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
” The more is goes on snowing, tiddly pom, tiddly pom, the colder my toes are growing, tiddly pom.” Winnie The Pooh.
This British bear of very little brain had more brain than the entire Met office combined.
Meanwhile here in Stowe Vermont the forecast is for it to maybe get as cold as -40°F with winds of 50 MPH. It is very windy already and snowing; it is about 10°F. It is forecast to snow until Thursday. Oh bother !!!!!
To E.M. Smith, these are government workers we are talking about here. I suspect that many are less efficient than you are thinking. In my own work we have government (permanent) employees and contract staff, when the work has to be done or requires innovation a contract worker is used, where it is not important then it is given to a permanent, if it is to be reported in the in-house journal or some other publication then a contract worker does it but a permanent is there for the photo.
I apologise if this link has been posted.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1240082/It-gigantic-supercomputer-1-500-staff-170m-year-budget-So-does-Met-Office-wrong.html
Not until late November did the Met Office tone down its prediction by saying that there was a ’50 per cent chance’ of a mild winter.
Spinning a coin could have given the same result – not one you would expect from an organisation that spends nearly £170million a year, has 1,500 staff and a team of scientists operating a £30million supercomputer capable of 1,000 billion calculations every second, with a carbon footprint the size of a small town
> photon without a Higgs (11:15:39) :
> 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.
“Whoosh”… the sound of a tautology flying over your head. Yesterday (January 1st) was the first day of the 2010 decade. So it was obviously the coldest… and the hottest… and the median for the decade so far.
Peter Jones (08:01:41) :
If there is any fairness in the system, these agencies should have been told that their funding will be severely affected if they can’t do a better job with forcasting. If the predictions don’t allow you to do any planning, then you’re better off just observing and reporting on the weather.
Sadly, I think that the Met Office is doing exactly what the politicians, who desperately want cap-and-trade, have told them to do.
Giving an honest forecast would probably have cost them their funding if not their jobs. BTW, I have no sympathy for gutless apparatchiks who value their jobs over the truth.
Not the MET Office but the UK Government pretending to save the world again.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6973577.ece
“Twelve million low-energy light bulbs were posted to households over Christmas by an energy company as part of its legal obligation to cut carbon emissions, despite government advice that many would never be used.
Npower sent out the packages last month to escape a ban on issuing unsolicited bulbs, which came into force yesterday. The German-owned company saved millions of pounds by giving away the bulbs. Alternative ways of meeting its obligation, such as insulating homes, are much more effective but up to seven times more expensive.
It faced a fine of more than £40 million, or 10 per cent of its turnover, if it failed to meet its target for improving efficiency in homes under the carbon emissions reduction target scheme.
Households have received more than 180 million free or subsidised low-energy bulbs in the past 18 months. A survey in July by the Energy Saving Trust found that the average home had six unused ones lying in drawers and cupboards.
In 2008 the Government ordered the big energy companies to invest in measures for improving energy efficiency and cutting fuel poverty.
Companies can choose how to meet their obligations. Each measure they fund is given a score for the lifetime carbon savings that it achieves.
The scheme made assumptions about the usage of light bulbs that turned out to be wildly optimistic.
Companies were allowed to register immediate carbon savings from every bulb issued on the assumption that all recipients instantly installed them in some of their most intensively used light sockets. In reality, many people either stored the bulbs or threw them away, often because they were the wrong fitting or wattage. “
The problem is that there is no penalty for getting it wrong – they just say they need more money to buy a bigger, better computer, employ more researchers, etc.
Perhaps they should be made to dress for their prediction. If they say it will be a BBQ summer they should be made to ride their bikes (or walk) to work wearing summer clothes. If predicting a mild winter then they should be made to wear only mild winter clothes.
Perhaps then they would learn the difference between wishful thinking and real weather.
@Carsten:
Thanks! That’s exactly the kind of comparison that one looks for. So for a similar sized country in very similar location, we have numbers more or less in line with what I was proposing for the ‘after cuts’ size. Nice.
Get two more of these ( “3” is the magic number for “comps” – no idea why…) and put it in a write up. Show 1/2 to 2/3 budget savings. Put in a lead in chart showing Met Office failing to beat a “fair coin toss” and with Accuweather and Joe Bastardi comparative stats as “whipped cream on top”; present to “appropriate” Lord…
I foresee a spike in google searches for “MET Office”.
Try this google trend search for interesting seasonal effects:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22met+office%22%2C+bbq%2C+skiing&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
I would even say «Britain facing one of the most inefficient Met Offices in 100 years»
matt v. (07:59:46) :
I’ve been following the PDO for the better part of a decade, and correct me if I am wrong, but when the PDO is in a COOL regime, most of the continental US (all but SE) and most of Northern Europe get warmer. If the PDO went cool, then, expect warming to happen, at least what most of us experience.
