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
Phillip Bratby (11:38:22) :
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
Thank you Phillip, you got in just ahead of me. Why don’t y’all mosey on over there and have a look? You might get the chance to wind up ‘slioch’ for whom this article will be a red rag to a bull. He’ll be along for a rant shortly, I have no doubt!
Our newspaper reported today that our area averages 28F in normal Decembers, last month average was 17F. Quite a drop! Fifth coldest December in history.
sorry anthony the words i want to use about the met office are banned , so lets just say they are very Foolish
Sam:
Oh yes, Slioch. When hell freezes over it’ll still be warm for him! It must be nice and warm where he is in Scotland.
P Walker (11:07:59) :
Well in a way Weather Channel isn’t quite lying. One station in southern Greenland did report +10 C 1200 Z today which is 50 F. To judge from the wind strength and direction this is due to Föhn effect (Chinook to North Americans). Other stations in SW Greenland reported temperature in the high 20’s or low 30’s, which is indeed rather warm for the time of year, though by no means extreme. Coastal SW Greenland is warmed by a branch of the Gulf Stream and usually does not get extremely cold in winter.
“Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.”
-Niels Bohr
OT
Pope urges lifestyle changes to save environment
“The pope and his predecessor John Paul have put the Vatican firmly on an environmentalist footing. Last month, in a message sent to heads of state and international organizations, the pope called on rich nations to acknowledge responsibility for the environmental crisis and shed consumerism.”
…said the man in the golden hat.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6000G220100101
Oh Really? I just looked up Cairngorm mountain range mentioned in the article in Wikipedia to get a little more background and there is a section titled “Man-Made Threats”
“The effects of Climate Change are likely to be seen first in areas such as the Cairngorms that are at the edge of the range of possibilities for the latitude where they are located. The Cairngorms represents an unusually cold area of mountains in a maritime climate at 57 degrees North. It would be theoretically possible for the climate to become warmer and wetter, or drier under present climate change models. The extent to which this is a man-made threat is in little doubt, and is the over-riding concern for the long-term conservation of this area. Ptarmigan has been considered as an indicator species for this process, although the natural population cycles of this bird do not seem to have been disrupted as yet.
Other man-made threats include the problems of popularity in a country with limited wilderness resources and a large, relatively affluent urban population. These include various types of recreation and the associated trampling damage and erosion, disturbance, litter and threats to water quality.”
Huh?
yr.no is a good weather service. But there is little doubt about their AGW correctness…
“Well in a way Weather Channel isn’t quite lying. ”
I often see periods of down-slope winds being cited as evidence of “Global Warming” by people who don’t understand the principal. Those high average temperatures are evidence that the wind blew more from a higher altitude location toward a lower altitude location than it normally does. It is simply an indicator of wind direction, not “Global Warming”.
We can get the same where I live when the winds blow down out of the Sierra Nevada in an offshore flow. If a somewhat persistent pattern sets up and we get more of those days than usual, our average temperature for the month will be higher than usual but only as a result of wind direction.
From the MET
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/science/creating/improvements.html
How our forecasts have improved
Our three-day forecasts are now as accurate as our one-day forecasts were 20 years ago. (Translation: we were wrong 20 years ago and we are just as wrong now)
In addition to improving the accuracy of the one- to five-day forecast, research has enabled us to make forecasts that were previously impossible. (Comment: should be – research has enabled us to make forecasts that are unbelievable)
•We employ around 1,800 people at 60 sites across the world, most (about 1,400) working out of our headquarters at Exeter.
•450 work in Research Science
•730 in Forecasting and Observations
•290 in IT
•40 in sales marketing and business development
•280 in corporate and business support functions like Human Resources, Finance, Procurement and Communications
Unbelievable.
P Walker (11:07:59) :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 .
I saw that, too. “This is how record lows can be caused by global warming…” They said that the high pressure system over Greenland is “anomalous.” I don’t know if that’s true or not but I’m sure they probably left something out.
What is their excuse? Have they written any BS articles yet to explain away this winter as an “anomaly”?
They have already. In a way.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL041188.shtml
It has this gem
“We demonstrate that the anthropogenic impact in 2008 was to warm the region’s temperatures, but that it was overwhelmed by a particularly strong bout of naturally-induced cooling…”
Did you get that? There has been anthropogenic warming – it is just ‘hidden’ by the cold.
