Met Office 2008 Forecast: Trend of Mild Winters Continues
Met Office, 25 September 2008: The Met Office forecast for the coming winter suggests it is, once again, likely to be milder than average. It is also likely that the coming winter will be drier than last year.
Reality Check: Winter of 2008/09 Coldest Winter For A Decade
Met Office, March 2009: Mean temperatures over the UK were 1.1 °C below the 1971-2000 average during December, 0.5 °C below average during January and 0.2 °C above average during February. The UK mean temperature for the winter was 3.2 °C, which is 0.5 °C below average, making it the coldest winter since 1996/97 (also 3.2 °C).
Met Office 2009 Forecast: Trend To Milder Winters To Continue, Snow And Frost Becoming Less Of A Feature
Met Office, 25 February 2009: Peter Stott, Climate Scientist at the Met Office, said: “Despite the cold winter this year, the trend to milder and wetter winters is expected to continue, with snow and frost becoming less of a feature in the future.
“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.”
Reality Check: Winter Of 2009/10 Coldest Winter For Over 30 Years
Met Office, 1 March 2010: Provisional figures from the Met Office show that the UK winter has been the coldest since 1978/79. The mean UK temperature was 1.5 °C, the lowest since 1978/79 when it was 1.2 °C.
Met Office July 2010: Climate Change Gradually But Steadily Reducing Probability Of Severe Winters In The UK
Ross Clark, Daily Express, 3 December 2010: ONE of the first tasks for the team conducting the Department for Transport’s “urgent review” into the inability of our transport system to cope with snow and ice will be to interview the cocky public figure who assured breakfast TV viewers last month that “I am pretty confident we will be OK” at keeping Britain moving this winter. They were uttered by Transport secretary Philip Hammond himself, who just a fortnight later is already being forced to eat humble pie… If you want a laugh I recommend reading the Resilience Of England’s Transport Systems In Winter, an interim report by the DfT published last July. It is shockingly complacent. Rather than look for solutions to snow-induced gridlock the authors seem intent on avoiding the issue. The Met Office assured them “the effect of climate change is to gradually but steadily reduce the probability of severe winters in the UK”.
Daily Express, 28 October 2010: IT’S a prediction that means this may be time to dig out the snow chains and thermal underwear. The Met Office, using data generated by a £33million supercomputer, claims Britain can stop worrying about a big freeze this year because we could be in for a milder winter than in past years… The new figures, which show a 60 per cent to 80 per cent chance of warmer-than-average temperatures this winter, were ridiculed last night by independent forecasters. The latest data comes in the form of a December to February temperature map on the Met Office’s website.
Reality Check: December 2010 “Almost Certain” To Be Coldest Since Records Began
The Independent, 18 December 2010: December 2010 is “almost certain” to be the coldest since records began in 1910, according to the Met Office.
Met Office Predicted A Warm Winter. Cheers Guys
John Walsh, The Independent, 19 January 2010: Some climatologists hint that the Office’s problem is political; its computer model of future weather behaviour habitually feeds in government-backed assumptions about climate change that aren’t borne out by the facts. To the Met Office, the weather’s always warmer than it really is, because it’s expecting it to be, because it expects climate change to wreak its stealthy havoc. If it really has had its thumb on the scales for the last decade, I’m afraid it deserves to be shown the door.
A Frozen Britain Turns The Heat Up On The Met Office
Paul Hudson, BBC Weather, 9 January 2010: Which begs other, rather important questions. Could the model, seemingly with an inability to predict colder seasons, have developed a warm bias, after such a long period of milder than average years? Experts I have spoken to tell me that this certainly is possible with such computer models. And if this is the case, what are the implications for the Hadley centre’s predictions for future global temperatures? Could they be affected by such a warm bias? If global temperatures were to fall in years to come would the computer model be capable of forecasting this?
A Period Of Humility And Silence Would Be Best For Met Office
Dominic Lawson, The Sunday Times, 10 January 2010: A period of humility and even silence would be particularly welcome from the Met Office, our leading institutional advocate of the perils of man-made global warming, which had promised a “barbecue summer” in 2009 and one of the “warmest winters on record”. In fact, the Met still asserts we are in the midst of an unusually warm winter — as one of its staffers sniffily protested in an internet posting to a newspaper last week: “This will be the warmest winter in living memory, the data has already been recorded. For your information, we take the highest 15 readings between November and March and then produce an average. As November was a very seasonally warm month, then all the data will come from those readings.”
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Who are you going to believe, the Met or your lying eyes?
O/T but have you seen this?
