From Dr. Benny Peiser at The GWPF
Questions Over Met Office Rain & Drought Predictions
The forecast for average UK rainfall slightly favours drier-than-average conditions for April-May-June as a whole, and also slightly favours April being the driest of the 3 months. With this forecast, the water resources situation in southern, eastern and central England is likely to deteriorate further during the April-May-June period… This forecast is based on information from observations, several numerical models and expert judgement. —Met Office 3-month Outlook, 23 March 2012
Seventeen counties in South West England and the Midlands have moved into official drought status, after two dry winters have left rivers and ground waters depleted. The news comes as the Environment Agency warned that the drought could last beyond Christmas. While rain over the spring and summer will help to water crops and gardens, it is unlikely to improve the underlying drought situation. —Environmental Agency, 16 April 2012
There’s evidence to say we are getting slightly more rain in total, but more importantly it may be falling in more intense bursts” — Julia Slingo, Met Office, 3 January 2013
The frequency of extreme rainfall in the UK may be increasing, according to analysis by the Met Office. Statistics show that days of particularly heavy rainfall have become more common since 1960. The analysis is still preliminary, but the apparent trend mirrors increases in extreme rain seen in other parts of the world. –Roger Harrabin, BBC News, 3 January 2013
In the wake of the “more rain and more intense rain” story, Doug Keenan sends this graph of England & Wales rainfall records for 1766-2012. Let’s just say the trend towards more rainfall is not obvious. As indeed is any trend towards less rainfall, which is said to be more likely by the UK Climate Impacts Programme. –Andrew Montford, Bishop Hill, 5 January 2013
Suddenly, after a wet year, which naturally the Met Office failed to forecast, they have reversed their customary fiery slogans to “Après nous le deluge”. Their antediluvian joy has given way to postdiluvian melancholy. They appear to have difficulty with the concept of random sequences of events, such as the precise positioning of the jet stream, and the fact that they produce apparent patterns and records. It was primitive man’s inability to envisage an effect without human cause that gave rise to much of religion. Of course it would have been most impressive if they had predicted all this a year ago, but they did not. Their predictions are as changeable as the weather and the only constant is the putative cause. –John Brignell, Number Watch, 3 January 2013
The Met Office continues to suffer from its recently acquired pretensions about climate. Careless remarks about BBQ summers and snowless winters and droughts in the UK have all been followed by Mother Nature failing to comply with their wishful thinking – the wishful bit being their hope that their faith in the power of CO2 in the system, or at least in computer models giving it a powerful effect, can be relied upon. –John Shade, Bishop Hill, 5 January 2013
My take on all this is that the alarmists are just getting desperate, spinning any weather and data to suit the CO2 thesis. Remember that the record annual rainfall for England is still less than the average annual rainfall for Scotland, hence if the average track of the jet stream is a little further south than usual then England gets a fair bit more rain. It has nothing to do with the alleged warmer atmosphere having more potential to store H20; if it was why did north-west Scotland have a drought in the spring and early summer? More bollocks from the Met Office. The UK weather and climate is determined by the track of the jet stream (and moderated by the Gulf Stream), and CO2 has feck all to do with it. –Lapogus, Bishop Hill, 5 January 2013
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Jimbo says:
January 5, 2013 at 9:57 am
The Met Office’s long term weather forecasts are in fact very skillful in a funny sort of way. For example if they forecast dryer conditions then expect wetter and if they forecast wetter then expect dryer.
Apparently that’s what happens when you work really hard to deny reality: you don’t just get it wrong, you get very good at coming up with the exact opposite of reality.
Have just written a piece about the Gloucester floods of 2007 for my MSc in Business Continuity, Security and Emergency Management and twice as many properties were flooded by “Surface Water Flooding” (Urban floods) than Fluvial (River Floods) and guess what the Environment Agency had to say about it in their report:
Two thirds of the properties flooded were from surface water flooding (overload of drains, culverts, sewers or ditches) (EA 2007) Even the EA have this to say in their report into the 2007 floods
“…it is not our role to monitor flows of water in urban drainage systems…”
In addition they highlighted:
• Lack of maintenance (for example, gully cleaning) on drains.
• Lack of maintenance (for example dredging) on rivers
• Too much development of the floodplain
• Confusion over responsibilities
Instead of their you-beaut sooperdooper computer have they tried the old “drunken monkey and a dart board” method?
Hmmm… just went outside… the wind is rising, it is 37 degrees, and there is smoke… must check…
The fires are a long distance from here, so no worries.