-29F this AM-And the low record falls-time to get the bubble mixture out and teach/show the grand kids how the bubbles freeze up. Good ice and the quest beings for the 15″ perch….
“Phillip Bratby (12:01:17) :
Sam:
Oh yes, Slioch. When hell freezes over it’ll still be warm for him! It must be nice and warm where he is in Scotland.”
Talked to one of my BILs in Scotland just last night and he was saying the cold is unbelievable.
crosspatch (11:04:58) :
It’s interesting to see Bastardi and Corbyn be in rough agreement on the detailed weather forecast, although they use different techniques. In a 30th December blog, Bastardi rips into the Met Office and Hadley.
The Met Office is now a busted flush.
Not only does it consistently predict warmist long-term forecasts, it actually gets +24 hour temperature forecasts wrong. The MO forecasts for my part of the world are consistently +3 degrees celsius above actual, some times they are out (and always positive) by +5 degrees. This is compared to both of my expensive German Min-Max thermometers (shielded against wind chill etc) and both of our car’s temp read-outs – which are surprisingly accurate.
And of course, there is also the real world: Fyvie Loch, – 20 miles north of Aberdeen, is now sufficiently frozen to bear the weight of both a golden retriever and 20 year old son: (I experimented with both specimens on the 31st of Dec)….
We noted footprints across the widest span of Fyvie Loch.
http://www.fyviecastle.com/
This is unusual, at least for the last 25 years.
There is something seriously wrong with the Met Office. Perhaps things changed for the worse when it took on a WWF activist as its director and added ‘Climate Change’ to its title.
The MO has gone from a reputable organ of the Ministry of Defense to a running dog of scientific fashion.
It can no longer be trusted.
Phillip Bratby (12:01:17) :
Sam:
Oh yes, Slioch. When hell freezes over it’ll still be warm for him! It must be nice and warm where he is in Scotland.
Phillip: Nowhere in Scotland is warm at the moment, believe me. Especially not where he is if my information is correct!
that followed ITS earlier inaccurate prediction
There is no need for an apostrophe!
Is anyone keeping a MET anomaly graph (MET prediction vs. actual occurence)?
As a U.S. Federal Meteorologist for 30-years, what we are seeing is much more than “weather is not climate”.
Stable and highly amplified atmospheric blocking is developing around the
entire Northern Hemisphere.
This will likely result in the most prolonged, deadliest, and extreme cold
seen since the GREAT winters of 1976/77 and 1977/78.
The Central and Eastern United States, northern Europe, Russia, and China
will be nearly simultaneously decending into a DEEP FREEZE.
The extreme power and energy demand for heat will have the “potential” to
drive the Economy back into Global Recession.
Many lives will certainly be lost due to this Historic Cold.
Heads up to Joe Bastardi on this one.
The AGW agenda and lies have been exposed.
Nature is about to crush them.
Sam:
I wonder how Slioch keeps warm then. He couldn’t possibly use fossil fuel derived electricity or burn gas, oil or coal; wind turbines don’t work in cold still air. Perhaps he’s a nuclear fan.
If we do have severe cold weather, how will this change anything. After all, the term “Global Warming” has already been dropped in favour of “Climate Change”, and if we have a bad spell of cold weather, it’s still climate change and we will need expertise to save the world. Now I wonder what they can tax on the grounds that it has caused cooling?
And it’s snowing heavily here in Edinburgh yet again. 2 and a half weeks of sleet or snow almost every day, and no end in sight. Not quite 1963, but the worst prolonged spell of this type of weather I can remember.
Oh, weather is not climate etc etc….
The two key metrics are how much sulfur the eruption produces and how energetic the eruption is (does the plume get high enough to inject the sulfur into the stratosphere where it has a long residence time to prolong its cooling effect.
It will take some time to evaluate if the eruption is significant in either of those regards.
Keep in mind that on a typical day there are several volcanoes world wide going through some sort of eruption phase, it is just that many are in very remote locations and are generally ignored by the media unless the eruption is spectacular or happens to effect air traffic corridors or a nearby population center.
Larry