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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Something I’ve noticed about models covering more than 5 days.
They spend most of the time just extrapolating an approximate continuation of the current circulation setup to the end of the run.
Then when they see a change in pattern developing about 3 to 5 days out they then just extrapolate an approximate continuation of the changed pattern for the rest of the period.
In other words predictive skill beyond 3 to 5 days is still zero.
Until a couple of days ago the models were suggesting an indefinite continuation of the mild zonal spell across the UK. Now everything from about 3 days from now shows substantial blocking to the end of the run.
They are just guessing and an old fashioned meteorologist with a set of synoptic charts could do just as well despite 30 years having passed, billions having been spent and whole new institutions having been created.
Met Office 2002: “They showed the UK faced drier, warmer summers and wetter, milder winters. ”
Met Office 2009: ” The scientists say summer rainfall in south-east England could decrease by one-fifth by the 2050s. ”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jun/18/uk-weather-climate-impact-report
But now the trend is “towards wetter weather” ?????????????
cui bono says:
January 6, 2013 at 7:00 am
It must take genius to get it wrong 90% of the time…
____________________________
Not when your predictions must go along the CAGW agenda at the same time that reality insists going the opposite way.
Wait a minute. The Met Office in 2009 was saying increased global temperatures result in drought. Now they are saying increased global temperatures result in flood?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/28/met-office-study-global-warming
As opposed to:
The Met Office is the UK’s number 1 national disgrace.
Where the Met Office have cocked up with their forecasts of warmer drier summers. ls that they were expecting the jet to move northwards during the summer, so allowing the fine weather that happens in southern europe to move further north. But since 2007 the jet has not been playing ball.
So they have ended up with egg on their face.
Another Met Office FAIL! Oh the humanity.
http://www.thegwpf.org/met-office-climate-forecasts-always-wrong-but-never-in-doubt/
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/yet-another-met-office-fail/
james griffin on January 6, 2013 at 6:28 am
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?
————-
Start with the distinction between a prediction for 20 years hence versus conditions now. Then follow with the distinction between global air temperatures and local ocean see temperatures feeding local weather patterns.
Or more simply: it’s complicated.
Water vapour!!!! But, but I thought there was no trend. Darn the Met Office must be rightwrong again. :-p
http://www.agu.org/journals/pip/gl/2012GL052094-pip.pdf
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/18/new-paper-on-global-water-vapor-puts-climate-modelers-in-a-bind/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/14/another-ipcc-ar5-reviewer-speaks-out-no-trend-in-global-water-vapor/
Did I hear drought?
So I now see that the UK is expected to get more droughtrain. Is there anything this innocent trace gas can’t do?
Slingo should be fired and the Met Office should be closed down and their work given to a private outfit.
LazyTeenager:
Your post at January 6, 2013 at 12:43 pm says in total
Allow me to clarify.
Yes, “it’s complicated”. Indeed, it is so “complicated” that
(a) it has proven to be too complicated for the MO to predict it
and
(b) you don’t have a clue what you are arm-waving about.
Richard
Spinning in the rain, just Spinning in the rain.
What a load of old propaganda, its global warming again.
Oh well Hoisted by their own Petard. Can they just get back to honest to goodness weather forecasting and drop the AGW tosh as its clearly affecting their judgment and making them look increasingly foolish.
I work at a number of the open-air events held in the South of England during the summer months. Not one of the various organising committees relies on the Met. Office forecasts, all use the services of private forecasting companies. As Joe Bastardi says above, when your income relies on being right just about all the time, then your attention tends to become a trifle more focussed!
I sometimes wonder if these people sit at home and think “How long am I going to have to spout this obvious drivel before my lords and masters get it into their heads that it is wrong and just repeating the same thing over and over doesn’t make it any righter”
James Bull
It’s been raining in the UK.
News? Not really. Oddly it’s been raining in the UK, and the populous complaining about it for centuries.
It’s just another item to keep weather in the news and the UK population sensitized to it. It has as much credence as the blathering of Prince Charles.
Aren’t the met office still campaigning for a bigger and faster computer so they can forecast their inaccuracies quicker?
To understand the Met Office position you have to understand a few things:
1. They are a govt department
2. ALL uk vehicle taxation is based on co 2
3. UK govt departments now being run by people who went to university here in 70’s and 80’s
4 Public sector pension funds heavily invested in green companies
i am sure you can think of a few more
“A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.” – Winston Churchill
Or disappear their predictions.
cui bono says:
January 6, 2013 at 7:00 am
It must take genius to get it wrong 90% of the time when you always have a 50-50 chance of getting it right.
=========================================================================
… and that’s when the rest of us start looking for a dogma instead of a science. 🙂
Anthony, did you really have to include a picture of her? Never mind “scaring the children” – you’ve put me off for the rest of the day…
Do WordPress provide a plugin which obscures a picture until a warning message has been clicked through?
For 18 year period, from 1995 – 2012 inclusive, temperatures in the central England area have been falling at alarming 1.7 degree C / century !
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/L100y.htm
I think the underlying point here is that the UK climate is deteriorating rapidly. We are having to get used to floods and new lakes. When it snows it will be very interesting to say the least. It’s obvious to anyone living in the UK that the climate is changing, we can debate the causes, but the fact is there for all to see. It’s climate change in action, but not as predicted.
