the long term historical sense and the realisation just what an impact weather and climate has had, not just on the UK but on the history and the destiny of whole human race.

The UEA/CRU finally get it right!
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_OoGClTz0_Lo/SxBOXaKVfQI/AAAAAAAAAyo/xmtxdOAXCOc/s400/cru+pear+shaped.png

Peter Hearnden (04:02:31) :
“Again, lets see some assessment, some analysis not ‘he’s” wrong “because I say he is’.”
Market driven economics. If you pay, one time, for a product that is shoddy you ask for a refund. If you pay continuously for a faulty product you are a fekkin eejit.
Farmers, supermarkets and insurers would not continue to pay Piers if he was accurate merely 50% of the time as the Met Office hover around that point and they distribute their forecasts free of charge.
We all agree, when purchasing the forecasts, not to divulge the contents.
If you hold a hypothesis regarding his accuracy the onus is on you to present evidence in its support, not upon us to disprove it – much like the case of the sickly thin stream of AGW spew.

Snow blankets London for Global Warming debate – first October Snow in over 70 years
You might say that the forces IPCC and AGWists claim to understand have it in for them, that the hand of Nature itself is taking pleasure in rubbing thier noses in it. It isn’t just Gore, he just happens to have an affinity for stepping in it and dragging it around.

If you want to know how to use weasel words in a forecast, this post from an hour ago can help you:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/updates-to-model-data-comparisons/comment-page-2/
Look at their ever-widening “confidence interval” in the graph! Now these are the prophets!

“ Dave Johnson (04:41:33) :
Peter Hearnden
I believe you were the first here to question the accuracy of Corbyn’s forecasts, We are still waiting for you to provide facts to back up that claim”
You mean as the one asking questions here I have to defend the one I question? That’s a novel suggestion :))
Sprry, all I ask is for something better than assertion that Piers is the meteorological superman some here seem to think. I don’t see that as toooo much to ask?

Just imagine what would it have happened without Climate-Gate at Copenhagen. These CRU guys were in the lying business many years ago. Too many “tricks”…

Here is my prediction for this winter posted in another thread last August.
Spot on so far (and I called last winter correctly too) but let’s see what Jan & Feb bring:
Winter2009/2010 for UK
by Stephen Wilde » Sun Aug 02, 2009 10:58 am
I hate trying to predict because everything could change tomorrow but on the basis of the present setup here goes:
The jets are still well south of us and if that persists into autumn and winter then of course there will be greater influence from cold high pressure over Europe and Greenland.
The matter of precipitation amounts depends on where the main battleground is between cold and warm air. No two years are the same and last winter was unusual. The cold spells were very immobile. Large chunks of cold air were dumped on us for weeks at a time with little movement and relatively little snow despite a couple of notable falls.
For the coming winter I think that, instead, we will get more occasions when the battleground is over southern UK or northern France and Germany with more snow over wider areas than we have had for many years. However so much depends on day to day variability of the precise positions of all the weather systems that I realise I am a bit out on a limb there. Nevertheless I think it a higher likelihood than for many years past.
I’m also unsure what the balance will be between northerly and easterly flows which give very different weather types. The chance of a return to prolonged south westerlies is low but it could happen depending on the synoptic situation over USA.
Last winter also showed a change from the previous two winters when cold plunges over the USA distorted the jets and gave us persistent warm wet south westerlies so we did not then share in the general slow cooling trend.
I think that the overall global trend is still moving towards a colder regime but only slowly. The position of the jets in both hemispheres still indicates overall cooling. We seem to be getting increasing cold weather reports in winter in both hemispheres despite the current absence of a strong La Nina so the effect of the previous one seems to be persisting.
Meanwhile ENSO is less negative than it was but the anticipated EL Nino seems to be stuttering. I would say that overall the rate of cooling in the air will slow down a bit thanks to the extra energy flow into the air from the less negative ENSO but remember that if the sun is weak it will not fully replace the energy lost from ocean to air via the warmer SSTs so there remains a general background loss of energy for the system as a whole.
So, (gulp!) UK coming winter cooler than recently and likely to further reduce the warming trend of the 1975 to 2000 period. Not necessarily back down to the longer term average but well on the way with an outside chance of a memorable winter.
More snow than we have been used to but generally drier than average in the north and wetter than average in the south.