@Adam Gallon January 5, 2013 at 6:19 am
The EA page Booker referred to has not “disappeared”. It is still at
http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/news/138916.aspx
but your link appends a double-quote (%22). Strip that off and the link works fine.
Philip Bradley says:
January 5, 2013 at 5:17 pm
Questions:
Cold air is heavier than warm ?
Cold air blocks warm air and forces it to change direction ?
Warm air can ride over cold but not move it?
When the jet stream moves south in the NH it creates cyclonic movement ?
When the JS moves north it creates anticyclones?
What moves the jet stream ? Joe Bastardi or PIers Corbyn are you there ?
What we need is another billion pound computer to give you wrong information a half hour sooner.Oh! and please top up our pension fund.
Im going to complain to the BBC about the use of the Phrase” Since records began”
I am pretending to be a Warmist to get onto the Biased BBC Newswatch show.
Start with
Dear sir
With the recent reporting of increasing rainfall in the UK.due to Climate Change
I detected the overuse of the Phrase “Since Records Began” in broadcast news
This does prompt 2 Questions exactly when did the records begin and where exactly.
I can remember back in the 1983 1987 elections complaints about political bias from both Labour and Conservatives.So now with most TV news and current affairs shows under every Opinion Poll and Survey they showed the source of their Data Mori You Gov etc.
Surely the same should apply when broadcasting Climate Weather Data.
Just using the “Phrase Since Records Began” is rather “glib”needs to state the Data Source and the historic Start point .
If the BBC needs to properly inform the public of the Danger from Climate Change and the Higher frequency of flooding and extreme weather events.The BBC should be less lessee fare in the accurate reporting of important Data and stop the use of the rather Vague Phrase “Since Records Began”.
Yours sincerely
i will Copy and paste this onto the BBC Complaints page
Anyone can tidy it up and make it less waffle and more catchy many thanks
http://news.bbc.co.uk/newswatch/ukfs/hi/newsid_4030000/newsid_4032600/4032695.stm
The UK Met office are desperate to pin something(anything) on rising CO2 levels. Certainly UK temperatures have not changed at all during the last 72 years – see http://clivebest.com/blog/?p=4448. The only trend observed in the world’s oldest continuous temperature record (HADCET) is a gradual 0.03C/decade recovery from the little Ice Age. Their climate models have failed to predict either UK or global temperature rises, so all that’s left are extreme weather predictions. Therefore expect to see many more scare stories this year.
Drought, Floods, Storms, Coast erosion, Plagues of locusts, Invasion of ladybirds etc.
“All Change: Met Office Now Predicts Global Warming Standstill Until 2017”
http://www.thegwpf.org/change-met-office-predicts-global-warming-standstill-2017/
“Global average temperature is expected to remain between 0.28 °C and 0.59 °C (90% confidence range) above the long-term (1971-2000) average during the period 2013-2017, with values most likely to be about 0.43 °C higher than average (see blue curves in the Figure 1 below).”
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/seasonal-to-decadal/long-range/decadal-fc
“There’s evidence to say we are getting slightly more rain in total, but more importantly it may be falling in more intense bursts” — Julia Slingo
That reminds me of Eric Morecambe’s reply to Andre Previn when questioned about his piano playing. “They are the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order”
James Abbott says:
January 5, 2013 at 3:16 pm
“This is just an attempt to distract from the real story, which is that 2012 saw the second highest recorded rainfall total in the UK and the highest ever recorded in England, since records began in 1910. But more revealing is the fact that 4 out of the 5 wettest years recorded have been since the year 2000.”
And this is precisely what happened at the end of the Medieval Warm Period. Google ‘the Great Famine’. There was continual rain and storms for UK and NW Europe for seven years leading to crop failures and large scale starvation. UK is now getting warnings from supermarket companies to expect extreme food price inflation – for precisely the same reason. Looks like William Herschel’s conjectures still hold about the Sun and the price of food despite modern agriculture.
From another blog:
From: “The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization”
By Brian M. fagan
“Seven weeks after Easter in A.D. 1315, sheets of rain spread across a sodden Europe, turning freshly plowed fields into lakes and quagmires. The deluge continued through June and July, and then August and September. Hay lay flat in the fields; wheat and barley rotted unharvested. The anonymous author of the Chronicle of Malmesbury wondered if divine vengeance had come upon the land: “Therefore is the anger of the Lord kindled against his people. and he hath stretched our his hand against them, and hath smitten them.” Most close-knit firming communities endured the shortages of 1315 and hoped for a better harvest the following year. But heavy spring rains in 1316 prevented proper sowing. Intense gales bartered the English Channel and North Sea; flocks and herds withered, crops failed, prices rose, and people again contemplated the wrath of God. By the time the barrage of rains subsided in 1321, over a million- and-a-half people. villagers and city folk alike. had perished from hunger and famine-related epidemics. Gilles de Muisit, abbot of Saint-Martin de Tournai in modern-day Belgium, wrote, “Men and women from among the powerful, the middling, and the lowly, old and young, rich and poor, perished daily in such numbers that the air was fetid with the stench.” People everywhere despaired. Guilds and religious orders moved through the streets, the people naked, carrying the bodies of saints and other sacred relics. After generations of good, they believed that divine retribution had come to punish a Europe divided by war and petty strife.
