By Paul Homewood
Following release of provisional rainfall data for the UK, showing that 2012 has been one of the wettest on record, Professor Julia Slingo, chief scientist at the Met Office, tells us
“The trend towards more extreme rainfall events is one we are seeing around the world, in countries such as India and China, and now potentially here in the UK”, adding that “the long-term trend towards wetter weather is likely to continue as global air temperatures rise. “
Leaving aside the fact that the Met Office have also been warning us about droughts lately, let’s take a look at some of the forecasts they were making during 2012.
Each month they issue a 3-month outlook. Unfortunately the ones issued prior to September have disappeared from their archives, but I had already saved the April-June, and also the Sep-Nov forecasts. Along with the Oct-Dec ones, what were the Met forecasting as the year progressed?
On 23rd March, they predicted “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.”
RESULT – RAINFALL TOTALS WERE 176%, 94% AND 203% OF NORMAL IN APRIL, MAY AND JUNE RESPECTIVELY.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/p/i/A3-layout-precip-AMJ.pdf
On 24th August, their forecast for September “weakly favours below normal values”.
RESULT – RAINFALL WAS 117% OF NORMAL IN SEPTEMBER.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/i/e/A3-plots-precip-SON.pdf
On 21st September, they said “For UK-averaged rainfall the predicted probabilities favour below normal rainfall during October. For the period October-November-December as a whole the range of forecasts also favours lower than average rainfall”
RESULT – RAINFALL WAS 101% OF NORMAL IN OCTOBER.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/h/g/A3-plots-precip-OND.pdf
On 24th October, they forecast “Predictions for UK-mean precipitation for both November and the November-December-January period are similar to climatology”
RESULT – RAINFALL WAS 111% OF NORMAL IN NOVEMBER.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/q/6/A3-plots-precip-NDJ.pdf
And on 20th November, “Predictions for UK-mean precipitation for December show a slight shift towards below-normal values – consistent with negative North Atlantic Oscillation conditions”
RESULT – RAINFALL WAS 150% OF NORMAL IN DECEMBER.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/j/i/A3_plots-precip-DJF.pdf
So for the seven months between April and December, that forecasts are available for, the Met Office forecast drier than normal conditions in six, and normal in the seventh. They failed to get any month correct, and for the seven months in question, rainfall averaged 36% above normal levels, (which are based on 1981-2010.)
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/anomalygraphs/2012/2012_Rainfall_Anomaly_1981-2010.gif
It is very kind of Julia to tell us now that she knew all along it was likely to be wetter. It is just a pity, though, that she forgot to tell us at the time.
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The MO lampshading their incompetence regarding rain seems to be a distraction from the latest revision to their warming forecast as just reported by Tallbloke:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/01/05/major-change-in-uk-met-office-global-warming-forecast/
The new version seems to show 2018 only 0.1C warmer than 1998:
Blinkers: http://i46.tinypic.com/123147s.gif http://i45.tinypic.com/mwz33n.gif
0.5C per century warming isn’t going to scare anyone.
The Met office needs a new dart board. The one they have now is obviously faulty.
Just proves to me that I went into the wrong line of work.
And I thought it was only sports analysts and politicians that could be so wrong, so often, yet still keep their jobs.
Oh, Snap! (an american expression, for those overseas, it means a killer comeback or insult)
Draughts – global warming
Floods – global warming
Night, Day, Eclipse, Normality – global warming
When will sanity prevail.
BTW Slingo, air temperatures are pretty much what they have been, within natural variability, since the last ice-age
England has the longest and the most accurate temperature record available to the science, and yet MetOffice scientists refuse to learn from it and what it shows:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-NV.htm
Bogus!
The only reason why it is so warm and moist in a stretch from Scandinavia over the British Isles to central Europe is a much warmer-than-normal northern Atlantic!
Watch Antony’s great “Sea Ice Reference Page” for – um – references:
While the Arctic Ocean has almost fully recovered it’s Ice-cover, there’s a patch the size of Texas north of the North Cape / West of Novaja Semlja, which is up to 8 degrees Celsius (!) warmer than average.
This “central heating” is heating the air above it, which is then transported to Scandinavia and Europe via a chan of lows, to provide for the warm, humid air over here. Yet, in addition, it also keeps the Arctic Ocean in this area ice-free. But this is in fact the LAST area, where arctic ice cover is below-average! Everywhere else around the edge of the arctic ocean, the ice cover is within long-term-average already, if not above!
But once this pool of warm water north of the North Cape / West of Novaja Semlja will have run “dry”, you can expect a MASSIVE drying / cooling of air over Europe to set in.
