From the GWPF, here’s a collection of articles that are collectively ripping the Met Office a “new one”. And, it is easy to see why. Here’s the Met Office supercomputer enhanced model output forecast from October 2010:
The map and this below are from Autonomous Mind: The piece even goes on to name the Met Office employee who spoke about the map and talked up the effort that had gone into producing the start point for a ‘seasonal forecast‘:
Helen Chivers, Met Office forecaster, insisted the temperature map takes into account the influence of climate factors such as El Nino and La Nina – five-yearly climatic patterns that affect the weather – but admits this is only a “start point” for a seasonal forecast. She said: “The map shows probabilities of temperatures in months ahead compared to average temperatures over a 30-year period.
Click the links in stories below for more at each website.
Let’s hope Santa isn’t relying on weather forecasts from the U.K. Met Office. The British deep freeze of recent weeks (which has also immobilized much of continental Europe) is profoundly embarrassing for the official forecaster. Just two months ago it projected a milder than usual winter. This debacle is more than merely embarrassing. The Met Office is front and centre in rationalizing the British government’s commitment to fight catastrophic man-made global warming with more and bigger bureaucracy, so its conspicuous errors raise yet more questions about that “settled” science. –-Peter Foster, Financial Post, 22 December 2010
Dave Britton, the Met Office’s Chief Press Officer, e-mailed the following statement to the Global Warming Policy Foundation:
Following the entry on your blog regarding the Met Office please find the Met Office response below:
The Met Office has not issued a seasonal forecast to the public and categorically denies forecasting a ‘mild winter’ as suggested by Boris Johnson <http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/> in his column in the Daily Telegraph.
Following public research, the Met Office no longer issues long-range forecasts for the general public; instead we provide a monthly outlook on our website, which have consistent and clearly sign-posted the very cold conditions.
Our day-to-day forecasts have been widely recognised as providing excellent advice to government, businesses and the public with the Daily Telegraph commenting only today that ‘the weekends heavy snow was forecast with something approaching pin-point accuracy by the Met Office’.
The public trust and take heed of our warnings and it is misleading to imply that the Met Office did not see this cold weather coming.
Dave Britton Chief Press Officer, Met Office – FitzRoy Road Exeter EX1 3PB United Kingdom, E-mail: dave.britton@metoffice.gov.uk – http://www.metoffice.gov.uk
GWPF Note: The Met Office’s track record of forecasting mild winters can be found here: Warm Bias: How The Met Office Mislead The British Public
The Met Office denial of a forecast is fatuous and their temperature map demonstrates clearly their computer models, featuring the global warming bias that undermines the Met Office’s predictions, are as much use as a chocolate fireguard. –Autonomous Mind, 20 December 2010
The economic impact of the freezing winter will deepen this week as Britain prepares for more travel gridlock, and millions of workers, travellers and shoppers were expected to stay at home in the run-up to Christmas rather than brave the icy conditions. Estimates from the insurer Royal Sun Alliance (RSA) have put the cost of the weather to the economy at £1bn per day, a sum that is thought to be hitting retailers, restaurants and bars the hardest. The total cost is expected to be around £13bn. –Jonathan Brown, The Independent, 20 December 2010
The row over the need for a multimillion-pound investment in snowploughs, de-icing equipment and salt stocks deepened this morning with the publication of a government-backed report using Met Office predictions that successive hard winters are rare. But the findings of the government-commissioned study were contradicted by Sir David King, the government’s chief scientific adviser from 2000 to 2007, who warned that ministers should plan for more cold winters. Quarmby said the Met Office remained convinced that the severe cold snap is a one-off phenomenon. –Dan Milmo, The Guardian, 21 December 2010
This is the third winter running when we have had very cold and snowy conditions hitting the UK. It comes at a time of continued, unusually weak, solar activity. Perhaps we all need to get used to colder winters across the UK in the next few years.—Paul Hudson, BBC Weather, 20 December 2010
It turns out that Dr. Viner of the East Anglia Climate Research Unit was flat-out wrong when he told the Independent in early 2000 that within a few years snow would be rare. In fact, snow has been abundant during every year but one since then. — Donna Laframboise, No Frakking Consensus, 7 January 2010
Paul Hudson’s blog is now showing pictures of rivers frozen over in central England, something that hasn’t happened for many decades. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/
Must be that climate chaotic cooling brought on by the chaotic warming, or something.
Peter H says:
December 22, 2010 at 9:55 am
“Interestingly, with the very cold weather likely to continue, it’s possible the December might be the coldest in the CET instrumental record. And you know what? Not one of the kind of people WUWT likes to detest (‘warmers’) will start waffling on about some nit pick or other to try cast doubt on the figures. ”
Of course they won’t cast doubt on the figures because their chicken brains have already decided that this is more proof for AGW. Exhibit A:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/20/uk-snow-global-warming
Peter Hearnden,
“People here clearly don’t understand probability.”
Yes clearly. The Met Office said there was a 80 to 100% chance of a warmer winter, so they got it correct.
