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/
Kev-in-UK
Yes, those who own the field can always move the goals :).
Willis Eschenbach says:
P.S. ……
P.P.S …….
P.P.P.S. ……..
Ok Willis, put down the eggnog and back away from the computer ;>
I think a day of reckoning is soon coming for the Met Office decadal forecast. They most recently predicted the global average temperature anomaly is to go to 0.8C by 2020 with an upper range of about 1.0C and lower range of about 0.6C as shown on their decadal graph shown in their forecast. That is an average rise of 0.4 C in the remaining 8 years when the anomaly has been basically flat since 1998.
They say “ From 2017 to 2021, the global temperature is forecast to rise further to between 0.54 and 0.97C with the most likely values of about 0.76 above average “
Their annual forecasts seem to have been high the last 13 years. The prediction for 2011 was 0.44C and the actual was 0.340C. The forecast for 2012 is 0.48 C. The actual is 0.411 to the end of October
I think their numbers have been consistently high and continue to be suspect but they put them out despite the past poor record of accuracy in my opinion .
The Thames froze over many times in the 15th – 19th centuries due to the little ice age. It is likely that during that period the Thames froze over most years to a certain degree, especially outside of London and further North. Some years, such as 1683/4, the ice was up to 18” thick.
When the ice was thick enough, frost fairs took place. Years when the ice was thick enough for this to occur were: 1408, 1435, 1506, 1514, 1537, 1565, 1595, 1608, 1621, 1635, 1649, 1655, 1663, 1666, 1677, 1684, 1695, 1709, 1716, 1740, (1768), 1776, (1785), 1788, 1795, and 1814, which was the last frost fair.
Although the Thames may have frozen slightly since then, with rising global temperatures, the demolishion of London Bridge and the emabankment of the river, it is unlikely it ever happened to any great degree and certainly not in the 20/21st centuries.
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/Chance-of-a-lifetime-cyclingonthethames.jpg
http://www.thamesweb.co.uk/windsor/windsorhistory/freeze63.html
If you want some historical floods try these,
http://www.thamesweb.co.uk/windsor/windsorhistory/floods1875.html
It appears it is just weather.
dirkh
Are you referring to this?
There is a paper in AGU called A LINK BETWEEN REDUCED BARENTS -KARA SEA ICE AND COLD WINTER EXTREMES OVER NORTHERN CONTINENTS by V.Petoukhov and V.Semenov
Robuk says:
December 8, 2012 at 11:35 am
When the Thames froze over in the past, wasn’t it a lot wider, shallower and slower moving? And now it’s built up, narrower, deeper and faster moving.
Mosher,
The River Thames froze over many times between the 15th – 19th centuries. Is it safe to say the Arctic sea ice extent was lower than it is today?
The winter of 1978–79 was harsh, cold and snowy in the UK. According to the satellite record it certainly is NOT safe to say that the Arctic sea ice extent was lower than it is today as it was at its maximum extent.
Dirk H
There’s also a study by Jennifer Francis of Rutgers.
She talks of a meridional jetflow which causes blocking highs and lows, which bring cold air down from the Arctic (but also take warm air up to the Arctic!) She describes it as follows
“The jet stream is clearly weaker,. That means weather systems, be it rain or dry conditions, are slow to move on and last longer. Ultimately this can result in “blocking” events, such as the conditions that produced the terrible heatwave in western Russia during the summer of 2010, “
However HH Lamb found the same pattern of meridional jetflow in the 1960’s when the Arctic was getting colder.
He had this to say about the effect of a colder Arctic:-
“changes over middle latitudes, where the most significant feature has been the very awkward type of variability from year to year, associated with the behaviour of blocking systems and meridional circulation patterns.” which led to “the extremes of cold and warmth, drought and flood associated with the occurrences of blocking in middle latitudes.”
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/guardian-have-all-bases-covered/
And of course the record cold winter of 1963 in the UK was caused by just such a blocking high to the North East.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/education/teens/case-studies/severe-winters
Paul Homewood says:
December 8, 2012 at 12:05 pm
as I said in my gentle retort to Mosher above – the UK weather is dominated by southwesterly winds,the gulf stream and the occasional blocking high- and that is essentially our weather in a nutshell! (perhaps he doesn’t realise the size of the UK and its lattitude?) – I fail to see how any of these can be significantly affected (i.e. for the longer term) by an extreme arctic melt.
7 Dec: Daily Mail: Freezing Britain: Siberian front brings ice, snow and -16C temperatures (but at least these skiers are enjoying themselves)
Temperatures expected to dip from Sunday with frozen conditions bringing chaos to the roads later in the week
Commuters pictured battling through heavy snow in Leeds, Newcastle and Lincolnshire
AA warn drivers to be prepared for treacherous conditions and advise grit is ineffective below -9C
Icy gusts from the east will bring a wind chill factor of -16C next week, according to Met Office forecasters
Follows a week of transport chaos with airports closing and dramatic car crashes putting police officers and a boy of 11 into hospital…
Forecasters report a current breakdown in high-altitude westerly winds – known as ‘sudden stratospheric warming’ – which can allow easterly winds from as far away as Siberia to chill Britain and gave us the coldest night of the year on Wednesday.