I say, enjoy the relatively mild and humid winter in Europe, as long as it will last – because it won’t last for much longer.
Verity Jones has kindly filled in the missing months for me.
For Jan – March, the Met forecast wet weather, and got dry!
For June – August, they admitted they had no clue, and got rain 158% above average!
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/01/06/met-office-predict-wetdry-droughtfloods/
Well, if she is now predicting more rain than usual, I suppose we had better be preparing for drought soon.
You have to admire the persistence, though. If it were me, I would have given up predicting anything, other than death and taxes, ages ago.
Such error margins are not minor blips, but indicative of seriously deficient methodology if not willful promotion of a failed Party Line. Absent any pretense to integrity, who cares what escalating idiocies Mde. Julia and her junk-science coteries serve up?
U.K. papers should publish quarterly Met Office forecasts, complete with the Madame’s cumulating off-the-wall erroneous track-record, ensuring that her asininities cannot be “disappeared” by serial propaganda fraud. But hey, are not disproportionate bonuses in order? Surely, Mde. Julia’s pronunciamentoes are “good enough for Government work.”
I wish some of that global warming would come to the US and relieve the drought! Oh, wait…
Rubbish. Wet means there is a fight going on. I have shown that many times in my blogging on the UK that the wetness precedes large scale changes to cold. Dryness means there is no fight at all. Large scale dry forecasts that came out of the UKMET office were because they did not understand what the heck is actually going on in the overall climate pattern, it doesnt fit their agenda of man driven climate change. Its the oceans, and the sun, It cant get wet unless cold is present to clash. Its that simple. Given the reality of the global weather picture where temps have leveled off and since the start of the cold pdo have begun to fall, this is rubbish. In fact the reason we can argue that it is wetter in the UK is because of the warm amo ( which would imply more moisture is available since the oceans are the driving force behind the planetary weather behind the sun) but there is cooling ready to clash from what is going on globally, in the larger scale The ignorance of what is happening in the greatest source region of the world, the tropical pacific and the pacific in general and how it is leading to events seen with the last pdo flip to cold while the atlantic is warm tells me that her recital is some virtual weather ( model driven) dogma that is bent on claiming man, rather than the physical drivers that have been here since the start of time, are driving the weather and climate. How is it that the private sector has hit these events, but we get excuses like this from warming driven people
Is there nothing these people are held accountable for? We have been hearing no snow, no cold, dry one thing after another and this is the 4th winter in a row where severe cold. which did back off, but will now come on again over the east and central part of Europe ( UK will have some but the main part of the continent will have newsmaking cold.. and will lead to great suffering) is taking hold. They MAKE UP REASONS AFTER IT HAPPENS FOR SOMETHING THEY DID NOT SEE. Lord knows in private forecasting, we get fired if wrong. This has been a fiasco on a major scale, driving an agenda that if the kind of cold comes even like the earth had in the 70s, societies are handcuffed by the blundering energy policies these people want, and we sit here and accept this. Amazing. we deserve what we get
Met Office?
It’s what civil servants do – drones, they tell lies and very big ones at that because they can get away with it, no heads will roll. It is a political project, they are doing the work of their masters in Brussels and thus: mankind is warming the planet, by pumping CO2 into the atmosphere is the meme.
and by the way, anytime she would want to debate me on the BBC on the large scale physical drivers that dictating the global weather and where we are going, I am ready. I would love to have that chance, as I am sure many of us would
Professor Sluggo? Oh noooooooooooooo…….
First we can expect more dry warm weather and snow will be a thing of the past…now they tell us it’s going to get wetter due to AGW. However last month they told us there had been no warming for 15 years. Just what is going on?
Earlier in 2012…
SUMMARY – PRECIPITATION:
For the 3-month period January-February-March 2012, for UK precipitation, the broad-scale signal, although weak, is for somewhat wetter conditions than normal. Northwestern parts of the UK are most vulnerable to very wet conditions.
Above average winter rainfall is needed in southern, eastern and central England for a full recovery of the water resource situation here – it currently looks unlikely that this will happen.
The probability that UK precipitation for January-February-March will fall into the driest of our five categories is 15-20%, whilst the probability that it will fall into the wettest of our five categories is 20-25% (the climatological probability for each of these categories is 20%).
SUMMARY – PRECIPITATION:
Rainfall significantly above average is needed in southern, eastern and central England during the February-March-April period for a full recovery of the water resources situation here – the chances of this happening are low.
For February there is a slightly elevated risk of well-below-average rainfall across the UK as a whole.