What’s up? Floating icebergs on rivers that should be 6c or 7c not enough to dissuade you from your religiotic stance?
‘..their temperature map demonstrates clearly their computer models, featuring the global warming bias that undermines the Met Office’s predictions, ……’
Aren’t all computer models based on programs written by people who may have some inherent prejudices that will bias the outcome of any predictions produced by a theoretically unbiased machine?
Garbage In – Garbage Out.
Global Warming In – Global Warming Out?
How do these models work?
My old ankle injury can do better forecasts than their super-computer.
They are forgetting a couple of the great laws of forecasting:
1. If you can’t forecast well, forecast often.
2. Give them a date or give them a number, never give them both!
The local paper in Norwich had a 2 page spread today, talking about rivers freezing over for the first time in nearly a quarter of a century. A small column down the side has the following “Weather is not Climate” explanation.
Climate Chat
During any period of extreme cold, you can bet someone will point to the wintry conditions outside and say “So much for global warming, eh?” But this nugget of saloon bar wisdom fails to differentiate between weather, the day-to-day condition of the atmosphere, including temperature, rainfall and wind, and climate, the average weather conditions of a place, measured over a longer period of time, typically 30 years.
Dr Tim Osborn, a reader in climate science at the climatic research unit of the University of East Anglia, said atmospheric circulation this winter had been very unusual.”When you get cold air moving down from the Arctic, air from somewhere else is moving to the Arctic. In recent weeks Greenland has been very warm, while we have been very cold. Global warming is not just moving heat around, it’s increasing the heat content of the atmosphere. Last winter was extremely snowy and pretty cold here, but when you take the measurements from weather stations across the world it was one of the top five warmest.”
“Someone in the UK would never have thought that, but it was exceptionally warm in northern Canada, parts of Asia and north Africa.” Dr Osborn said that climate records for England dated back to 1659 and that while last winter may have seemed quite extreme to us, there were 56 colder winters on record. “Climate is the average weather over a 30-year period. Compared to other 30-year periods, the current one is the warmest of those, but there are lots of year-to-year fluctuations,” he said.
I’m reminded of the revelation, a couple of years after the fall of the Berlin wall, that the official German Democratic (sic) Republic’s forecasts were always manipulated to try to give a feeling of well-being. If it was going to be unbearably hot they’d knock a couple of degrees off their predicted maximum, and vice-versa for very low temperatures. Maybe the Met Office thinks that was a brilliant idea and is following the GDR method of trying to fool all of the people all of the time.
My view of the accuracy is that they’re quite good for 24 hours; mediocre for 48 hours; and I ignore anything further out.
I have the perfect solution…sell ALL of the expensive supercomputers now engaged in generating the useless seasonal forecasts, and use the proceeds to buy salt, sand (aka “grit”), and snow shovels. At the least the people will get something for their tax money…
BTW – if the early winter HAD been warm, don’t you think the Dave, the MET Press Officer, would have been crowing about how accurate the official seasonal forecasts were (which, of course, they ALWAYS provide…but only when they’re right…)?
Steeptown says:
December 22, 2010 at 9:16 am
“….But it does issue them to the government, local councils and anyone who wants to pay for them….”
———————–
So, given these are public bodies then FOI requests should be able to ‘release’ these not-for-public-consumption forecasts, if they are not already available?
Back to the idea of secret weather data I suppose. The absurdities make my head spin sometimes. And I just read the NYT article linked above – well, only a few paragraphs actually. That is some real hardcore alarmist crap they’re spewing. Like I say, I can’t read that kind of stuff for much more than a couple of paragraphs because it starts to make me mad, because I’m being so blatantly lied to and it is so blatantly propaganda.
AutonomousMind – nice blog
Sarf of the River – good rant
Hmmm … a classical LTCM (Long Term Capital Management) moment.
To wit, (from here):
In 1994 … Meriwether founded a hedge fund called Long-Term Capital Management.[he] assembled an all-star team of traders and academics in an attempt to create a fund that would profit from the combination of the academics’ quantitative models and the traders’ market judgement and execution capabilities.
… investors, including many large investment banks, flocked to the fund, investing $1.3 billion at inception. But four years later, at the end of September 1998, the fund had lost substantial amounts of the investors’ equity capital and was teetering on the brink of default. …
The lessons to be learned from this crisis are:
– Market values matter for leveraged portfolios;
– Liquidity itself is a risk factor;
– Models must be stress-tested and combined with judgement; and
– Financial institutions should aggregate exposures to common risk factors.
.
It’s got to be depressing for the Met Office to realize that they could up their average forcast accuracy by replacing climate models and super computers with a monkey throwing darts. Not only would it save money, but their forecast would at least be in the ball-park half the time.
It’s become our Guardian.
At the web pages for the Norwegian Met Office, there is a pointer to a problem with the results from the temperature models coming out of the Reading center (ECMWF) in that:
“The temperature prognosis in the long term forecast often show errors at the time being. The prognosis will in most cases produce colder forecasts than real measurements will show. The biggest error will be during night and when there is little cloud cover and little wind. They believe the error stems from the models calculating more radiation of heat from the ground than what is actual, and that the errors in the prognosis are higher for landscapes with complex topography than for flat land countries like Denmark.”
http://www.yr.no/nyheter/1.7428184
Peter H says:
December 22, 2010 at 9:55 am
People here clearly don’t understand probability.