Interestingly, I just did and published a calculation for Prague showing that 1.5 °C of warming would only lower the number of snowy days roughly by one quarter of the current number.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/12/what-would-15-c-of-warming-mean-in.html
After 100 years of hard work, the change would be barely noticeable. It would be even more undetectable at places which already have substantial amount of snowy days – just a few percent.

Leon Brozyna (02:27:50–that handy list missing science.
THAT was funny.
As to the main story at hand. 70 YEARS? A generation and one-half (give or take a few years) where snow has not hit in October? Wow.
And quotations about the end of snow in Britain (it just got turned back into Narnia) from none other than CRU?
Too good. Too good.
But isn’t the response that gooly-gee wilkers this is what is EXPECTED from a warmer world. More water vapor due to increased evaporation (and you get your heaviest snow near the freezing point of H20 due to how the weather patterns flow–i.e., snow in Antarctica is really rather rare) and you’ll get more snow?

If we are to assume that weather forecasting is the ouput of computers and that the Met Office models used are clearly defective at short range, why on earth are we apparently accepting their long range outputs ? Even the Telegraph has a correspondent Geoffrey Lean who doesn’t seem to understand that point. The media have been thoroughly duped and should be ashamed of themselves.

tallbloke (04:59:39) :
I’m from the North-East & I won’t see 50 again. 🙁
DaveE.

UK days of snow averaged over 2 time periods
1961 to 1990
and
1971 to 2000
animated gif
http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/9668/daysofsnowlyinguk.gif
The history of british winters 1616 to 2008
http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=other;type=winthist;sess=

If you look real quick, you’ll see that 49 states have widespread frost.
http://www.findlocalweather.com/weather_maps/temperature_north_america.html

kwik (03:56:14) :
Pierce Corbyn is interesting.
I agree and on the freeze frame of the youface interweb video he looks like the mad professor.
What more could anyone want from a weather forecaster?

“But then, Hearnden is the type to big up (for example) the 2006 European heatwave but then dismiss the excepional cold we’ve had recently because it fits his preconceived (and quite unscientific) views.”
You can find Hearnden (he sometimes posts as Devonian) at most of the places weather gets discussed. He is a rabid warmist, uniformly resorts to appeals to authority, and never admits when he is wrong. For a scam like AGW to succeed, you need a number of useful idiots like him to go around as evangelists.

It’s been nearly 200 years since the UK had consistently snowy winters. For a big snow event persistent high pressure located in Northern Scandanavia advects polar and sub-artic air across the North Sea. This is a pretty strong fetch with gale force winds picking up copious amounts of “warmer” moist sea air, which in turn is forced upslope as it hits the east coast line of the UK. A mixture of speed convergence and mechanical lifting and very cold air aloft create intesne snow showers that move westward. This is the exact same thing that occurs in the Great Lakes Snow Belt of the US. Before this episode is over, the UK could get between 1 and 2 feet of snow (with plenty of drifting). The frigid air of course is cold enough to freeze the Thames and shallow creeks and ponds. This regime of snowy winters is well recorded in both paintings and literature of the past.
Luckily for the UK, it has a maritime climate, and these surges of frigid polar air masses do not last that long. I believe the prevalence of “white winters” in the UK died off with the passing of the Dalton Minimum.

grow crops in Greenland
Not sure about grapes in Britain. That’s rather far north, and even with moderated temps due to the North Sea, too much cloud cover, I’d think. Grapes like full sun and warm days.
But as to Greenland, I think the very name was actually cooked up by the Vikings as a slick sales gimmick to attract other settlers. It was always cold and never green so far as I’ve been able to find.

‘Spence_uk’, thanks for those kind words.
I’m in upland Devon, but we don’t get the same weather as you in London, where it has, by all accounts, been as you report. What I say about our winter so far is what has happened: quite a bit of frost so far, very little snow.
As to winter 09/10 being as cold as summer 06 was warm, time will tell.

