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
Surely the met office can dig them out of the snow and relocate some temperature stations over steam vents and next to furnaces to insure that this year, like every year before it, is the “hottest on record”.
The head of BAA (British Airports Authority) has just admitted his company did a piss poor job handling the recent bad weather, so he is not going to take his annual bonus.
5 bucks says those running the Met Office do not understand the concept of ‘doing the honourable thing’ and will insist on receiving their bonuses just for keeping their office seats warm. The award of this year’s Met Office bonuses will have nothing to do with doing a good job, only on whether or not enough of the general public have been duped by their unfounded scare stories on future climate trends.
? did anybody find out where the AAA batteries go in this super doopa computor I think there been flat for the last 6 months
Regarding the ‘impossibility’ of Forecasting the current N. European Freeze:
Wednesday 1st December 2010
That post man correctly predicted last years big freeze and the good summer we had this year
REAL scientists would be camped out at his house pumping him for info on what signs to look out for – instead of sitting on their asses in-front of ‘super’-computer screens
Obviously people are ready to lose their own honor over global warming orthodoxy…
Sunday, light rain was forecast by the Met office for Tuesday. When Tuesday arrived we had a foot of snow. OK, it’s precipitation, but the Met office regularly fail to get the temps correct, over estimating them in most cases.
NIWA in NZ has abandoned its “massaged” official temperature record. The new one shows no warming in NZ since 1960. The enormous cost to NZ of this AGW fakery is yet to be counted:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC1012/S00054/climate-science-coalition-vindicated.htm
Steven Mosher says:
December 22, 2010 at 1:48 pm
With your logic no probabalistic forecast is ever wrong – we just witness ‘an x% event’.
That’s why bonuses get paid every year at the Met Office regardless of what actually happens.
pablo an ex pat
December 22, 2010 at 10:34 am
re. means of being dismissed in cricket:
I think that you omitted the most relevant ways:
Handling the ball and obstructing or interfering with the field.
It strikes me that either of these activities are what the CAGWers are best at.
p.s. in cricket there are no second chances like 3 strikes and you’re out, you are either out or you are not, first time every time.
In the US Nexrad usually shows precipitation as rain, mix or snow. The Met Office ‘rainfall radar’ is unable to distinguish between varieties of precipitation.
Anyone know why Nexrad can and ‘rainfall radar’ can’t?
I wonder why it is that no Royal Air Force base has been closed by snow, neither has any USAF base in the UK been closed by adverse conditions. Lakenheath is still fully operational as are Lossiemouth and Leuchars.
I can testify from personal experience that one of these bases is flying some rather noisy aircraft off at very regular intervals!
Richard says:
December 22, 2010 at 3:46 pm
I always favored knocking the bails off myself .
And speaking up for Baseball, which as an immigrant I have to say that I love, the batsman in Cricket doesn’t have to offer a stroke, they can simply block the ball however good it is and play the next delivery. In Baseball if you fend off the ball with a less than 2 strike count against you that’s a strike.
The other major difference between Baseball and Cricket is that at the end of the days play you know who won.
Pamela Gray says:
December 22, 2010 at 2:00 pm
“Alistair, wasn’t impugning your maths. I understood your post quite well. Good spin is always true.”
It is spin, plain and simple. How this AGW crowd can turn every event into proof of global warming is truly amazing. And the revisionist history is simply astounding. For years, for decades, we hear about the warming of the planet. Now it’s record snow in several places and they claim they knew it was coming all along? BLULSIHT!!!!
“”””” P.F. says:
December 22, 2010 at 10:29 am
TreeHugger says at 9:32 am: “The Internet has given rise to . . . challengers who question every aspect of the science — even the physics, worked out in the 19th century, that shows that carbon dioxide traps heat. That is a point so elementary . . .” “””””
Say watch your language there !
There’s no particular evidence that CO2 even at 390 ppm of the atmosphere, in any way traps heat to an extent that would be noticeable compareed to the other atmospheric gases like N2 or O2. Of course all these gases continually swap heat around amongst themselves; but in no way could any of them be said to be trapping the heat; any more than the hot plate on your stove is trapping heat. Storing maybe, but not trapping.
Now in the event that you actually meant to say that CO2 “traps” Long Wave Infra-Red Electromagnetic Radiation; say in the 13.5 to 16.5 micron wavelength range; then one could make a case for that being correct.
But nobody in their right mind would call such Radiation “Heat”.
Certainly the human body; which is quite sensitive to heat, is in no way responsive to wavelengths in the 13.5 to 16.5 micron range; we simply are quite oblivious of its presence; and in fact we have to jump through hoops to even detect its presence with sophisticated instrumentation.
Let’s agreee that it is well established that CO2 and H2O both can capture EM LWIR Radiations in the bands from about 5.0 microns to about 80 microns; which is the principle LWIR spectrum corresponding to a mean global surface Temperature of 288 K or about 15 deg C (59 deg F).
Actually everybody has readily available to them an excellent source of EM LWIR Radiation that they can use to perform their own global (or local) LWIR “heating” experiments with.
I have one at my desk here right now; and keep one on hand at all times.
It’s a cylindrical like contraption about 200 mm long and maybe 60 mm diameter.
I can absolutely guarantee that it has an emissivity of about 0.97 or higher in the LWIR spectral range; so it is about as good an LWIR radiation source as you can lay your hands on.
There’s a label on this cylindrical LWIR source; it says:-
Bottled at the Source, CRYSTAL GEYSER, Natural Alpine Spring Water, By CG Roxane.
You should get one, and hold it up near your face, and just feel that LWIR “heat” just pouring off the source.