The pattern caused the bitter 2009-10 winter, the coldest for 31 years…
Heavy snowfall across Holland, Belgium and northern France has seen road and flight links affected. Airports in the UK were reporting a knock-on effect from the disruption, with KLM and Air France cancelling flights to Paris and Amsterdam.
A spokesperson for Eurostar told MailOnline Travel that passengers heading into Europe on the cross-Channel rail service today should expect ‘minor delays of 10-15 minutes due to speed restrictions caused by bad weather in Northern France’.
Heavy snowfall in Belgium has seen the cancellation of flights at Brussels’ international airport and delays to train services from France, Germany and the Netherlands.
Forty flights to Brussels’ main airport had been cancelled as of 8am this morning.
The high-speed Thalys rail service between France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands said on its website that snow had delayed services and advised travellers to delay their trips.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2244458/Arctic-Britain-Siberian-freeze-brings-ice-snow-16C-temperatures-week.html
how will EU Govts justify extending Kyoto?
There is no doubt that the presence of strong winter negative AO or ARCTIC OSCILLATION has strong influence on the severity European winters. During the last cold spell for Europe 1962-1987 a period of 26 years , there was a negative winter AO for 77% of the years or 20 years. That is why European winters are colder during Neutral and some El Nino years as they set up negative AO conditions and weaker westerlies which allow cold Arctic air to seep south.[ 2010 winter is a good example
herkimer says:
December 8, 2012 at 11:43 am
“dirkh
Are you referring to this?
There is a paper in AGU called A LINK BETWEEN REDUCED BARENTS -KARA SEA ICE AND COLD WINTER EXTREMES OVER NORTHERN CONTINENTS by V.Petoukhov and V.Semenov”
Yes, Petoukhov, that was the name.
DIRK.H
Here is the other paper that I alluded to in one of my previous posts. I show their introduction below
1. Introduction
Global surface temperatures have generally warmed for the
entire length of the instrumental record. The most significant
and strongest warming occurred in the most recent 40 yr,
with Arctic temperatures warming at nearly double the global
rate (Solomon et al 2007, Screen and Simmonds 2010).
Coupled climate models attribute much of this warming to
rapid increases in greenhouse gases (GHGs) and project the
strongest warming across the extratropical NH during boreal
winter due to ‘winter (or Arctic) amplification’ (Holland and
Bitz 2003, Hansen and Nazarenko 2004, Alexeev et al 2005,
Langen and Alexeev 2007). Yet, while the planet has steadily
warmed, NH winters have recently grown more extreme
across the major industrialized centres. Record cold snaps and
heavy snowfall events across the United States, Europe and
East Asia garnered much public attention during the winters
of 2009/10 and 2010/11 (Blunden et al 2011, Cohen et al
2010). Cohen et al (2009) argued that the occurrence of
more severe NH winter weather is a two-decade-long trend
starting around 1988. Whether the recent colder winters are a
consequence of internal variability or a response to changes in
boundary forcings resulting from climate change remains an
open question.
Paper called Arctic waming, increasing snow cover and widespread boreal winter cooling
by Judah L Cohen, Jason C Furtado, Mathew A Balow, Vladmir A Alexeev, and Jessica E Cherry, published in Environmental Research Letter, December 2011
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/1/014007/pdf/1748-9326_7_1_014007.pdf
As i posted earlier, this paper only looked at the period of1990-2010 and implied a connection. They did not study or explain why cold winters and lots of snow happened in the past when there was lots of Arctic ice like 1880-1910 and again 1945-1976 where both periods were cold with lots of snow and cold temperatures . Clearly there are other causes for cold winters and extra snow than warm summers which makes the theory suspect . It appears to me that the AGW theory of only warming winters and warming summers did not materialize in the case of the winters so they had to find a new excuse which they totally missed in their models. Winters were supposed to get warmer in Europe and North America not stay the same for 20 years as they have now done since 1990[ and now actually cooling since 2006]
Havn’t seen much sun in the UK this year. My garden has been waterlogged most of the year. The low temperatures are caused by the cold wet ground. Rainfall might not have been much above average for the autumn but the fields have had puddles in them much of the time. That’s not normal!
Steve mosher, you there? We’re all wanting to know how it feels to be PWNED…..
herkimer says:
December 8, 2012 at 12:38 pm
Take a look at the AO now – it is quite low and the ensemble forecasts expect it to remain low, at least for the next 14 days:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao_index.html
(the link is for the benefit of other readers – you obviously know where to find the AO)
This weather alert appears on MET Office weather forecast web page
Current alert level: Level 3 – Cold Weather Action in one or more regions of England Issued at: Friday 7 December 2012 at 08:32
There is a 90% probability of severe cold weather/icy conditions/heavy snow between 0000 on Monday and 0800 on Tuesday in parts of England. This weather could increase the health risks to vulnerable patients and disrupt the delivery of services. Please refer to the national Cold Weather Plan and your Trust’s emergency plan for appropriate preventive action.