Did’nt Ancient British Warriors, sometimes wear nothing more than woad? As far north as Scotland, too? ….Obviously, much hardier than todays warriors then. Unconcerned about the need for protection in combat too? Could it be, there was some advantage, in it? ….When its blooming hot?

The best supercomputer ever made rests on the shoulders of men, this is so because it is connected to a fantastic cosmic web, any other external devices are but childish toys.

tpf – that pretty graphic of snow days in the Uk for 61-90 vs 71-00 is, while pretty, spectacularly useless.
The terrible winter of 63 distorts the difference between the 2 pics so much as to make any long term comparison impossible – in the south, we probably had a much snow in 63 as we did in the next 20 years! I remember it, we had snowdrifts in the garden from when it started (Xmas) till March…
Now if the pics showed say 65-95 vs 75-05, they would be much more likely to show something interesting

gtrip (01:30:00) :
Joe Romm over at CP is melting down:

He is in meltdown. Meltdown Mann is also there. One of the tactics is to spread more intensive forecasts for 2020 and 2050. we can’t refute them.

“Bob Kutz (06:35:36) :
[..]Your side’s credibility fades by the day.”
Bob i think you’re barking up the wrong tree. Pamela is one of the most knowledgeable persons round here – i sure as hell can’t follow her arguments about jet streams and the atlantic oscillation…

The October 2008 snowfall was remarkable, not least for the delicious irony of its fallingon London while Parliament was debating the Climate Change Bill.
That was, however, far from the most significant snowfall last winter. On February 1st 2009 six inches of snow fell on London overnight – the heaviest snowfall for 18 years.

Re DirkH If you want to know how to use weasel words in a forecast, this post from an hour ago can help you:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/updates-to-model-data-comparisons/comment-page-2/
Look at their ever-widening “confidence interval” in the graph! Now these are the prophets!
If you read the text you will find the following lines.
“We can break it down a little more clearly. The trend in the annual mean HadCRUT3v data from 1998-2009 (assuming the year-to-date is a good estimate of the eventual value) is 0.06+/-0.14 ºC/dec (note this is positive!)”.
Is it me but I thought 0.06 +/-0.14 gives a range of -0.08 to +0.2 in other words no positive trend !

@Peter Hearnden
OK, so your perspective is say, 50 to 10,000 years in the future.
My next question is, what should the Victorians have done differently?
And what should pre-agricultural man have done differently?
We are taking a 50 to 10,000 year perspective, long term climate trends that will, and have, affected the climate, and what man should do, and should have done, on those time scales.

2009 is not a year on which University of East Anglia shall look back with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one Elizabeth II, it has turned out to be their Annus Horribilis.

Does anyone know of a site presenting the recent snowcover for Europe. There is a few for NA but the one I went to last year for Europe seems to be gone.

Peter Hearnden (00:45:04) :
I think Dr Viner and the article is (like all the science) broadly right.
BROADLY right?
The alarmists have been consistently predicting an ever more elusive disaster for 30 years. The seas have risen only at the incremental, steady rate they have have for centuries. The poles haven’t melted. Islands have not submerged. Snow hasn’t ceased. Some glaciers have sublimated, some have grown. We’d have better luck using fortune tellers.
Until the Met Office and CRU begin to evince scientific traits such as transparency, replicability, falsifiability and independent verification, they will be rightly scorned by those who value truth more than mooing with the herd.

Peter, I seem to remember from years back on ClimateAudit that you were always up for some banter, I hope I haven’t misjudged that.
I have made no predictive claim about the temperature of the 09/10 winter as you state; my commentary was on the number of sleet/snow days in 2009. This is relevant to the discussion as this was a specific claim made by the Independent article above. I can assure you I’ve personally witnessed rather more than the 0.7 days average quoted in that article, but that is anecdotal.
I had a look on the met office web site but unfortunately they seemed to stop updating this statistic available as a gridded download in 2000, making it difficult to verify the explicit claims made by the scientist above. The metric is still monitored; I found an article on Scotland in which someone plots these data for a region up to 2006. Interestingly, the article observed no trend in the number of days of sleet/snow up to 2006; but they did detect a downward trend in number of days of snow lying. This is just one region in Scotland though; why no data for England?
Strangely, the downward trending data has been updated by the met office to much more recent times. Funny how people seem to find more time to update data which confirms their own preconceived opinions. If you have any better luck in locating the data, I’d be most grateful for some pointers.