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC1012/S00054/climate-science-coalition-vindicated.htm
Meanwhile, in sunny Australia where it is (supposed to be) summer:
Bitter summer freeze bites eastern states as summer gives way to snow and cold
Oops! Reference did not show:
http://www.news.com.au/national/bitter-summer-freeze-bites-eastern-states-as-summer-gives-way-to-snow-and-cold/story-e6frfkvr-1225974173962#ixzz18gazeBfF
Was this a joke? Surely it was…….!
Here in northern England the local weatherman, Paul Hudson, tonight said that the average temperature at the weather station at RAF Leeming was -9.8C for December. Our previous two coldest winters were in 1981 and 1963 and this is colder by far.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/
You couldn’t make it up!
It’s not just seasonal predictions that the Met/BBC get wrong – they regularly wrongly predict temperatures only a few hours ahead and even AFTER the event! The underselling of cold weather is the norm over here, because these government-funded quangos are merely towing the party (government) line on AGW. For example, the minimum night temperatures over the past 3 nights in my region (NW England) were “predicted” to fall between 0 deg C to -4 deg C (worst case). In reality, -10 to -14 deg C were actually recorded in my town, which is on the coast. At 10 am today, the temperature was still down to -10 deg C. These “errors” are never correct in retrospect, but are merely repeated.
“This will be the warmest winter in living memory, the data has already been recorded. For your information, we take the highest 15 readings between November and March and then produce an average. As November was a very seasonally warm month, then all the data will come from those readings.”
_____________________________________________________________
This has satire written all over it, yet some people seem unsure whether or not to take it seriously. That, in itself, speaks volumes…..
See what happens when science is hi-jacked by those persuing a political agenda?
J Knight
“Unelect these fools, my British cousins, and quit buying global warming propaganda rags like the Telegraph and Independant. ”
Unfortunately, all the major parties have swallowed CAGW whole. There is no alternative with a prayer of being elected.
Similarly, although The Independent, The Guardian and the BBC are the most evangelical about CAGW, all the newspapers and all the TV stations default to the warmist position. Despite having two prominent warmist writers plus cut and paste of any old garbage press release about polar bears, The Telegraph has Delingpole, who alone makes it the most sceptical of the broadsheets. The Mail has Booker which makes it the only other paper to routinely run any sceptical stories – but even then most of it’s coverage is as unthinkingly warmist as everyone else’s.
Weather is not climate, but the British People are getting a solid dose of cold.
Somehow I figure the poll numbers are going to reflect this spot of weather…
Ian L. McQueen says:
December 20, 2010 at 9:14 am
Misled would indicate to me that the practice had ceased. Misleads that it continues. I bow to your judgement.
Sorry if already mentioned:-
“Met Office data suggests mild winter but don’t forget last year”
“Its “Barbecue Summer” was a washout while its “mild winter” was the coldest for 31 years, so you might be forgiven for taking the Met Office’s latest prediction with a pinch of salt.”
By Andy Bloxham 7:30AM BST 28 Oct 2010
Notice, data not forecast!
“Although the Met Office no longer issues long-term forecasts, their latest data suggest a high probability of a warmer winter for London, the East of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.”
“As well as the milder winter, the computer concluded that almost all of Britain had a 40 to 60% of being drier than normal, with only the south coast more likely to see normal amounts of rain.”
“However, the Met Office warned that the figure were only part of the data used to build predictions for December, January and February’s weather but do not include such influential factors as the El Nino-La Nina high-low pressure system in the Pacific Ocean and the North Atlantic Oscillation, which partly governs the winds and storms which arrive in Britain from the west.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/8090325/Met-Office-data-suggests-mild-winter-but-dont-forget-last-year.html
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. How much do we pay these people? Anyway I’d better go and put another jumper on. brrrr
old44 says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
December 20, 2010 at 1:03 pm
Ian L. McQueen says:
December 20, 2010 at 9:14 am
Sorry
Misled would indicate to me that the practice had ceased. Misleads that it continues. I bow to your judgement. Should be “Has misled”? result of lack of space for headlines.
There is a completely logical explanation for the persistance of “Despite the cold winter this year, the trend to milder and wetter winters is expected to continue, with snow and frost becoming less of a feature in the future.”
It enables the transition from the “Global Warming” script to move on to the “Climate Disruption” script. Only if “warming” is the expected mode can the cold be described as a “disruption”!
All that money going to research how to force change in public attitudes is not wasted.
I quote in part from Roger Harrabin article in BBC NEWS on January 16,2010 called MET OFFICE DEBATES LONGER TERM FORECASTShttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8462890.stm
“The UK Met Office is debating what to do with its long-term and seasonal forecasting after criticism for failing to predict extreme weather.
