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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Paul Hudson (BBC) seems to be one of the lone sane voices at he BBC..
his blog article – ‘Whatever Happened to Global Warming’ may have even prompted the leaker/whistleblower…
(Paul Hudson received some of the emails concerning himself, a MONTH, before the rest were leaked)
As the ‘team’ complained about it amongst themselves and Michael Mann was going to have a word with Richard Black (BBC) to see what was going on (seem to consider the BBC a cheerleader for AGW)
From his current article –
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2010/12/are-severe-winters-here-to-sta.shtml
“In my blog ‘could the sun cast a shadow on global temperatures’ I wrote about how Australian scientist David Archibald was convinced that prolonged weak solar activity could mean much colder winters in future. He wrote his paper in February 2009.
Perhaps we all need to get used to colder winters across the UK in the next few years. “
It is literally like Alice Through the Looking Glass in the UK at present. The MET Office has been steadily politicised over the last 20 years through the appointment of Global Warming Activists to the senior positions – and has become an instrument of policy for the Eco-Fascist tendency: WWF, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth. The current Head of the MET office is I understand the former Director of Global Warming Policy at WWF (former postings on WUWT went into this).
We have no hope of rational energy policy in this country until the MET office has been cleansed of the warmist political agenda which curently dominates every aspect of their work and world-view. The problem is that the entire Science Establishment of the UK has been successfully infiltrated by the Warmists over the last 20 years – from the Royal Society on downwards; there is no hope of this changing because £billions of taxpayers cash has been funneled towards thousands of lecturers, professors and research establishments – all on the gravy train of Global Warming is for Real. All of those thousands of ‘scientists’ and meteorologists would literally be committing career suicide if they dared to suggest that all of this collective insanity / groupthink was remotely in question.
Is Peter Gibbs a new sceptic hero? I think so, and you can grab a signed photo of him from ebay!
http://blackswhitewash.com/2010/12/21/met-offices-peter-gibbs-says-we-cannot-predict-climate/
Roy said
Quote
The idea of construction an undersea power cable from Iceland to Britain to supply electricity generated from geo-thermal (and possibly also hydroelectric) power plants has been proposed at various times in the last few decades but nothing has been done.
Unquote
Seems that you have been doing the same as me and thinking the same way. The costs are so low (if designed that way), the locations so flexible and the delivery system so simple, it just blows you away that it will not be looked at.
There are many places in the world where is is extremely viable and effective. As you siad it can be mixed and matched with hydro power, hydrokinetic preferably.
It gives constant power 24/7. Yes there were some hiccups most notably The Geyers in Kalifornia but those were down to bad design/survey but fighters have taken over closed plants and reopened them.
Complaints are made about the cost and risk of drilling holes. Thats normal and good survey and distribution of steam supplies will mitigate risks. The closer to the source, the lower the drilling costs but greater risk but payback, wow.
“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.”
—–
Please note this is a spoof. It’s a guy like me who does not believe in AGW that wrote it. You really should update this post to note that it is not real.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1239908/Britains-big-freeze-hit-return-work-forecasters-issue-new-ice-alert-drivers.html
^^^^ That is a link to the source of that quote. Search for this post -( tony, norwich, norfolk, 3/1/2010 10:19) —— For fellow Americans they go Day/Month/Year so it would be 1/3/2010 to you and I when he made the post
Later on this guy admits it was a spoof.
I does our side no good to post wrong information.
I’m sure the models are excellent, for the first few hours of actual forcasts. But every day you add to them reduces accuracy by probably 25%, so that after 4 days, there can be no accuracy except by chance. And since climate models use the same code (why do the British say “codes” instead of “code”? It sounds like they’re trying to crack the Enigma machine or something, not write computer programs. It sounds strange to our American ears.) as weather models, you can’t expect a better result.
Another thing that bothers me about models. If you run the same model with the same parameters, say, 20 times, and get 20 different results, how can the model be predictive in any way?
I like this one from Goddard’s site –
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2010/12/21/met-office-chief-climate-scientist-has-difficulty-reading-maps/#more-12187
It looks like the Met Office does not share with the public what it gives to the government with respect weather forecasts and tells the opposite story to the public.
“Last October, the Met Office warned the Government that Britain is likely to experience a colder-than-average start to the winter. But long-term forecasts are still notoriously difficult to make with any accuracy, as the Met Office discovered with its “barbecue summer” prediction. Professor Slingo said: “The key message is that global warming continues.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/the-uk-may-be-cold-but-its-still-a-warm-world-says-met-office-chief-2165492.html
“But the official forecasters have said that this winter could be unusually mild and dry, with temperatures at least 2C more than last year’s big freeze in which snow and ice caused travel chaos across much of Britain.“
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/8090325/Met-Office-data-suggests-mild-winter-but-dont-forget-last-year.html
So who is fooling who and why?