As a geologist, my perspective is on the order of thousands of years as far as climate is concerned (I view these minor 20- to 30-year perturbations as mere noise in the overall scheme of things). So since we’re talking about the future, I can tell you what will happen: We’re going to have another glacial epoch. It is unavoidable.
We’re at the end of this current interglacial, as the following graphs indicate:
http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precautionary_Planning/New_Data/
Generally, interglacials last about 10,000 years, and we’re at least 10,500 years into this one–up to 12,800 years by some accounts. So the timing is a bit uncertain, but we’re at least 500 years overdue. And the switch from interglacial to glacial only takes a few years; some evidence shows it happens within 4 months.
I don’t know whether it will happen next year, in 10 years, 100 years, or 1,000 years, but it will happen. And there isn’t anything we can do to stop it. It’s just climate.
And it will be devastating.

I think I know what happened to my stock portfolio. CRU went into the business of stock market forecasting and came up with this doozy in 2006:
“Stocks have reached what looks to be a permanently high plateau.”
Yeah, thanks guys.

Wakefield Tolbert (06:35:34) :
Wine was widely grown in England during the MWP, have a look in the Domesday Book for example, there are a number of vineyards mentioned. Most english vineyards were in the southwest, but some were as far north as Yorkshire.
And yes, barley was grown on southern Greenland during the MWP, though it was only marginally profitable. This is mentioned in historical sources, e. g. Konungs Skuggsjá (13th Century). Barley was grown on a much larger scale at the same time in Iceland, even inland at a considerable altitude (at Skálholt for example). This is also mentioned in historical sources, and has been confirmed by palynology (pollen analysis). The inland farmlands were abandoned in the fourteenth century and coastal fields about a century later. No grain was grown subsequently on Iceland until the (exceptionally warm) 1930’s.

And thus, because of the Met Office and CRU, Britain has been unprepared for bad weather and it has cost the economy.

Perhaps we have indeed prevented an ice age by relentlessly plowing and salting our roads and parking lots.

Is there a logical explanation for publication of stuff like this ? “New quantitative evidence of extreme warmth in the Pliocene Arctic ” from here http://micropress.org/stratigraphy/
Surely the exposure of the fiddle with data by CRU and its fellow criminals puts paid to all the guff about 3.5* higher temps. as forecast by the IPCC?

BTW, I didn’t say ALL of Greenland was green.

Correction:
“You should be happy upon news of ANY long term, consistent cooling events because it would mean that AGW is wrong and we are not all going to fry.”

Henry chance (06:50:47) :
Meltdown Mann is also there.
HAHAHA, best yet. Meltdown Mann, just loaded. sCrutape Letters, Climategate….Goracle…
Pay no attention to the Mann behind the Carbon Curtain.
“Looks like plant food to me”. Audrey Jr. Little Shop of Horrors.

Photon, the statement was partly in jest based on what’s been passed around on the Net as the counter to the “denier” crowd, with the final back-up being that this was a localized warming due to shifting ocean currents. And yes I’m also aware that those darling little fuzzy-wuzzy polar bears (apparently) survived periods where the ice extent was much less than today.
But it’s still curious. I mean, REALLY, Greenland today is colder than a brass….well…somthing….
So the warmer period must have been more than just slightly warming. We’re talking at least TEMPERATE climes for much of the year. Grapes are fussy plants, ya know.
But thanks for the info and the others who’ve provided the links.

