Have a look at these two juxtaposed news clips from the UK Daily Mail, one from October 28th, 2010, the other from November 28th, 2010.
and here’s today’s news:
Now have a look at what the Met Office issued on 10-28-2010:
That missive comes from this page where they gave up on seasonal outlooks, but they don’t actually tell you where you can find the “monthly outlook” forecast.
A search for “monthly outlook” yields nothing, pretty lame. But, there are some suggestions it may be a paid service.
Anybody know where to find it?
In other news, new records have been set.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2010/pr20101128.html
Big chill breaks November temperature records
28 November 2010
Last night saw November minimum temperature records fall across the country. Most notably both Wales and Northern Ireland recorded the coldest November night since records began. In Wales, temperatures fell to -18.0 °C at Llysdinam, near Llandrindod Wells, Powys. Northern Ireland recorded -9.5 °C at Loch Fea.
Scotland recorded minimum temperature of -15.3 °C at Loch Glascarnoch, whilst England recorded -13.5 °C at Topcliffe in North Yorkshire.
The UK’s lowest ever recorded temperature in November was – 23.3 °C recorded in Braemar, in the Scottish Highlands, on November 14, 1919.
The cold and snow is expected to continue to affect many parts of the UK today and through the coming week. Met Office forecasters are warning of further severe frosts, snow and icy conditions. The north-easterly winds, with a significant wind chill will also make it feel bitterly cold as daytime temperatures struggle to rise above freezing.
Met Office warnings and advisories of severe weather for snow and icy roads are in force for parts of northern and eastern England, parts of Scotland and Northern Ireland. Further snowfall is expected through Scotland and the north east on Sunday.
Met Office Chief Forecaster, Steve Willington said: “The very low overnight temperatures we have seen are likely to be repeated through the coming week as the cold and snowy weather continues. As winds increase into next week, it will feel increasingly cold with a significant wind chill to contend with by day and night.”
“Icy roads and snow will be a risk for many, and the public are advised to stay up to date with the forecast to make sure they have the latest information.”
Only slightly OT but I see the UAH temperature graphs haven’t been updating for the last few days. Anyone have any idea what the problem is? Satellite or equipment problems?
Bob Tisdale says: November 28, 2010 at 3:48 pm
David, UK says: “A sadly misguided and zealous Green friend of mine told me the other day that the cold is due to the slowing down of the Gulf stream…”
And recently I was told that the Gulf oil spill would result in a slowing of the Gulf Stream and cause a cool winter for Europe.
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Nah! I have it on good authority – The oil spill would make the Gulf Stream more slippery- it would speed it up. I predict a warmer winter in Europe!
Doug
The MET was right! I am having a barbeque winter… no matter how much snow I need to shovel to reach the grill.
No snow yet, but, I’m amazed how poorly charcoal fired grills cook during the winter. There’s just too much dissipation of heat.
The Met office will continue to say the winter will be milder than normal, until the winter actually is warmer than normal. It is a statistical certainty that this will happen sooner or later, most likely sooner than later. At that point they will crow about their accurate prediction, and there will be news report after news report about this being proof that global warming is actually happening, and everybody is going to die.
If I had the button to punch in front of me that would halt all public funding for climate related research I would push it.
Other sciences have the genuine ability to produce real benefit from research.
Perhaps after all of those who have been perpertrating the AGW farce are no longer involved in science a return to some limited research could proceed.
The predictions of the Met Office are about as believable as my local council (Edinburgh, Scotland) anouncing that it had gritters out on the roads 24/7 to deal with the several inches of global warming currently sitting and freezing on the ground.
Well, I had to trundle around a bit yesterday and on main roads too and if they were gritted at any point in the last 48 hours then my name is Al Gore.
The MET office needs to keep up the bad good work. They are doing a wonderful job indeed of demonstrating to the general public how off the mark the whole AGW theory is.
Maybe we need a Nobble Prize for forecasting?
Just to make the northern people jealous and keep a perspective that weather is chaotic, in Greece we are having the warmest November for decades. It is 21 degrees day and night outside, all due to southern winds which bring air from Africa.
Five day fore cast of the week gives more of the same, with a bit of cooling at night (12-16C minimums) some nights. In Crete they have 27 C maximum.