I was WAY critical of the modelers, since the models were certainly not including the PDO, as of 5 years ago or so. It is so new, and even now they don’t really have any understanding of it at all. Hell, they don’t even have a clue what causes ENSO. They know THAT it happens, but not WHY? (i.e., why does the current flow the other way and where does the extra heat come from?)
The PDO regime went WARM early in the decade, and I am surprised to see it going cool again so soon. But I haven’t seen anything on it lately. I’ve had my mind on other things. Must be time to eddikait myself a bit more…
M.Simon
No matter what populists or number buffs start thier counts with, the fact remains, there was NO Year Zero, so the first decade of the modern era ended on Dec 31st 10 A.D. Every subsequent decade has ended with a year that includes a zero as the last digit, i.e 20, 150, 2000 etc. To call Dec 31st 2009 the last day of the “Noughties,” is to fly in the face of this inconvenient fact.
The MSM here in New Zealand, and no doubt elsewhere in the world, have fallen into the same routine that was trotted out ten years ago when they trumpeted the year 2000 as the beginning of the new millenium. Because people are tired of pointing out the error of their (the MSMs’ ) ways, the MSM continue on their merry way, promoting falsehoods and confusing the public with their ignorance.
Back on topic, the Met Service here in N.Z. must have been trained by their British counterparts. A high of 27 C was predicted for my area (Palmerston North) today. This would have been the first temperature over 25 C this summer (since Dec 22nd), but alas by my estimate it is lucky to be 21 C, if that. What’s 6 degrees C between friends. They also predicted rain for yesterday that didn’t eventuate either. May be they have one of those rotating dart-boards that the climatologists use, and the holiday staff don’t quite have the knack of spinning and throwing down pat like the regular staff would.
It is of no consequence though because we can rely on NIWA to make the appropriate adjustments later to bring those pesky “Palmy” numbers into line and save face for the the Met Service. Meanwhile holiday makers on this coast can escape to “Global Warming Land,” on the other side of the divide thanks to the Fohn/Chinook winds we call simply the NorWester. In the low 30’s (Celsius) over there. Just confirms the old adage, “If you don’t like weather, MOVE!” This natural dichotomy affects 2 thirds of N.Z. It does give us options when it comes to weather though.
Keep warm my northen mates. It isn’t shaping up as a hot summer here inspite of the east coast temperatures so far. The only cheery news for us has been an upswing in the SST’s around the coast of N.Z. in the past few weeks after 7 months of it being cold.
Thank you Mr. E.M.Smith.
I only have about 11 years in IT at 3 of the top 5 IT companies, my first guess was 100 should do it.
You should see what we managed with teams of 6-10.
I have had my own architecture firm and managing 6 highly productive brilliant architects is quite consuming – I can only hazard a guess re: the issues attempting to get 290 working in the same direction.
One wonders if some of those IT staff are somehow involved “fudging data” or otherwise making Harry’s life a bit crazier?
Yes, I realize “Harry’ is at UEACRU –
but then perhaps the MET is engaged similarly…
and has therefore gotten confused as to what data is “real” vs.”fudged”
and finds itself making forecasts from the wrong data set?
Wow, totally by coincidence I was over at WUWT, and found a great link to Reference: 450 skeptical peer reviewed papers, posted by Anthony on November 15th, and in the first 10 or so, I found this that discusses the PDO, among other factors. They apparently even included it in their model. Excellent!
My thanks to Andrew at Popular Technology. Hells yeah, Dude!
“Philip T. Downman (11:06:31) :
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.”
No worries – Danish police are used to pick him up. He’s not a fan of speed limits.
tty , Clive – Thanks .
Ian Cooper: “If you don’t like weather, MOVE!”
It’s been a great summer to holiday in my back yard – the Bay of Islands. Almost no rain since October as all the storms hit middle and southern NZ while we’ve sat under big fat anticyclones.
Tourists are welcome here, all you sufferers from global cooling.
This may be a cold winter but the AMSU daily temps seem to be rising in the last week or so. Apparently, somebodies enjoying warm weather.
matt v. (07:59:46) :
“The current cool winter is the start of many such cool winters for the next 20-30 years. I see serious crop losses in the Northern Hemisphere during the coming decades starting this year and now also in Europe and Asia [ last year Canada lost about 20 % of crops due to late very cold spring and lack of spring moisture ] . Global warming will be seen for what it really is, a very flawed science that has caused the world to misallocate vital resources.”
You are 100% correct.
And it is a travesty that we have been betrayed by the scientists who most have a say-so (the Met and NASA) and yet their political ideology offsets proper judgement.
We will survive however….and maybe we will learn.
In the meantime…get rid of these bozos: Mann, Schmidt, Hansen….all of them. They are USELESS.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Quote savethesharks (21:40:36) :
“You are 100% correct.