But even more disconcerting is the following statement
“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”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/8090325/Met-Office-data-suggests-mild-winter-but-dont-forget-last-year.html
How could one possibly produce a realistic winter forecast by excluding the very factors that have caused the last 3 very cold winters for UK and Europe , namely AO. They will never produce anything credible with this kind of science.
As apparent from previous similar climate cycles, the current cold weather is likely to continue to March 2011, also the year 2011 will likely be a cool year and we are in for 20 years of cooler weather despite all the empty assurances of Prof. Slingo that global warming is happening. Who cares what the temperature is 100 years from now when you are just trying to survive and keep warm today.
I sent this email last year to the Met Office and got the following response.
I see your latest news on climate change is the following.
“Climate could warm to record levels in 2010
Recently released figures confirm that 2009 is expected to be the
fifth-warmest year on record. (10 December 2009)”
Another example of counting your chickens before the eggs hatch.
Do us all a favour look up the meaning of the word science in the
oxford dictionary.
By the way Anthropogenic Global Warming is only a theory.
Eimear #####
17
London
And Very Very Cold
Dear Eimear,
Thank you for your feedback regarding Climate Change
We are sorry to learn that you are unhappy with a service the Met Office is providing. In order to best deal with your correspondence it has been forwarded to the Customer Feedback Manager who will respond to you as soon as possible. Your reference number is ##########.
We are committed to dealing with your query quickly and accurately, although this will be subject to the complexity and nature of your enquiry.
If you have any further questions or need additional information please contact the Weather Desk on 0870 900 0100 where one of our advisors will be happy to help you. The number is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Yours sincerely,
Tara
Weather Desk Advisor
Met Office, FitzRoy Road, Exeter, Devon, EX1 3PB, United Kingdom.
Tel: 0870 900 0100 or +44 (0)1392 88 5680 Fax: 0870 900 5050 Email: enquiries@metoffice.gov.uk http://www.metoffice.gov.uk
Met Office Hadley Centre – No 1 in the world in the THES review of geosciences research centres
Your personal details will be stored in our database. The information will not be passed to any third parties. Please advise us if you do not wish your details to be stored. The Met Office is an Executive Agency of the UK Ministry of Defence and is registered under the Data Protection Act 1998.
lattitude had it correct. How can the Chairman of the Meteorogical Office hold so many posts in organisations with a political stance to global warming? How can there be trust in his organisation? This system is corrupt and it’s not just its data.
Just listen to this unbelievable crap from an obviously nervous “Dr” Vicky Pope at the Met. Office., broadcast on November 26th.
What an absolute twat.
At least John Humphries tries to tie her down a bit.
Sorry. She is just a twat.
Sorry – forgot to post the link. It’s here.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9231000/9231192.stm
Does not detract from her twatishness.
The deeper you dig into the carbon industry cess pit …
Humility at the Met office are you joking. It is a political organisation. It now looks as daft as other political organisations.
This was their joint press release last year, it contains statements that are contradicted by their own science. The statement blamed the 2007 UK floods on climate change, but their own research found no evidence.
I wrote to them and asked what was going on?, and received a reply from the Met office that was intentionally unintelligible, and no reply at all from the learned Royal Society, or the Environment Agency. They are a joke!
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk:80/corporate/pressoffice/2009/pr20091124a.html
contradicted by.
http://www.ceh.ac.uk/news/news_archive/2008_news_item_05.html
Jeff Alberts:
‘(why do the British say “codes” instead of “code”? It sounds like they’re trying to crack the Enigma machine or something, not write computer programs. It sounds strange to our American ears.) ‘
perhaps “two nations divided by a common language” (various attributions)
Currently, December 2010 is the 3rd coldest in the HadCET record since 1659 with a value of -0.4°c. The deviation from the 1961-90 reference period is -5.2°c.
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/cet_info_mean.html
The next few days are very likely to bring sustained below zero temperatures to Central England. Somewhat milder conditions are expected after 27-28th Dec. Depending on the last decade of 2010, there is at least 30 to 40% chance to beat the monthly all-time low average set in 1890 (-0.8°c).
Since late November, daily mean temperatures have dropped below 250-year record lows twice. http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/graphs/HadCET_act_graphEX.gif
British Decembers have been getting increasingly colder in the last few years and this cooling process is ‘unequivocally’ accelerating. Climate tipping point ahead – remember, it may arrive without any warning… http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100209191445.htm
Not really:
Moreover:
That’s not so. Fowler states, “Latin plurals sometimes become singular English words (e.g., agenda, stamina) …” As long as it’s OK to employ those words as singulars, it’s OK to do the same for “data.”
Because of its inconsistency with long-established and near-universal usage, and because, as Fowler shows, there is no real rule forbidding “data is,” “data are” will never be accepted–it will always sound odd or even affected.
It’s counterproductive to make an issue about it, because the people criticized will not change their habit, but be determined to pay no attention to any similar criticism in the future. This backlash is what happened 100 years ago after schoolmarm grammarians made a fetish of not splitting an infinitive, distinguishing between shall and will, etc. They lost the war, by going a bridge too far.