The great rains of 1315 marked the beginning of what climatologists call the Little Ice Age, a period of six centuries of constant climatic shifts that may or may nor be still in progress.”
The weather experienced by the UK last year from a historical perspective is nothing new. As soon as the Sun becomes inactive and the Hadley cells become less vigorous the jetstreams move equatorward and weather that would have been North of Scotland instead crosses southern Britain. Start learning history and realize that there is nothing new, exceptional or unprecedented about the weather that is currently happening.
And your statement is just an attempt to distract from the fact that the Met Office’s forecast at the start of last year was wrong, as usual. I recall the Met Office promised us a dryer UK with more warmth.
Now let’s compare what the Met Office said with your statement that the UK is getting wetter.
Can you see that your defence of the Met Office is a joke? YOU can’t latch onto the rain issue and ignore the drying issue.
Now for a bit of climate science regarding the UK’s droughtrain.
Finally, what evidence can your provide that greenhouse gases have anything to do with the ‘record’ rain?
Here is the link for the first quoted Met Office statement in my last comment.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2010/droughts-to-increase
James Abbott says:……
———————
On the subject of record rain, can you imagine the gnashing of teeth if the following was to occur today? Both in New York in the same year. [my bold]
Records are made to be broken.
I think if a scientist visited the Met Office he would advise the politicians that dabble there that their billion dollar computer has falsified the CO2 forcing and its central role in climate a hundred times over. Please tell me, someone, that you know of modellers who have been adjusting the CO2 forcing downwards in recent years. Viner and the rest have staked and ruined their reputations as serious climate scientists with abandon and no sign of revision of their models.
Ian W said:
“As soon as the Sun becomes inactive and the Hadley cells become less vigorous the jetstreams move equatorward and weather that would have been North of Scotland instead crosses southern Britain. Start learning history and realize that there is nothing new, exceptional or unprecedented about the weather that is currently happening.”
Quite so.
I’ve been telling you all since 2008.
Climate Ace says:
January 5, 2013 at 5:26 pm
“King of Cool, BTW, why are you pretending that what is happening in Tasmania is not an extreme event? Hobart has just set a maximum temperature record… “
Absolutely not Climate Ace. But what I am suggesting is that is has BA to do with CO2 and I do note that Hobart experienced 40.1 deg C in 1899 and 40.8 in 1976.
And if I am allowed to continue to ignore decorum and discuss natural though disastrous events whilst they are still happening, I would venture to say that bush fires in Tasmania, which is covered in forest, have been happening for thousands of years before the first convicts occupied the penal colony in 1803 and modern arsonists ply their evil trade.
And having had Elvis, the water bombing helicopter dropping buckets loads of water to put out a fire on the boundary fence to my property some years ago, I fully sympathise with all the fire fighters and those that have lost property down there and wish them well. I am reassured that they will be given all the help they need from their fellow citizens. I am also optimistic that, unlike devastating fires of 1967, that they were much better prepared to prevent loss of life.
And whilst these unfortunate events will happen in Australia (and all over the world) from time to time, we are NOT as Christine Milne stated on ABC radio last month being swamped by “extreme events” because of carbon dioxide and if we are “on track” for a 5 – 6 deg C rise in temperature, she is going to be dead and buried before she experiences anywhere near one tenth of that amount with no discernable increase for a decade and a half.
But my major point Climate Ace is that 2013 is going to a critical year weather wise for both sides of Australian politics. I wouldn’t dare to be as brave as the Met Office and make any predictions like some notable alarmists who have had their fingers well and truly burnt. But I do know that you WILL get rain in Tasmania. It may not be tomorrow but it WILL come and the forest will be green again and the houses will be rebuilt and Tasmania will soon return to its glorious natural state.
And I can only hope that for Christine Milne’s sake we do not get record snow falls in winter.
Thanks Jimbo
Try reading a posting before sounding off against it.
I stated quite clearly that forecasts are unreliable – including from the Met Office – and that much more relevant to climate science is actual measurements. And so it is interesting to note that 4 out of 5 of the wettest years in the UK (since 1910) have occured since 2000.
