It’s not like there haven’t been clues. Like for example as I pointed out the Arctic Oscillation has gone strongly negative.
The article says:
“The cold weather comes despite the Met Office’s long range forecast, published, in October, of a mild winter. That followed it’s earlier inaccurate prediction of a “barbecue summer”, which then saw heavy rainfall and the wettest July for almost 100 years.”
Excerpts:
Britain is bracing itself for one of the coldest winters for a century with temperatures hitting minus 16 degrees Celsius, forecasters have warned.
They predicted no let up in the freezing snap until at least mid-January, with snow, ice and severe frosts dominating.
And the likelihood is that the second half of the month will be even colder.
Weather patterns were more like those in the late 1970s, experts said, while Met Office figures released on Monday are expected to show that the country is experiencing the coldest winter for up to 25 years.
On New Year’s Day 10 extreme weather warnings were in place, with heavy snow expected in northern England and Scotland.
Despite New Year celebrations passing off mostly unaffected by the weather, drivers in parts of the country, particularly areas of Northumberland, Cumbria and the Scottish Highlands, were warned not to travel unless absolutely necessary.
The continued freezing temperatures did not signal bad news for everyone however. CairnGorm Mountain said it has had its best Christmas holiday season in 14 years.
With heavy snow in the area, the resort said that over a four-day period following Christmas Day it has had more than 8,000 skiers and snowboarders using its runs – including 800 on New Year’s Eve.
h/t to David Corcoran
Not only that, yesterday held the record worldwide of being the coldest day of the current decade. In some areas that may be broken by today.
Nice article from the front page of the UK Met office about how things are worse than we thought!
It’s not hard to miss as it immediately follows the article about how cold this winter is.
If you can’t find at least half a dozen points to make fun of; you need to read WUWT and CA a lot more!
Here’s the link, enjoy.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2009/pr20091218b.html
Gee, if we get global cooling, can we put the developing countries on the hook to pay us hundreds of billions of dollars in “thermal debt” for “using up all the heat”?
REPLY: [ Just don’t “thread bomb”, ok? -mod]
☺ ☺ Ten-four. Would never do that. Clive
Bastardi is calling for a major snowstorm across Europe for next week.
If I were a local council in the UK, I would pay attention to what he has to say.
Danes, look out! Remember 1658 when Karl X of Sweden came over the sea ice. Any day Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden may come the same way.
The Weather Channel (US) just aired a segment in which they said that the frigid air in the US and Canada is being caused by an unusally strong high pressure ridge over Greenland , where the temps are in the fifties farenheit (supposedly) . Therefore the cold in the US is a result of global warming . Seriously . Of course they didn’t say anything about Europe . I used to trust TWC , but no longer .
@Me
“not hard to miss”
Doh!!!
Or here – http://www.snow-forecast.com/maps/static/scotland/last7days/snow – This site is aimed at skiers and is usually fairly accurate.
It’s official,this blog is too popular.
I posted a quick off-the-cuff quip after reading the 4 (that’s FOUR) comments ony to come back and find my sarky wisecrack at about 54th position.
ShrNfr (10:45:49) :
Not only that, yesterday held the record worldwide of being the coldest day of the current decade. In some areas that may be broken by today.
Please supply the link to this. I’m interested.
I don’t know about Denmark but one might be able to walk from Iceland to Greenland soon.
P walker, I just saw the same segment on the Weather Channel. You can tell with a lot of those guys that they have a hard time saying it. But, for some reason it is TWC’s line….
Jim Watson (07:31:23) :
“Sort of OT but Cryosphere Today just changed their current SH and NH sea ice charts from 1979-2000 mean to 1979-2008. Gives it a whole new perspective.”
that is interesting. obviously, the new range is regarded to be a better reference, implicitely acknowledging the dominant natural cycle.
another reason may have been the increasing doubts about northern temperature records and loads of data suggesting that northern europe and russia have been just as warm or even warmer in the 1930s.
Manatee cold mortality count…
Media:55
Fish and Wildlife Research Institute:72
A number of other carcasses were too decomposed to say.
http://research.myfwc.com/features/view_article.asp?id=33589
Hide the decline?
Crosspatch has got it.
This is setting up to be a doozie of a storm and a winter like Europe hasn’t seen since 1956 and the UK since 63. My neighbours here in SW France say that it snow to about 45cm and stayed for 3 weeks which when you live close to the bay of gascoigne is quite something.
Hold on to your AGW beliefs this is going to be one hell of a ride.
The met office don’t even give forecasts in the sense of “here’s what the weather will be like this winter.” They remain straddled on the fence, hedging as they do by tossing probabilities around like confetti – and then changing them in mid stream.
First it was 7 to 1 against a cold winter. Now, apparently a cold winter has been elevated to 45%. What the hell use is that? Doesn’t anyone see that even if the rest of winter were to miraculously warm, they can still claim something like 40% was cold. If the winter continues to be cold, they’ll just change the probabilites again.
I wouldn’t pay these confidence tricksters a penny (or a dime) of my money, but unfortunately they are funded by my taxes. It’s time they were put on a ship to antarctica and left there until they come to their senses.
Whether or not the weather is cold, the climate still warms, so we’re told.
This is OT…but I ran across an interesting comment from Powelineblog.com on some of the stuff done in the 1990s to develop a “consensus”
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/01/025294.php
It’s hardly an apology–but at least it looks like a sheepish grin!
http://release.theplatform.com/content.select?pid=5mCzgDf_lCZ3uKBDkKLY2_dqmD4_S0yF&UserName=Unknown
This is for the Met and all the warmers out there. Better luck next time. 🙂
Christopher Booker has it all in hand at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6924898/The-Met-Office-gives-us-the-warmist-weather.html?state=target#postacomment&postingId=6925094
What really annoys me and has done for nearly 2 years now has been the UK MetOff piping on about their wonderful £30m computer and their latest high resolution model both of which would allow them not only to forecast accurately for 10yrs ahead but the same model would forecast precipitation intensity 12 hrs ahead.
They haven’t forecast anything correctlty all year. The recent floods in Cumbria which were forecast by Accuweather.com and by WeatherAction.com were not forecast by this wonderful supercomputer. I wonder if anyone at the UK MOD has considered the usefulness of the Metoff to be worth the £millions a year it cost to run when they could buy better and cheaper forecasts elsewhere. I am just soooo pleased that I am not funding Brown’s utter stupidity out of my taxes.
Incidently, the Metoff forecast a TOP 5 warmist winter not just mild, Oh No.
If you want the most reliable weather forecasts for Northern Europe, especially Scandinavia, I recommend Norway’s.
http://www.yr.no
For ice cover, see also http://retro.met.no/kyst_og_hav/iskart.html
Manfred (11:20:02)
Another reason might be because the world ice area/extent (I’m not sure which it is) has been approaching the recent average with expansion in the south compensating for reduction in the north. With the north now also expanding they need to include the big loss years around 2005 – 2007 in order to keep the norm in line with requirements.