@gareth Phillips
I resist the temptation to engage my caps lock and only state:
Climate is always changing.
Thank you Allen for your well thought out and considered post.Climate indeed always changes. It always rains ( in the UK at least) but it is the rate of change and rainfall that is important. It’s a bit like the difference between being hit by a car at 30 miles per hour or 3 miles per hour. They are both moving, but the impacts are very different. Most of the annual record rainfall has taken place since the year 2000. It’s been 4 years since we had a real summer, it’s been raining and breaking records every year for years now. Yes, climate changes from day to day, but sometimes it changes just a bit more than usual and we have to admit that whether this is natural variation or something else, there is something unusual and unpredicted going on. I see from our history that the last time we had weather patterns like this in the 13th century we ended up with the black death hitting a weakened population. While I am not saying that similar things will happen in our century, we need to adapt, adjust and recognise dramatic changes are afoot, at least in the UK. Examples may be ceasing to build houses on flood plains and fantasising about droughts and Mediterranean climates.
Gareth Phillips says:
January 7, 2013 at 7:37 am
I think the underlying point here is that the UK climate is deteriorating rapidly. We are having to get used to floods and new lakes. When it snows it will be very interesting to say the least. It’s obvious to anyone living in the UK that the climate is changing, we can debate the causes, but the fact is there for all to see. It’s climate change in action, but not as predicted.
—————————————————————-
I think the underlying point here is that the UK climate drama production department of government is deteriorating rapidly. We are having to get used to average floods and no new lakes. When it snows it will be the same boring snow as always, to say the least. It’s obvious to anyone living in the UK that the climate isn’t changing, we can debate the causes, but the fact is there for all to see. It’s climate change in action, but not as predicted.
There. Fixed that for you.
Gareth Phillips says:
January 7, 2013 at 9:51 am
Thank you Allen for your well thought out and considered post.Climate indeed always changes. It always rains ( in the UK at least) but it is the rate of change and rainfall that is important. It’s a bit like the difference between being hit by a car at 30 miles per hour or 3 miles per hour. They are both moving, but the impacts are very different. Most of the annual record rainfall has taken place since the year 2000. It’s been 4 years since we had a real summer, it’s been raining and breaking records every year for years now. Yes, climate changes from day to day, but sometimes it changes just a bit more than usual and we have to admit that whether this is natural variation or something else, there is something unusual and unpredicted going on. I see from our history that the last time we had weather patterns like this in the 13th century we ended up with the black death hitting a weakened population. While I am not saying that similar things will happen in our century, we need to adapt, adjust and recognise dramatic changes are afoot, at least in the UK. Examples may be ceasing to build houses on flood plains and fantasising about droughts and Mediterranean climates.
================
Gareth, you are spot on about not, absolutely not, building houses on flood plains.
There is one fact we know about flood plains [although various politicos with axes to grind over the past Idunnohowlong, plainly don’t].
Flood plains can flood.
Goodness.
Can you believe that?
[Rhetorical.]
For the rest, I am unconvinced we have ‘dramatic changes’ going on in the UK’s weather/climate.
Weather, for sure.
Climate change for sure, of some sort, and as always.
But even in the UK we have weather records of only – perhaps – four hundred years [barring exceptional events recorded in ‘Chronicles’ etc]. We have reasonably good records of perhaps a century and a half [before then, it appears, calibration was at best jolly spotty, and consistent recording may not have been the norm]. Even the delightful Meteorological Office – aware of records back well into the Eighteenth Century – insists that [most] records start about the start of the last century [say during King Edward VII’s reign] – see the recent ‘Wettest Year Ever in England’ [since records began – ‘in 1910’!) – when some measurements of rainfall [sporadic in space and time, no doubt] have been kept since the Seventeenth Century.
Four hundred years is about one twenty-eighth part of the time since the last Ice Age cold period proper.
And the climate has changed in that period, but we have no good records [at any definition], of weather observations – let alone of any accuracy! – for twenty-seven of those twenty eight twenty-eighths.
Do we have any clear concept of normal?
Average?
Over a hundred years, maybe; but not ten thosand years!
The wet months in the UK are down to the change to a more southern placed jet stream. The jet stream normally brings in low pressure systems between Scotland and Iceland from the Atlantic Ocean. This causes Scotland and Iceland to get the usual wet weather with England and Wales drier. During these wet periods NW/N Scotland has been drier because the low pressure systems have been further South pushing across especially England and Wales west to east instead of in it’s usual track.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/anomacts/2012/12/2012_12_Rainfall_Anomaly_1981-2010.gif
The southern placed Jet stream has also been a key player for much colder winters over recent years for the UK. The same weather patterns occurring in Winter especially when placed much further South, leads to colder temperatures here increasing the snow risk further North.
The Met Office in the past claimed global warming was to increase rainfall in winter with drier summers. The jet stream with it’s movement northwards during this period was responsible and this would increase the chances of less snowfall. What happened in reality we know is much different and since 2000 the jet stream moved South and has been especially dominant since 2007 with floods and cold winters. The UK always gets a mild winter every so often even during these periods, so this is nothing out of ordinary when it occurs.
Therefore the Met Office didn’t know why the rainfall has increased and with this recent confusion with global warming, obviously still don’t show they know now. The change in weather patterns reflects more like the Little Ice Age UK then global warming UK, when southern tracking lows often brought snow/cold and very wet weather.