You then ask
“Finally, what evidence can your provide that greenhouse gases have anything to do with the ‘record’ rain?”
Its basic physics. As the atmosphere and oceans warm, the atmosphere can carry more moisture, increasing the likelyhood of increased annual rain and more intense rain events. As the increase in temperature seen in recent decades is probably the result of the emission of greenhouse gases, then it follows the 2 are likely linked.
It would certainly appear sensible that with UK weather strongly influenced by Atlantic weather systems then it would be expected that in a warmer world, rainfall will rise and that is what the 30 year means show – albeit a modest increase. But there could be other influences in the longer term, most obviously pressure patterns and in 2012 the jet stream position led to almost 3/4 of the year with the UK under low after low coming off the Atlantic.
So whilst all this does not definately prove the case, the actual observations of increasing rain are consistent with global warming.
But to repeat, predictions are just that – predictions. Its no surprise that the climate sceptic community leaps on poor predictions when the real measurements clash with their world view.
P. Solar says:
January 5, 2013 at 9:45 am
<<>>
Speaking as one of the afore-mentioned “old gits”, I entirely agree!
James Abbott says:
January 6, 2013 at 11:44 am (replying to)
Thanks Jimbo
Hmmmn.
Let me help you out a litttle bit here with some simple math.
If your CACA global warming is to blame for the UK rains this past month, then clearly the “rise” in temperature you so fear is to blame. Actual global measurements of the actual global temperatures for the past month show a clear and distinct and frightening “rise” of 1/5 of one degree increase over the the baseline period in mid 1970.. Are you blaming an actual 1/5 of one degree change for record setting rain and floods?
Whoopsie. No significant temperature rise found, no “Sahara-like” deserts nor drought nor frozen tundra either. Therefore you are wrong.
Obviously, since the FUTURE temperatures you so fear could not have caused today’s rain, snows, and flooding, perhaps the past temperatures did. Let’s look at a period when temperatures were a little bit higher – say, 1998 when measured global temperatures were a whopping 1/2 of one degree higher than the baseline. Nope. No flooding, no abnormal snow, no abnormal weather that year.
Perhaps it was the decrease in temperatures from 1998 to 2012 that caused it? But that’s not your feared CACA global warming, so obviously you can’t blame any global warming, nor global cooling, for today’s rain.
So why did you? Other than propaganda that is.
Don’t you mean on the record? Also note that stations have been moved and that the Met Office has an inbuilt bias towards forced climate change.
Everything is consistent with global warming old chum.
Of course it’s entirely consistent with the theory of AGW. . The problem is that many models are used and so Warmists have inoculated themselves against falsification. If you don’t believe me then look at my list of peer reviewed bollocks predicting everything under the Sun.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/03/the-big-self-parodying-climate-change-blame-list/
Jimbo,
James Abbott doesn’t understand that local climates change constantly. A few millennia ago the Sahara was verdant. Now it is a desert. England is no different; it’s climate is always changing. It has changed slightly over the past century and human CO2 emissions had nothing to do with it..
Abbott believes this is due to global warming. But he is wrong. The planet has warmed a tiny 0.8ºC since the start of the industrial revolution. If that produced global effects, then every local climate would be changing.
Mr Abbott sees only what he wants to see, and he wants to scare himself. From his prior posts, he has succeeded. He ignores the fact that the Met predicted less precipitation, then it blamed it’s failed prediction on global warming and “carbon”. Unfortunately, Abbott cannot see how ridiculous the whole climate alarmist narrative is.
Thanks RACookPE1978
Oh dear – you are seriously muddled there.
Firstly there has been no cooling since 1998. Thats a much used but false line. On both the 5 year running mean and annual plot, its been warmer since 1998, not by much, but warmer.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif
Secondly, the modern warming phase, most likely linked to greenhouse gas emissions, started around the late 1970s. Since then the world has warmed by about 0.5C.
Thirdly, the ocean-atmosphere system cannot instantly respond to forcing. In particular the oceans respond more slowly so we need to look at long term trends, not individual years.
Overall, on basic physics the modern warming phase plus the smallewr rise from pre-industrial times (total about 0.7C) should result in about a 4% increase in moisture content in the atmosphere. That will not lead to biblical flooding, but it should result in measureable change – and indeed the UK has seen a gradual increase in annual rainfall over recent decades.
Your use of extreme impact scenarios is your own – I have never used them.
Jimbo
You are still hung up on predictions and models.
For the third time, I agree – they are not that reliable. Its the measurements that are much more important.