Actually mine right now is a bit screwed up, and due to a lack of environmental control it is radiating at 447 Watts per square metre give or take a bit, instead of the regulation 390 W/m^2. But close enough, and well within the IPCC +/- 50%, 3:1 ratio guidelines for accurate data.
This is a SCIENCE blog; and we should attempt to use correct scientific terminology, if we want ot be understood.
In recent years, researchers have been able to put the Keeling measurements into a broader context. Bubbles of ancient air trapped by glaciers and ice sheets have been tested, and they show that over the past 800,000 years, the amount of carbon dioxide in the air oscillated between roughly 200 and 300 parts per million. Just before the Industrial Revolution, the level was about 280 parts per million and had been there for several thousand years.
That amount of the gas, in other words, produced the equable climate in which human civilization flourished.
Here’s another quote from that NY Times article linked by several people above:
“Bubbles of ancient air trapped by glaciers and ice sheets have been tested, and they show that over the past 800,000 years, the amount of carbon dioxide in the air oscillated between roughly 200 and 300 parts per million. Just before the Industrial Revolution, the level was about 280 parts per million and had been there for several thousand years.
That amount of the gas, in other words, produced the equable climate in which human civilization flourished.”
This is one of the most egregious violations of the correlation = causation fallacy as I have ever seen. One single molecule is apparently accountable for an entire climate system over a period of several thousand years. The sun, the earth’s orbit, past ice ages, oceans, currents, atmospheric circulation and any number of other events and phenomena were irrelevant because a specific amount of a trace gas is the sole determinant of whether the climate is “equable”. Looking up the exact connotation of equable, I see it means “unvarying”, “steady”, “free from extremes”. Like real climate has ever behaved that way. I can’t believe they can publish this sort of claim with a straight face. Just admire the hubris of that statement one more time, “That amount of the gas, in other words, produced the equable climate in which human civilization flourished.“
I read here on one of the blogs that some ratbag said that even though it was cold in the northern hemisphere there were other places in the world that were very hot and those hot places were upping the average to make this year the hottest on record.
Well, I’ve got news for them, here in the SH, Australia, I watched the weather report on our ABC last night, and they said the temperatures across Queensland were 5 to 7 degrees ( c ) below normal. Where I live, our daily temps should be 30 + but so far, this summer, we have had only 2 days that just got to 30.
Everyone who reads WUWT will know it has been snowing in the southern parts of Australia, in the middle of summer.
Keep an eye on the Sun.
For those who would like bureaucratic British English translated into plain language, here’s an explication of the recent UK Met Oafish interim report on “Winter Resilience:”
12.14 For the purpose of this report, the following summarises what we understand:
translation: This report is intended to say that what we say below amounts to what we think we understand, and which we wish you would also think we understand.
The probability of the next winter being severe is virtually unrelated to the fact of just having experienced two severe winters, and is still about 1 in 20.
translation: All winters are just weather. They are totally unconnected. So, despite what you may have heard, there is no such thing as climate, except when we say there is. I mean, if I should accidentally punch you in the nose twice, surely you would not expect me to be so lucky as to connect on my third swing as well? Of course not!
The effect of climate change is to gradually but steadily reduce the probability of severe winters in the UK.
translation: The effect of changes in climate, which, listen carefully, we are now saying does exist, is to gradually but steadily make it very unlikely that winter in the UK will be severe, as do also fairies at the bottom of my garden.
However, when severe winters come, they could still be extreme – in terms of snowfall, wind and storms, though not necessarily in relation to temperature.
translation: However, those winters, which will simultaneously be unlikely and inevitable, could be extremely bad, but only in terms of snow, wind, hail, sleet, ice, and so on, though possibly they will also be quite balmy.
12.17 But we need to understand and accept that the chance of a severe winter is still relatively small and that there will be many years when some will question the degree of resources committed to winter resilience.
translation: But you need to get it through your thick skulls that it’s so very unlikely that winter will be severe, we’ll do little planning for it, and will, of course, get caught flat-footed and completely unprepared. Some of you idiots will want to second-guess us. We shall be resilient and ignore you totally.
12.15 An important consequence of the declining occurrence of severe winters is the loss of knowledge and experience among planning and technical staff in local highway authorities and their contractors, especially if the severe winters which do occur have more extreme snow events.
translation: As clueless as we may already seem, we will attain even greater inability to respond to severe winters in future, especially if they should, somehow, involve snowstorms.
12.16 All this, in our view, reinforces the need for comprehensive resilience planning, and for ensuring that the salt supply chain is resilient.
translation: So, it is our considered opinion that instead of having specific plans and resources in place, we must plan to be very, very resilient, responding to any emergency as it arises in a flexible manner. And lots of salt would be jolly. We know about salt, yes, indeed!
the Met Office supercomputer enhanced model output forecast
I’m sure it’s a fine computer. I’m not sure it’s a fine program.
jorgekafkazar,
A perfect translation, IMHO.
FWIW, Mr. Hudson suggests that the MET Office models predicted a colder than normal 2010-11 winter for western Europe…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2010/10/another-cold-winter-ahead.shtml
“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”
Oh nos! Climate has gotten into the weather! Run for the hills!
“even a broken clock is right twice a day” – Mattin Houston
This does bring up an interesting question: what happens if the Met slips in a correct forecast? Imagine the disruption then!
Here is a graph by the Met of the CET that is updated daily.
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/
It shows the temperature anomaly as of Dec 21 at .5 C below the record back to 1772.
This should be fun to watch.
I was reading Delingpoles blog yesterday, He was giving them hell about this and mentioned that they were wanting more money to buy another superduper computer “To make better predictions in the future”. They have a 30 million pound puter now that is not worth a plug nickel, What is a another one going to do?