And it is a travesty that we have been betrayed by the scientists who most have a say-so (the Met and NASA) and yet their political ideology offsets proper judgement.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA”
I agree, Chris. But sadly I must also admit that nuclear physicists bear part of the responsibility for the current mess.
If they had recognized neutron repulsion in nuclear rest mass data, then solar and space scientists might not have been so insistent that the Sun is a ball of Hydrogen, and the variable nature of the Sun – Earth’s heat source – could have been taken into account.
Quote savethesharks (21:40:36) :
“You are 100% correct.
And it is a travesty that we have been betrayed by the scientists who most have a say-so (the Met and NASA) and yet their political ideology offsets proper judgement.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA”
I agree, Chris. But sadly I must also admit that nuclear physicists bear part of the responsibility for the current mess.
If they had recognized neutron repulsion in nuclear rest mass data, then solar and space scientists might not have been so insistent that the Sun is a ball of Hydrogen, and the variable nature of the Sun – Earth’s heat source – could have been taken into account.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Paul Vaughan (14:54:51) :
“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.”
Getting hard to take these people seriously.
LMAO – particularly considering the amount of resources they have (to accomplish so little).
Redirect ALL of the money-stream to Dr. Piers Corbyn and let him decide how taxpayers’ money should be spent productively on climate research.
UK is becoming a climate laughing-stock.
Agreed.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Beijing’s turn now.
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/149433/Snow-causes-travel-chaos-in-Beijing
M. Simon (16:23:45) : Populists start counting with “1″. Number buffs (and computer jocks) start with zero.
FORTRAN programmers start arrays at 1
C programmers start arrays at 0
ALGOL programmers start arrays at any number including negative…
I like FORTRAN, but my heart belongs to ALGOL: “Where would you like the decade to start, sir?”
GEEK Sidebar: The default array starting point actually has an impact on the compiler design. The hardware starts with empty memory locations, so it is a little easier to, by default, start an array at that empty zero point; and a little more efficient. Otherwise you always have to put a bit of code in that says “Memlocation+1” to start. “C” was written by efficiency geeks, so it starts with 0. FORTRAN was written by folks wanting to do math formulas so it starts with 1 (since that is what most real problem statements do: “Count how many trains?” does NOT go 0,1,2,3,4 the answer is 5 trains…) This makes the compiler a bit more complicated, but the day to day programming tasks are a bit easier (I declare an array of 5 items and count them 12 3 4 5 rather than the C way of 0 1 2 3 4 and needing to keep that straight in my head all the time…)
Then ALGOL comes along and says, basically, start an array anywhere you like, the compliler guy will get over it…
Since all those languages began, times have changed and the languages with them. Many compilers these days let you declare arrays that start wherever you like since dealing with negative numbers is common (FORTRAN even supports imaginary numbers…)
But their original biases remain in the basic language definitions… and in the minds of folks programming in those languages.
So it isn’t quite as simple as saying “computer jocks” start at 0.
And we won’t talk about COBOL, APL, PL/1, ADA, etc. It’s just too painful to take that path down memory lane. (And RPG is ‘right out’…) I still have bad dreams about the time I was assigned to an ADA project… Nor JOVIAL, the “evil twin” of ALGOL… (military real time embedded systems.. you know, things that go “whoooshh…. whirrrrr…thud BANG!” )
But yeah, “real people” tend to count starting with “1” and nerds with “0”.
(Me? I’m “location specific counting”. Like ALGOL, I can start counting anywhere I feel like starting… Sometimes I miss ALGOL. I downloaded the compiler, but I’ve not installed it. Not sure I want to make that retro leap…)
OBLIGATORY Climate / Weather Hook:
This, btw, is an example of the kind of thing that makes computer models “a problem”. No end of “bugs” pop up because the language expects an array to start at one point and the programmer expected it to start at another. It doesn’t help that folks have written some parts in one language and other parts in another language either.
So you have to go through every single line of every single program and “vet” it for proper declaration and then for proper usage with special attention paid to start number, end number and actual span. (i.e. did they declare it 5 long, then count from 1-5 when the computer had 0-4? Or declared 5 long then counted 0-5? Or declared 4 (thinking 0-4) and got 1-4? etc.
Until that is done, ALL computer code is just a basket of bugs waiting for you to descover the ‘edge case’ that tickles the bug. There are formal procedures to try to stamp out those bugs, but even they do not get them all.
And that, boys and girls, is why THIS geek drives a “classic” car with NO computer in it at all and a straight mechanical fuel injection system. No electricity need apply… I’ve had the “limp home” on blown oxygen sensor experience and friends had the ‘computer stops car’ issue. Just say no…
I certainly would not trust the fate of the world economy to a model. After all, look what the financial model wunderkind did with “mortgage derivatives”…
All computer models do is “inform our ignorance”. Either about the reality we do not completely understand (by divergence from reality) OR about the bug level of our code.