Guest post by Paul Homewood
The UK Met Office report that the UK has just had its coldest autumn for nineteen years, leaving 2012 on course to be second coldest year since 1996.
Mean temperature in November was 0.4C below the 1981-2010 average, the third month in a row when temperatures have been well down on normal.
The average temperature for the autumn in the UK was 8.6C, compared to the long term average of 9.5C and the coldest since 1993. It is also the sixth coldest autumn in the last 50 years.
The year as a whole is currently running as the second coldest since 1996, beaten only by the exceptionally cold year of 2010. Temperatures so far in December are 2 degrees below normal, and the Met Office are forecasting that this will continue for the foreseeable future.
One of the features this autumn is just how persistent the cold weather has been. There have not been any exceptionally cold interludes, as, for instance, we saw with the heavy snow in November 2010. Instead, the weather has just been consistently cold.
Figure 1
Rainfall
Rainfall totals for the UK during the autumn amounted to 374mm, about 8% above normal, but nothing exceptional. For instance, this total has been beaten six times in the last 30 years.
Figure 2
Several areas were affected by floods towards the end of November, particularly in SW England and Wales, and the map below shows rainfall totals were well above normal there during the month.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/anomacts/
However, as Figures 3 & 4 show, the rainfall totals just experienced in that part of the country, during both November and the autumn as a whole, are actually very commonplace. Indeed, it can be seen just how variable the UK’s weather can be!
Figure 3
Figure 4
Met Office Autumn Forecast
At the end of August, the Met Office 3-month outlook forecast:-
The balance of probabilities suggests that September will be slightly warmer than average whilst for the period September-October-November UK-averaged temperatures will be near the 1981-2010 climate mean.
For UK averaged rainfall the predicted probabilities weakly favour below normal values during September. For the period September/October/November as a whole the forecast favours a slightly higher than usual risk of above average rainfall, whilst the risk of dry conditions remains around climatological levels.
Woefully wrong on temperatures, but a bit better on rainfall. I’ll give them a C+ overall!
All Met Office data is available here.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/datasets/
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
From Wikepedia:
Was this an essentially US vote for a US candidate ? An attempt to bypass and pre-empt the rest of the World from having a voice or a say in any decision.
Was this the establishment closing ranks and preventing an outsider, Landscheidt, from getting the recognition he deserves ?
Did Leif Svalgaard predict the timing and extent of the minimum we now seem to entering ?
I believe he did not, and neither did Eddy.
Whilst Eddy was undoubtedly a widely influential and respected solar scientist he did not actually predict the timing or strength of the forthcoming minimum which Landscheidt did back in 1983.
From Wikipedia :
. Something Kepler speculated nearly 400 years earlier.
It was Landscheidt’s extraordinary achievement and so far accurate prediction of the forthcoming minimum rather than Eddy’s modern rediscovery (Kepler) that the sun is a variable star, which in my view means that the minimum we seem to now be entering should properly be named in Landscheidt’s honour.
REPLY: But, it won’t be. Sorry. – Anthony
Are you saying there was big ice losses in the North Pole in the 1960s and early 1970s? 😉 You can’t have it both ways for the North Pole unprecedented lows old bean.
The whole of the world is now in danger of entering a new ice said Professor Mad fellow and confidant of Em Mann, the celebrity planet saver who recently married Minnie Mouse.
The cause of this impending disaster is global warming, caused by rebarbative elephants breaking wind in the Sahara desert.
Professor Mad, recently awarded a Nobel prize for his random theory on Lego brick said the science is settled.
Steven Mosher says:
yes, when you have big ice losses in the NP, two of the expected results are colder and more snowy winters in the NH.
—
Morning, Steve!
Can you explain to me, then, why the mild winter of last year, was also the result of big ice losses in the NP? Or why I ‘enjoyed’ deep snows and very cold winters in the late 70s in college, when NP ice was at an ‘all time’ high?
Steven Mosher says:
December 7, 2012 at 8:35 pm
““Just as predicted!”
yes, when you have big ice losses in the NP, two of the expected results are colder and more snowy winters in the NH.”
I’d like to point out that the winters 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 were extremely snow rich here in Germany WITHOUT big ice losses in the Arctic; those were the two winters following the double La Nina.
Is this also expected in the world of warmist science, Steven?
If so, under which circumstances can we expect NO snow? I can give you my REALIST answer, shaped by real world experience: in warming decades like the 80ies and 90ies.
What we have now are winters like in the 70ies, no matter what your XBox says.
Here you can compare England’s seasonal temperatures since 1660. Autumn’s temp’s are shown in brown, the right hand side scale.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-D.htm
I don’t have the data to hand but I believe that the technical term for the current weather is “bloody freezing” and that brass monkeys might want to be careful of losing their wedding tackle.
Anyway. I’m off out with 10 other guys to compete in a day of ultra prix outdoor kart racing. I wonder if they can fit snow chains to those things…..?
Oh, there’s definitely some adjustments happening.
Have been keeping a spreadsheet of monthly Met Office data for Scotland for years – since I started to get interested in the whole topic. That enabled me to identify that, a few years ago (approx 2009), there was a mysterious amendment to the historic record.
ALL past years were dropped by, on average, a few hundredths of a degree – 81 years at -0.03 and 9 at -0.04 out of a 104 year data set. In comparison, the 3 years since then have been increased by .01, .02 and .08 degrees since being originally published. Given the tenths of a degree we talk about on a regular basis, this isn’t insignificant.