Some experts say the Met Office should stop longer-term forecasting because it damages the organisation’s reputation.
Others maintain that communication of the forecasts must be improved.
The Met Office has been criticised for failing to predict in its seasonal forecasts the UK would suffer this cold winter or the last three wet summers.
After being rapped for its now notorious “barbecue summer” press release, the winter forecast was expressed in probabilistic terms, with a 66% likelihood that the winter would be warmer than average and a one in seven chance that it would be colder.
The Met Office has now admitted to BBC News that its annual global mean forecast predicted temperatures higher than actual temperatures for nine years out of the last 10. ”
Has anything changed?
There are much more reliable weather forecast sites, so why are we poor taxpayers supporting the Met Office? Their accuracy, if the nonsense spouted on the BBC is included, is below random, i.e., noise. I believe they are just one more example of the complacency that sets in when an organisation is publicly funded (wherein lies the solution).
Booker also writes for The Telegraph.
Brian H says:
December 20, 2010 at 10:41 am
Dr. P.;
“begging the question” is indeed relevant, but you’re not using it properly. It means committing a tautology, assuming the conclusion in the premises.
===========
Thanks for pointing that out Brian H. The misuse of “begging the question” deserves correcting every time it occurs, as its use has become endemic in the English-speaking world. To beg the question is to commit a specific fallacy in logic, as you state, more commonly referred to as the circular argument. People ought to be using the phrase “to raise the question,” in the context used by Dr. P.
Given there is a perfectly usable phrase available (‘to raise the question’), the English language gains nothing by conflating the two phrases to mean the same thing.
Sorry for the lesson in informal logic. It’s a personal pet peeve of mine.
The Met Office is the same organization that pushes the 4 degrees rise by 2060.
If anyone has not looked at how insane 4 C by 2060 is, a simple exercise will do. If we are going to warm 4 degrees C by 2060, it means 4 degrees warming in the next 50 years or a rate of warming 4/50 or 0.08 C per year. Our current rate of warming trend [ least square trend slope ]since 2001 is 0.0042 C/year according to WOODFORTREES COMPOSITE INDEX This means that they are telling us that the globe will warm or 0.08/0.0042 or 19 times faster than today or the last 10 years. These people really do have global warming fever of the worst kind and it looks incurable. What is the cure for this kind of non science from a government run organization.
CRS, Dr.P.H. says:
December 20, 2010 at 11:22 am
Exeter today:
“Hundreds of people have been working to minimise the disruption caused by the snow and ice in Devon but forecasters have warned there could be worse to come.
Exeter was covered by a couple of inches of snow during the early hours of Saturday morning and there was more snow on higher ground.
And the Met Office is expecting a similar amount of snow to fall today, followed by more snow later in the week. Overnight temperatures dropped to -13C (8.6F) overnight on Saturday and are expected to be around -5C (23F) during the night over the coming days.”
CRS, Dr.P.H…
And come it did,this morning woke to 8 inch’s of snow here in Exeter
Cars and lorries having great problems moving.Met O got it right with the fact snow was coming it’s just the amount and intensity that they got wrong..oh and our now famous Haldon Hill fiasco occured again with lorrys stuck and gritters and snowploughs stuck behind them.All this in the warmist part of the UK..for the third winter on the trot
Henry chance says:
December 20, 2010 at 12:24 pm
The real reason Santa won’t be coming…
http://www.private-eye.co.uk/pictures/covers/full/1122_big.jpg
DaveE.
One way you can make difference is when your next prospective local council or parliamentary candidate knocks on your door, ask him/her to initial one of two alternatives:
I will / will not support increase in taxex related to the GW / climate change.
Then vote accordingly, and if elected hold him/her to account.
The UK Met Office is focused on global issues and hence this year has been pushing the global line that ‘2010 is the hottest ever’. This may be true or not, but it shows what many people in theUK are beginning to suspect, that it has neglected its primary purpose of giving the UK a clear indication of all local weather issues which may affect their lives. Hence the lamentably inaccurate forecasts for winter conditions. If they are set on proving global warming by any statistical scraping methods, they are not concerning themselves with cold weather, which is where most of the climate hurt in the UK comes from.
It would take a political decision at the highest levels to stop funding for the single-issue Met Office activities related to the UNO IPCC supranational entity, and to re-establish funding towards better all round locally meaningful climate science.
The Dominic Lawson quote of a MetOffice staffer is likely a steaming-pile of $#*%. What’s with journalists these days quoting blog postings and uncorroborated sources. I’d be really surprised if “Tony from Norwich” exists.