I think we understand proability very well. People are not interested in what might happen – we can read reams of climastrology papers for that. People want to know what will happen with, say, 95% probability. That is a useful yardstick for decision making. A 60% probability is just about useless for making decisions. You can’t buy 60% of the worst-case amount of de-icing fluid for your planes because the forecast is a 60% probability of colder than average conditions.
I was in Geneva last Friday night when my flight to London was canceled. The Heathrow aviation forecast (Met Office) for the next day was a 60% probability of poor visibility and low cloud in heavy snow. Accuweather said a band of snow would move across the south of England from north to south.
Would you have gone to the airport in Geneva the next day hoping to get a flight to London? After all there was a 40% chance the poor conditions wouldn’t happen.
I went by train based on the Accuweather forecast. I’d probably still be in Geneva if I’d hoped the 40% probability would conveniently pan out.
The Norwegian Met Office also reports that so far, December is competing with December of 1981 on being the coldest December in 110 years.
There is a table with the monthly mean per Dec 21 for a number of stations here http://met.no/?module=Articles;action=Article.publicShow;ID=7552
Table heading is Station, Mean per Dec 21 2010, Minimum recording ever, Year of min recording, Station data since.
Some of the stations have records going back to the 1860-ties.
Bewick swans arrived in England nearly three weeks early this year. Many more geese than normal were seen heading for France. Maybe they didn’t get the Met Office’s projection.
The Met offices statements, “The Met Office has not issued a seasonal forecast to the public…” and “Following public research, the Met Office no longer issues long-range forecasts for the general public…” strongly suggests that they are issuing seasonal forecasts to someone, perhaps the government? I wonder what those forecasts say. Could someone working in Government in the UK, perhaps the military, a mayor of a city or a transportation official who gets those forecasts that are not for the “general public” post them for us to see.
Is their super computer named Marvin?
I heard on the radio this morning that although Heathrow had closed up shop Copenhagen Airport had no problems.
Is this because the weather is better in Denmark?
They have learned a lesson since last year? or
They now have better forecasting and are better prepared?
I’m enjoying the “snip” lines on bemused comments.
The economic impact of the freezing winter ….. from the insurer Royal Sun Alliance (RSA) have put the cost of the weather to the economy at £1bn per day …. The total cost is expected to be around £13bn.
Hmmm? Do I hear a call for more CO2?
Captain Kirk: “Scotty!”
Chief engineer Scott: “Yes Captain?”
Captain Kirk: “We need more CO2! Shovel on the coal!”
Chief engineer Scott: “But Captain, ta be green they converted us to dilithium crystals and solar wind power!”
Captain Kirk: “Damn those fools! We’re going to freeze to death.”
Chief engineer Scott: “Aye Captain. Green – – and blue.”
As someone who runs models in hydrogeology all I can say is I continue to be in disbelieve at the total nonsense being generated by so called supercomputer “climate models” with their in-buildt warming trends. As for the denial comments there’s enough material there for an entire psychiatric conference. Who do they having running these “august” organizations ? Basil Fawlty ?
“bemused” in Pasadena – who you snipped – is presumably the vanguard of the Met Office’s exchange programme with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci_16810241
JPL’s director of Climate Science:
‘What sets Met Office apart, he said, is their “seamless” connection between weather and climate models. “This is very important because weather is a key component of shaping the climate system. You have to get weather right.”
Bwahahah.
“They are among the premier climate and earth systems (institutions) in the world”.
Oh, my aching ribs.
REPLY: Well then we’ll see if she has the courage to put her words and persona together here, I welcome comment provided the email address is valid, and not just made up on the spot. For somebody at NASA to make things up, well …that just…oh, wait. – Anthony
As the Danish physicist Niels Bohr said, “prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.”
Bohr did not actually go as far as to state explicitly that prediction about the past is easy. Climate modellers seem to find it almost as difficult as predicting the future according to a posting at this blog just over a fortnight ago.
New peer reviewed paper shows just how bad the climate models really are
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/05/new-peer-reviewed-paper-shows-just-how-bad-the-climate-models-are/
However even very intractable problems have been solved in the past. One of the most famous was the problem of determing longitude. After four ships from Sir Cloudesley Shovell’s fleet were lost off the Scilly Isles in 1707 ,because the navigators were not sure of their exact position, the British government offered a prize of £20,000, a huge sum in those days, for a reliable method of determining longitude. Eventually John Harrison solved the problem by developing reliable chronometers for telling the time but he was not given a prize until 1773 when he was awarded £8,750.
Perhaps it is time to have a similar competition for long term weather forecasts, or two competitions, one for long term forecasts (at least a season ahead) and another for forecasts of extreme weather, at least a month ahead.
These competitions should be open to all-comers, not just British citizens.