“Bananas grow in National Trust garden of the future”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/7505950/Bananas-grow-in-National-Trust-garden-of-the-future.html
In 2010 the National Trust commissioned three paintings on the basis of Met Office predictions:
Hope they didn’t spend too much of their members’ fees on these…
If the Met Office correctly used its resources to predict weather rather than construct models to try to predict climate, we’d all be better off.
Is the UK’s Met Office fit for purpose?
Steven Mosher says:
December 7, 2012 at 8:35 pm
““Just as predicted!”
yes, when you have big ice losses in the NP, two of the expected results are colder and more snowy winters in the NH.”
Morning, Steve!
Is that also the reason why we no longer get heatwaves in the summer over here?
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2012/11/24/whatever-happened-to-our-heatwaves/
Brrr. The alarmists said a few years ago that the traditional English garden of lawn and temperate scrubs would soon die off, and we should replace everything with Spanish and Moroccan heat-resistant and drought-resistant flora. Pah! At least I can look out of the window and see a unkempt lawn rather than dead palms.
And the lawn is partly covered with funny fluffy white stuff. I keep asking kids what it is but they don’t know. /s
But according to Piers “Moron” Morgan at the end of the Nye-Morano ‘debate’, the only temperature that matters is the one in New York, and that’s above normal, therefore global warming is real. ‘Pah!’ again.
Wait, there’s record cold in England but the US broke over 600 high temp records around the country on one day last week. So ABC World News ran a story implying global warming. Of course the focus was on the warm US and the melting Arctic. They neglected to mention 95% of Canada covered in snow, and the cold in England.
Ii would think, though, that chilly England is a result of globule warming.
SAMURAI says:
December 7, 2012 at 9:34 pm
“…How long is this stupid hoax/fraud going to continue?????”
As long as there are humans that stand to gain financially.
Do you have any idea what the “big ice losses” were like in the Arctic ocean in 1962????? Same for 1739/40, 1947, 1940 and 1979 (record ice extent in the Arctic in 1979.)
In 1947 snow fell every day between January 22nd to March 17th, somewhere in the UK. The Arctic must have been in a terrible state according to CAGW’s get out of jail free card.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/8446942.stm
http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=famous-winters;sess=
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/gallery/2010/dec/15/weather-big-freeze-1962-pictures
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/05/coldest-winters-britain-snow
As a racing fan I’m always aware when it’s particularly cold because of the numbers of cancelled meetings. This last week we’ve not only lost several jump meetings to frozen tracks, but one of the three ‘all weather’ courses has had to shut due to frozen kickback and ice balling in the horses’ hooves. that’s very rare – and unprecedented so early in the year so far as I remember
LOL!
By the way Warmies, our Gavin Schmidt said we are to expect milder winters as a result of the greenhouse effect. Mosher says expect colder winters as the Arctic warms due to the greenhouse effect. This is called disruptive climate now I gather. LOL.
Expect warmer winters.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/20905
Expect colder winters.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2009JD013568
No matter what happens CAGW is entirely consistently inconsistent.
The following article is a testament to the stupidity of so called expert climate change scientists;
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
This article will forever haunt Dr David Viner. And it should be a lesson to others not to arrogantly double guess what Mother Nature will do.
After 20 years of global warming as adjusted by HadCru, GISS & NOAA (1977-96, incl), what will these corrupt gangs say when & if there be no warming or indeed cooling during the following 20 years (1997-2016, incl), et seq, as seems likely in reality if not in their cooked books? Or will they simply further adjust their secret AlGore-ithms to Mann-ufacture spurious warming?
The climate is doing what it always does, changing back & forth.
You see, all we had to do was pay a few billion pounds to Tuvalu to compensate them for our CO2 emissions, and AGW problem goes away.
Government policy proved correct – hurrah!
How much money has been wasted
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/climateexperiment/whattheymean/theuk.shtml
“Met Office 2012 annual global temperature forecast”
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2011/2012-global-temperature-forecast
“4 January 2012 – 2012 is expected to be around 0.48 °C warmer than the long-term (1961-1990) global average of 14.0 °C, with a predicted likely range of between 0.34 °C and 0.62 °C, according to the Met Office annual global temperature forecast.”
In 2000 a Met Office scientist named Viner famously wrote that snow was becoming a thing of the past. Obviously the Met Office haven’t a clue. They are completely blinded by their obsession with CO2.
Now they have admitted that global warming is slowing down. But they still have a serious credibility and integrity gap. In effect they’re describing a parked car as a car that’s slowing down.
They’re a complete disgrace.
Chris
.
Re: UK Flooding.
Its not the rain that is the problem, but immigration. Overpopulation in the UK means that more and more housing estates are being built on flood plains.
The clue to the flooding problem lies in the name.
So then they dyke and levy the housing estates, to prevent flooding, and of course the floods then have nowhere to expand into. So the floods get deeper and faster, as the water piles up and cannot dissipate onto the flood plains.
Then, traditional towns and cities, which were purpously built above the flood plains, get flooded with the artificially deepened waters. So the Greens cry, ‘look, we have never had floods so bad as to flood Tewksbury’. Yes, well if you had not corralled the water and locked it out of its flood plains, there wouldn’t be a problem, would there.
And still Greenpeace will not campaign on population issues, as if an ever expanding population will have absolutely no effect on the environment. Numbskulls that they are.
I think Mr Mosher has fallen into the ‘simple explanation’ warmist mantra type syndrome.
What a silly statement/proclamation Steve! I don’t believe you can back that up with any appropriate data – even discounting you using/implying the ‘whole’ of the NH is affected by NP ice melt!
in the UK, most of our weather is dependent on the gulf stream and south westerlies! so unless NP ice melt significantly affects the gulf stream or imposes ‘blocking highs’ over northern europe – I don’t see how it can affect us very much at all.