Well, it causes more snow in temperate regions (just to play the Devil’s advocate once again for shiggles).
The poles don’t really get that much snow. But usually what falls can stay for quite a while. It snows more in Columbia SC than at the South Pole.
That has not altered the climate. Because it can’t hang around long enough for much of an effect. However, I have HEARD that if you get really BLASTED with early snow in the year (as here in the USA where half the nation is buried at the moment) then yes an albedo effect is, well, in effect, and you supposedly get a feedback lag effect of cooler temps by the time February rolls around.
I remember times even in “Hotlanta” Georgia we’d get several inches of snow a couple of times a year. That does not happen anymore. But then as from the articles above when superimposed……

Dearest Bob,
Climate is a combination of topographical parameters, GPS address, and proximity to large weather creating atmospheric systems (IE the jet stream and other such things). Weather patterns are the year to year, and decade to decade variations you get within your climate zone, which includes the extremes of your zone (it’s an agricultural term relating to planting zones and is a far older and data-backed understanding of climate than the current “climate change” thinking is). Weather is what you get today. AGW is a political entity that has used science in corrupt ways to push their agenda.
The idea that climate is an average of weather is not correct. If farmers were to use your definition of climate, they would end up in a soup line, along with you.
But all is forgiven you my son, hehehehehe.

I picked this up on an earlier thread and emailed the Independent for their comments on the last couple of UK winters.
Silence was the only reply. Presumably as one of Gordon Brown’s flatearthers my views are beneath contempt.

This is fascinating.
Because while there are some noteworthy ideological (which from our pals on the Far Left I think this is about an “ecosophy” metaphysics that hold Mamma Nature as sacrosant and anything beyond naked humans foraging for berries and tubers is evil to nature) defenses of RealClimate’s holdout on ClimateGate and “Hopenhagen” (real website, no bull) I’m getting the impression the CRU faux pas and follies are more serious than is generally admitted?
Elizabeth May claims to have read all some thousands of emails and says there’s nothing to see. As does Newsweek’s Sharon Begely. And FactCheck.org says it’s time to move on and there was nothing to see, and the El Tricko thing is just a colloquialism used to rightsize the data when you’re getting absurd feedback from bummed out thermometers, etc.

Caleb. Thanks for the info.
My curiosity is this: What were the sea levels in those ages???!!
Greenland ice is mostly anchored to land. That’s the whole furrowed brow and fret if the whole thing melts; ya know, New Orleans and the Maldives will go underwater for good, as will NYC, and the Aussies will have to mount barbed wire and .50 cal machines gun nests to ward off uninvited guests from Malaysia and Indonesia when the low-lying areas go under as well. That sorta thing.

Concerning weather extremes as a function of temperature, cold periods = more storms, warm periods = less storms
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2009/12/27/winter-storms-update/#more-397

DirkH (06:53:53) :
It’s beem my experience in reading her posts that she (Pamela Gray) is supportive of the AGW theory and it’s agenda.
To the point; this thread is about an article from the year 2000 in which a prominent scientist at CRU indicated that snow would become very rare in the UK. The headline of the article is something along the lines that snowfall in England is a thing of the past.
Her rebuttal to this thread is that individual weather events are not climate, and in fact a weather pattern observed over a period of years is only weather variability. Her statement is a direct contradiction of the articles tenants; that weather patterns have changed due to global warming, and there will therefor no longer be snowfall in the UK. According to her statement, global warming would result in little to no change to the weather in the UK, whether she intended to say that or not.
My observation is that weather, taken in the aggregate over a period of years, is in fact climate. If we cannot agree on that single point, the AGW crowd has gone completely off the tracks insane.
As to her credibility; she certainly is well read, but then I am certain that Phil Jones and Mike Mann are well read, but I don’t lend any credence to what they say.
They are paid to say it, and know too well they will no longer be paid if they say IT no longer holds. They’ve been on the path too long to recognize that it’s leading downhill rather than up.
My opinion; (Just so we understand each other); The climate is variable. It always has been. If we study it, we may eventually reach some sort of understanding of this chaotic system. That would be a monumental achievment for mankind. IF we continue to tilt at windmills, accept what is clearly faulty (if not outright fabricated) science, we (all of mankind) are likely to get blindsided by the next ice age, or a truely warming climate that we do not understand and therefor cannot react to properly.
Put another way; what if the climate IS warming at an alarming rate, but for reasons wholly unrelated to CO2? We will spend vast sums, destroy economies, further impoverish those who need the most developmental assistance, and have gained nothing. The notion that our climate is warming entirely or even largely due to CO2 is patently false, as demonstrated by numerous articles, some of which remain unpublished without explanation as in;http://brneurosci.org/co2.html,
and http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf, and has NEVER been proven to be true beyond simple correlation in the 20th century and some simple lab experiments involving small bottles filled with CO2 and a heat source. The computer models are hopeless, as the climategate data shows quite convincingly, and now we’re left with an agenda, rather than scientific pursuit.
Now, if Pamela wants to support such a theory, that is okay with me, but I’ll be damned if I don’t point out the self contradictions and inconsistencies that come from the statements she makes, and her side of the argument seems to live by.
Sorry to be so verbose, but your statement required a well thought out reply.
Cheers!