We frost-backs have just come out of an unseasonable three week long deep freeze in western Canada. Some 10 days ago we had a day time high of -27C versus the long term daily average of +1C for this time of year. Conversely the eastern Canadian arctic has been unseasonably warm. Living in a continental climate, to the east of the Rockies, the temperature, on any particular day can easily be 15 to 20 deg C higher or lower, relative to the long term climatic average. That is the nature of weather. This is why I have such a difficulty with the incessant alarm over the ecosystem in the N. Hemisphere being stressed by a positive change of 1-3degC to the long term average temperature. This ecosystem is adapted to withstand much larger daily temperature variation on any particular day from year to year. A positive drift in the long term average temperature just does not seem to me to represent a real or significant threat. However, if increased CO2 resulted in a significant long term change in precipitation, or in the annual number of frost free days, this would be significant.
anthony if they used your dartboard method they might actually get one right occasionally
Time for the venerable ghost of Charles Dickens to start writing some more tales.
Check out the latest London forecast. Brrrrrr.
http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=London,%20United%20Kingdom&wuSelect=WEATHER
And on the Emerald Isle where it is currently 19 degrees F in Dublin!
http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=Dublin,%20Ireland&wuSelect=WEATHER
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
David, UK says:
November 28, 2010 at 2:17 pm
“A sadly misguided and zealous Green friend of mine …………
Familiar scenario, people?”
========================================================
Yeh, it used to be, but now I’ve no misguided green friends. Might have something to do with me just pointing and laughing at them now. There was a few that did allow me to expose them to a different perspective. And, now, while still friends, they are no longer misguided greenies. 🙂
I really don’t think the Daily Mail should be used as sources for WUWT, it has a terrible reputation for scaremongering and bad reporting aimed at it’s elderly readership, like my mother. It’s rather worrying that WUWT readers also read it …
For instance, on the page where the Daily Mail got it’s seasonal forecast it says in big letters “Don’t use this for seasonal forecasts” … so they did. Go figure.
The monthly forecasts have been ok up to now for the Metoffice, it did forecast this cold snap.
Andy
Who do you believe?
The BBC weather forecast for Dublin today (Mon 29th) says a minimum of 0 degC (from the Met office).
The current reading at Dublin airport, only 5 miles north and a similar distance from the coast at 6:00am GMT is -7 degC.
Only slightly wrong??
What Tallbloke didn’t mention is that Topcliffe is an airfield site.
DaveE.
I live in Milford Haven, Wales, UK. This place is as far west as Truro in Cornwall. The outside temperature over the last 24 hours has not exceeded 0C and is currently -4C. I have lived here 7 years and not experienced this level of cold in November. Back in February this year we did get -7C.
During this year, 2010, I can confirm we had snow in January, February, March and November and it looks like December too according to forcasts, yet the UK MET office claims this will the the “hottest year on record” !!!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11841368
I really don’t know what the Met Office is up to.
My local met station just three miles away is one to the reporting stations for the shipping forecasts.
And I can access its forecast updated regularly on line.
Some years ago I gave up on its five day forecast.
But my credulity in its current 24 hour forecast is now somewhat stretched.
At 06:08 GMT today it reported temperature as 3 degrees C, my local instruments say about minus 2. Which is why the snow underfoot has frozen into a treacherous skating rink.
It is unusually cold here, and I have been watching their 3 hr forecasts with interest, in general they seem to be overestimating by about 2 degrees C.
Twenty years ago I would have simply phoned them up and spoken to the Met Officer but you cannot do that now, you have to go thru London HQ and never get a direct answer.
So WUWT?
Progress I suppose.
Kindest Regards.
In defence of the Met Office, I would like to point out that their forecast for the next 84 hours is always excellent. Not surprising when a petaflop computer is available to do all the calculations.
84 hours is the point , anything over 84 hours and you have no chance. The starting conditions are not known well enough, this leads to more and more uncertainty if the forecast.
I guessing but I think 84 hours is the limit in terms of an accurate forecast.
Brian H says:
November 28, 2010 at 4:17 pm
Well, knock me down with a feather. What a brilliant and cheap idea. We have ceiling fans in most rooms but never thought to use them in winter to keep the warm air down here. Will definitely do that next winter (we are in Oz).
The UK met office sold their corporate soul for CAGW gold, it was showered upon them enabling them to purchase new luxury buildings and super computers and extra staff and a very comfortable lifestyle for those at the top, a typical useless bureaucracy of sell outs and bunglers.