The probability that UK precipitation for February-March-April will fall into the driest of our five categories is about 20%, whilst the probability that it will fall into the wettest of our five categories is about 15% (the 1971-2000 climatological probability for each of these categories is 20%).
SUMMARY – PRECIPITATION:
Rainfall substantially above average is needed in southern, eastern and central England during the early spring (March-April) period for a recovery of the water resources situation here – the chances of this happening are very low.
During March the forecast for the UK as a whole favours dry weather, and the wind direction preferred in our forecasts makes the southeast of the UK more prone to dry weather than the northwest.
The probability that UK precipitation for March-April-May will fall into the driest of our five categories is 20-25% whilst the probability that it will fall into the wettest of our five categories is 10-15% (the 1971-2000 climatological probability for each of these categories is 20%).
SUMMARY – PRECIPITATION:
For UK-average rainfall, the predicted probabilities slightly favour above-normal values during both May and May-June-July. However, confidence in this prediction is not high, and there is still a significant probability of below-normal rainfall.
Whilst the wet weather of recent weeks will have had a positive effect on soil moisture, with all that that implies for agriculture, it is unlikely to have had a significant impact on groundwater supplies. With the forecast for May and May-June-July not favouring a continuation of the current very wet spell, groundwater resources in southern, eastern and central England are very unlikely to recover during this period.
The probability that UK-average rainfall for May-June-July will fall into the driest of our five categories is around 15%, whilst the probability that it will fall into the wettest of our five categories is around 30% (the 1971-2000 climatological probability for each of these categories is 20%).
SUMMARY – PRECIPITATION:
For UK-average rainfall, the forecast for this summer is very uncertain, due to a lack of any strong driving factors. Although there is a somewhat elevated chance, relative to climatology, of the summer being wet, it looks unlikely that there will be very wet conditions. However, the probability of very dry conditions remains close to climatology.
The probability that UK-average rainfall for June-July-August will fall into the driest of our five categories is around 20%, whilst the probability that it will fall into the wettest of our five categories is 25-30% (the 1971-2000 climatological probability for each of these categories is 20%).
I hopes this helps. I did a scatter plot of predicted vs actual, and the best fit line is perpendicular to a line through the origin…
Joe,
Even if Prof. Slingo accepted your offer of a debate, the BBC would not air it. They would not be allowed to by the Government.
Here we see Julia Slingo blaming her execrable forecasting on- global warming
It is now the standard ploy of public types to blame their screw-ups on that. Thank God for the blogosphere where such as Slingo can be held up to public scrutiny.
I agree with Joseph Bastardi. I am not a meteorologist, but I do try and think critically about what they are trying to say. When they said that “warmer temperatures mean more water vapour” and cite that as the reason for record rainfull in 2012, I start to wonder what the effect would be of that extra 1c or so on rainfull. Maybe there would be a little more moisture and rainfull would be a little heavier than otherwise. But the defining pattern of 2012 has been the longevity of the rainfull, not the intensity.
As Joe says, any rainfull is caused by a clash of fronts – warmer air rises over a cold air mass, and hence drops its water vapour as rain. The real question is why has the weather conspired to produce front after front clashing over the British Isles? I can’t answer that question, but it is equally clear that it has nothing to do with the “rising temperature equals higher water vapour” conjecture. In fact, if anything else was noteworthy in 2012, it was that temperatures in summer were below normal, and yet rainfull was greater than normal – the exact opposite of the Met office conjecture.
One wonders whether any of these people actually think of the consequences of their words before they leave mouth.
Joe, I would not hold your breath on any chance to correct those public funded climate jokers on live tv. The media buries all the stories on Asian and European cold winters and certainly could care less for the reasons, and even more don’t give a damn about who freezes to death. In fact I never see any news regarding extreme cold anywhere on the planet. But have a drought or warm period….you would think the world was about to end.
To Joe Bastardi –
I am 100 Percent with you, Sir!
My wonderful wife has the knit pullovers ready for our family of four just in time for the coming cold spell. Folks, get prepared: This one’s not going to be pretty here in Europe!
“The trend towards more extreme rainfall events is one we are seeing around the world, in countries such as India and China, and now potentially here in the UK”
Only “potentially”, hence not yet observed, if ever. How beautifully circumspect.
What’s about the action and reaction in this statement “the long-term trend towards wetter weather is likely to continue as global air temperatures rise“? It’s only one part.
The second part would be:
More clouds that will reduce the temperature in the places where the clouds are. A rainfall it will also cool the air where it takes place.
This is means that we have a zero-sum-game. It means that any warming somewhere will result in some cooling somewhere else. Take the average and you get zero.