Here’s another example of a “snow” prediction gone bad here in Canada. You may have heard that Vancouver (in the Colonies) is hosting the 2010 winter Olympics in February.
This 2006 snow prediction is pretty funny.
A University of Calgary researcher… doubts that Whistler will have natural snow for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics due to global warming.
See here:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2006/10/20/skihills-warming.html
But golly gee look what happened:
Snowiest month on record NOVEMBER 2009
See here:
http://www.whistlerblackcomb.com/weather/snowreport/index.htm
And here:
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Whistler+Blackcomb+sets+November+snow+record/2290797/story.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3a+canwest%2fF259+(Vancouver+Sun+-+News+%2f+Vancouver
Needless to say the snow could indeed melt before the Olympics in a few weeks.

Caleb (08:10:51) : Wakefield Tolbert (06:35:34) : (And here we leave what you can prove, and enter the landscape of lore: The excess population may have headed into Hudson Bay and mingled with the Cree, or even headed further south.) (The Mandan tribe, along the shores of the Missouri River, was pretty much wiped out by small pox in the 1800’s, but apparently had many members with blue eyes.) Fascinating, Caleb, never occurred to me where they may have gone. Barry Fell, A prof. at Harvard, a while back, has a few books on stone inscriptions, of European origin in the US, of pre-1492 times. He contends the Vikings did extensive copper trading with natives in the Michigan area, supplying the key ingredient for the Bronze Age across the pond. IIRC, he documented inscriptions as far west as the Rockies.

“Not sure about grapes in Britain. That’s rather far north, and even with moderated temps due to the North Sea, too much cloud cover, I’d think. Grapes like full sun and warm days”
One can grow grapes in many temperate climates. The key to the Medeval UK grape production was its quality. The vinters in the UK produced some of the highest quality wines in Western Europe during this period (10th to 13th Centuries). Thier wines were so good that the French barred thier importation. And as you said, high quality grapes need plenty of sun, and warm temps. One would think that the maritime climate of the UK would preclude this. All we can assume is that the UK enjoyed a period where summers were very hot and mostly dry. The winters were probably mild as well.
One last thing, anthropologists discovered that as far North as the Scottish Highlands as well as the higher elevations of Norway, cultivation of grain crops took place during the later decades of the MWP. This indicates that the warm mild climate was more than enough to compensate for the poor soil conditions.

“Gavin concluded that this proves it is as warm in England now as in Roman times. What do you say to that?”
I simply consider the source.

Spence_uk: “To give an example of why Dr Viner and Peter Hearnden are quite wrong about the science, here is a more thoughtful article published on UK snowfall by UK WeatherOnline:
http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/feature/2006/12/05_pe.htm
These give decadal figures for UK snowfall back to 1890. ”
It’s a good article, well worth two reads, that much we agree on. But, I think he’s actually only talking about December’s, not snowfall as a whole?

tallbloke (08:19:32) :
Suggest you part with some cash to find out for yourself. You don’t seem like the sort of chap who would take our word for it if we provided an analysis, and we’re not going to hand over Piers’ forecasts for free. So if you wanna play, you gotta pay.
Call it research.
What!!!!. The poor man was just asking for past predictions – Do You have to pay for those?
All that is needed is Corbyn’s predictions for WEATHER for a number of years – preferably consecutive to eliminate cherries. Is no one willing to provide that.
Free the data – free the code!!!!