There is always a high price to be paid for selling out though, the met office stooges had to toe the party line, forecasts had to toe the party line and executive minders were brought on board to ensure the party line was followed. The met office purchased a very expensive super computer which they promised would provide unparalleled accuracy and detail, what they failed to appreciate was of the maxim GIGO so the product was worthless but even that didnt matter because following the party line was more important that honesty and truthfulness.
We in the UK have witnessed a national tragedy and humiliation as famous and loved national institutions have been subverted and destroyed one after the other, institutions that formed and shaped the modern world have been eaten from the inside until only a shell remains. The met office is now paying the price, the heaviest of prices for deciding to sell its soul but we all share in their shame and humiliation, we are the owners of the met office and our pride has been replaced by shame at the actions of those entrusted to care for and build upon the wonderful legacy that our forebears built in centuries past.
The UK met office is a joke but who among us is laughing? Our once trusted and respected national institution that spawned the worlds meteorological bodies is now a pathetic joke whose sole aim it seems is to consume the hundreds of millions of pounds it sold its very soul to possess. They say money cant buy you love, well it certainly cant buy respect.
Geoff Sharp says:
But that’s my point… at the moment we can’t. Generalities for future climate will be fine after another few decades when we’ve documented more with modern instrumentation, and gained a better understanding of cycles in play. Unfortunately, we will have to discard a large amount of the record due to the AGW’s polluting it by artificially depressing older temperatures.
By the way, is altering data not a crime against Science?
Stephen Brown at 2pm said
“Unfortunately I cannot afford to pay the newly-imposed increases in my energy bills, both electricity and gas, which have been Government-mandated in order to pay for all of the windmills that Huhne thinks will provide me with electricity.”
Please read the rest of what he said as this is coming to a country near you. There are 5 milion HOUSEHOLDS in the UK in fuel poverty and probably another 5 million who have severely cut back on their fuel use, and as a result are uncomfortable in their own homes during this cold weather. That’s probably 30 million people-half the UK population.
The cost of our fuel for travel is also sky high. This is largely caused by taxation of one kind or another including green taxes in recent times to fund hugely expensive and ineficient renewable energy projects. This is all to reach our legal obligations to reduce carbon, the only country in the entire world to voluntarily shackle themselves to this madness, with the subsequent damage to the competitiveness of our industry and huge cost to the population.
I live along the South coast from my namesake Stephen Brown and we havent had any snow as yet, although the Met office had forecast some for last friday causing the local authorities to scramble all available gritting lorries to keep a notorious hill free of the white stuff. Its been blocked the last two years running after the Met office failed to properly predict what was coming.
The hill is three miles away fro the Met office in Exeter. If they can’t properly forecast for the same day for places three miles away from them they certainly can’t forecast for the entire winter let alone for 100 years ahead.
On Saturday night I recorded minus 6C the coldest night since we moved here 10 years ago, let alone in November.
As I can’t aford to put on our central heating during the day I’m off to my study which I’ll try to keep warm whilst I write part two of one of my historic climate articles. Coincidentally it deals with the (non) reliabilty of global temperatures and SST’s-the Met office/Hadley core disciplines.
The stupidity of using Met office records as the basis to penalise the UK population and try to close down our industry just beggars belief.
(a very cold) Tonyb
It made headlines here in Finland that Global Warming is going to change the region to be colder in the coming years. HEADLINES! There is no ****ing limit to the bull**** they push! It was -21C this morning and that is about 21 degs from the average. Yea, weather is not climate… 😉
Just looking at that ENSO image on the right we can be pretty sure it isn’t going to be much warmer any time soon… Pretty huge La Nina going on.
I think the Mail and Telegraph articles refer to the probability maps on the Met site. Given the same forecaster is quoted in both articles my guess is that they looked up the Met probability map for Europe and from that picked out the % probability of below, normal and above for the coming 3 months.
If you search ‘probability map’ you will find it on the met site. If I’m reading them right they are still giving only a 20% (rising to max 40%) chance of colder than average winter in UK. Large parts of northern Europe are still getting a prediction of above average temperatures for the winter. They must be expecting things to pick up a lot in Jan! Either that or they use a computer with a built in warming bias. But I’m sure they wouldn’t do anything like that would they?
savethesharks says:
“November 28, 2010 at 9:37 pm
Time for the venerable ghost of Charles Dickens to start writing some more tales”
I wrote about the climate of Britain during the 19th century through the persective of the life and times of Charles Dickens. You can read it here.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/bah-humbug/
Tonyb