Less cold over the next few days with higher daytime temperatures than of late so the mean temperature criteria is unlikely to be met this weekend, despite overnight frosts. There is now growing confidence that into the start of next week very cold air originating from the east or northeast will spread across the whole of England. An east or northeasterly flow at times will bring snow showers, particularly to the east of England, these sometimes heavy, and leading to locally significant accumulations. At present this spell of very cold weather looks set to last through much of next week and it is likely this alert will need to be extended.
It looks to me that global warming is going full blast Uk and snow will be a rare thing again this winter. It is much warmer than we thought.
herkimer says:
December 8, 2012 at 12:38 pm
That is correct – however AFAIK the AO is not related to arctic melt! Ergo, how the feck can anyone put arctic melt and cold european winters in the same sentence without demonstration?
Increased colder winters and cooler summers are down to weaker solar activity, it is the only climate factor that changed recently and matches different periods over decades. Arctic ice has no influence on causing cold winters, with many occurring before with much more ice than recently during the satellite data. NH maximum snow extent matches periods of changing TSI levels fairly well too. So this link is fairly strong too with seasonal weather in the UK and NH snow extent compared with TSI levels..
Since the 1960’s when NH snow extent was first collected, the lowest TSI levels during that time are over very recent years (2007+). During this same period NH maximum snow extent has been at it’s highest levels. During the 1980’s and 1990’s TSI levels were at there highest with the lowest NH snow extent during this period. During most of the 2000’s (up to 2007) TSI levels were lower than the 1980’s and 1990’s with NH snow extent higher too. The 1960’s and 1970’s were the next lowest period to very recently with low TSI values and this was also second to highest period with NH snow extent.
A entire year of below normal temperatures in the UK is just weather. But a single tropical storm hitting the US coast is unmistakable proof of climate change. Do I have that right?
UK, coldest autumn in 20 years. Big deal. US, hottest year since records commenced. Compare and contrast.
John Brookes
Since global temperatures this year are running well below the average for the last 10 years and much lower than 1998, I think we can safely say it is just weather.
John Brooke’s
According to grist that would be the rather less impressive record of being the warmest since 1934 with by no mean each American state being the ‘warmest ever’
http://grist.org/news/unless-hell-freezes-over-2012-will-be-the-hottest-year-in-u-s-history/
All of which should demonstrate that the us hasn’t been keeping reliable records for very long and that GLOBAL warming is no such thing. Around one third of all stations worldwide are cooling according to BEST
No doubt mosh can clarify the exact parameters of that at the same time he clarifies his claim way above about arctic ice and snow fall
Tonyb
When it comes to winters we are starting to cross over from just weather to climate .
The annual global temperature anomaly has been flat for-15 years now or since 1997 and has been actually dropping during the last decade[per hadcrut3gl]
The winter temperature anomaly for the Northern Hemisphere as measured by Hadcrut3gl shows a negative linear trend for 15 years since 1998
The European winter temperature departures from 1961-1990 mean normal for land and sea regions of Europe have been flat or even slightly dropping for 20 years or since 1990. They have been noticeably cooler in the post 2007 period[ Per EEA]
The winter temperatures for Contiguous United States have been dropping since 1990 at -0.26 F per decade [per NCDC]
The annual temperature for Contiguous United States has been dropping since 1998 at -0.80 F per decade [per NCDC]
Basically US winter temperatures have been flat with no warming for 20 years
The winter temperature departures from 1961-1990 mean normal for land and sea regions of Europe have been flat or even slightly dropping for 20 year or since 1990
The Canadian annual temperature departure form 1961-1990 averages has been flat since 1998
The Canadian winter temperature anomaly has been rising mostly due to the warming of the far north and Atlantic coast only
8 of the 11 climate regions in Canada showed declining winter temperature departures since 1998
During the 2011/2012 winter the Canadian Arctic showed declining winter temperature departures
The winter temperature departures for the Canadian Arctic Mountains and Fiords dropped from 6 C and 5.2 C in 2010 and 2011 to only 1c in 2012. So Canadian north may be starting to cool as well?
[CANADIAN DATA PER ENVIRONMENT CANADA]
Eve says:
December 7, 2012 at 7:12 pm
I don’t want to do the solar panels thing. We get hurricanes here.
=========
Windpower!
Sparks says:
December 8, 2012 at 12:02 pm
Robuk says:
December 8, 2012 at 11:35 am
When the Thames froze over in the past, wasn’t it a lot wider, shallower and slower moving? And now it’s built up, narrower, deeper and faster moving.
That was the point of the photo below.
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/Chance-of-a-lifetime-cyclingonthethames.jpg