Pamela Gray said “The idea that climate is an average of weather is not correct.”
That statement is nuts (primarily because such a statement is useless).
Climate IS weather! It is nothing else.
Now you may push your definition to the limit (mathematically) and see the error of your ways. Say we average “weather” (made up of temperatures highs and lows, and precipitation forms and amounts (and medians, standard deviations, etc, for all these), along with cloud formations, wind speed and direction–all components that weather includes) and what do you get? Well, taken over the history of the earth for one particular location, a single useless average value.
However, when one looks at weather bracked by periods of time within which these various weather indicators are relatively consistent, then we have some useful information–such that farmers, ranchers, commuters, campers, municipalities, etc. can plan their activities more effectively (on a smaller time scale), out to predictions of the next little ice age or Big Ice Age (on a much larger time scale).
The basic component of climate is weather, in all it’s glorious detail. And climate is nothing else.
Climate isn’t dictated by the fact you’re sitting in an air-conditioned home; it isn’t dictated by how much you were just shaken by that magnitude 6.0 earthquake. And it has nothing to do with what you’re wearing.
Certain plants can be found in a tropical climate because they have certain requirements of “weather” and their kind are perpetuated in that environment.
Another set of plants can be found in a temperate climate because they also have certain requirements of “weather” and their kind are also perpetuated in that environment.
Deserts connote weather that dictates the type of plants found there, while the extreme polar climates are typified by their lack of plants.
Change the attributes of weather to another climatic regime and new life forms follow as they respond to the weather. And these life forms extend beyond plants to animals, even to us humans.
But any way you look at it, climate IS weather. All of it.
It is the culmination of all the contributing factors that cause or control the weather.

Peter Herdsman:
What science are you discussing then? Seems to me you’re defending the statement made by the Meto Office back in February. Quote from Peter Stott “The famously cold winter of 1962/63 is now expected to occur about once every 1,000 years or more, compared with approximately every 100 to 200 years before 1850.”
Love to see you come back here and explain to me how a now 1-1000 year event may be unfolding 10 month after the Meto announced their Warmist Biased assessment of Winter 08/09:
http://www.meto.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2009/pr20090225.html
Pathetic science really?
Nice to see within a short while nature comes to bit them up the backside. Justice is swift I see. ;-| Well, still to unfold, but it further proves the link between the “Hale” Cycle of the Sun in Quiet Solar conditions altering the Regional Weather Patterns across Northern Europe. But let’s see what has happened come March ;-| I won’t talk to you about UV, Ozone, Planetary Waves, Ocean Cycles, as I know you won’t understand. You never did even after 3 years of our debating these topics. The reason being, you have only one agenda (and you always have), which is not about the science in anyway, but of imposing your Warming POV on others. In all honesty, I never recall you ever engaing in any scientific debate other than posting links to RealClimate, which I always showed were flawed. Other than that, you only ever raked up personal attacks on high profile members of the sceptical community, and cried Wolf every time the ground was pulled from under you. Shame on you.
Read the 131 Pages of my Solar Thread (you know where) and then come back to me with some intelligent questions, but I doubt you’ll have any. Do you? Neither do I.

P Gosselin (01:44:11) :
In the aftermath of Climategate, the CRU is one institute that has been rendered a complete laughing stock by a few sophomoric “scientists”.
Becoming more a reality every day. Bastardi sees it as nothing less than a climate war. I suggest that Met and CRU suffer now from career destroying hubris: an inability to say, “We were wrong.”

I love these Anglo posts. They attract commentators adept at the Mother Tongue. I especially liked the image of pre-stuffy Brits dressed in nothing but woad (purple dye for us colonists). Then there were kilts, and now snow pants and parkas. That’s got to be a telling trend.
And I enjoy the assertions that the Viking Greenland sales pitch was nothing but a real estate scam, painting Eric the Red as an early incarnation of Algore, or perhaps Marx (Groucho) in Cocoanuts:
Buy a lot
Any piece that we’ve got
Will increase ev’ry season.
Ask us why
Ev’ry one wants to lie
In the sun; there’s a reason.
Be all that as it may, I do think it would be quite proppa to stiffen your upper lips and give that rotter Gordon B. the old heave ho.