Forecast for warming revised downward.
The UK Met Office has revised one of its forecasts for how much the world may warm in the next few years.
It says that the average temperature is likely to rise by 0.43 C by 2017 – as opposed to an earlier forecast that suggested a warming of 0.54C.
The explanation is that a new kind of computer model using different parameters has been used.
The Met Office stresses that the work is experimental and that it still stands by its longer-term projections.
These forecast significant warming over the course of this century.
The forecasts are all based on a comparison with the average global temperature over the period 1971-2000.
The earlier model had projected that the period 2012-16 would be 0.54C above that long-term average – within a range of uncertainty from 0.36-0.72C.
By contrast the new model, known as HadGEM3, gives a rise about one-fifth lower than that of 0.43C – within a range of 0.28-0.59.
This would be only slightly higher that the record year of 1998 – in which the Pacific Ocean’s El Nino effect was thought to have added more warming.
If the forecast is accurate, the result would be that the global average temperature would have remained relatively static for about two decades.
Blog suspicions
An apparent standstill in global temperatures is used by critics of efforts to tackle climate change as evidence that the threat has been exaggerated.
Climate scientists at the Met Office and other centres are involved in intense research to try to understand what is happening over the most recent period.
The most obvious explanation is natural variability – the cycles of changes in solar activity and the movements and temperatures of the oceans.
The forecasts are based on a comparison with the average global temperature over the period 1971-2000A Met Office spokesman said “this definitely doesn’t mean any cooling – there’s still a long-term trend of warming compared to the 50s, 60s or 70s.
“Our forecast is still for temperatures that will be close to the record levels of the past few years.
“And because the natural variability is based on cycles, those factors are bound to change the other way at some point.”
The fact that the revised projection was posted on the Met Office website without any notice on December 24 last year has fuelled suspicions among bloggers.
However the Met Office says the data had been published in a spirit of transparency as soon as it became available from the computer that produced it.
Future forcings
It describes the decadal projections as part of an experimental effort launched in 2004 to fill the gap between daily weather forecasts and century-long estimates for climate change.
But this is an emerging and highly complex area of science because of the interplay of natural factors and manmade greenhouse gases at a time when a key set of temperatures – in the deep ocean – is still relatively unknown.
One aim of attempting to project the climate on this timescale is to be able to rapidly check the accuracy of the models being used.
A paper published last month in the journal Climate Dynamics, authored by scientists from the Met Office and 12 other international research centres, combined different models to produce a forecast for the next decade.
It said: “Decadal climate prediction is immature, and uncertainties in future forcings, model responses to forcings, or initialisation shocks could easily cause large errors in forecasts.”
However the paper concluded that, “in the absence of volcanic eruptions, global temperature is predicted to continue to rise, with each year from 2013 onwards having a 50 % chance of exceeding the current observed record”.
Scrutiny of Met Office forecasts and climate science generally is set to increase in the build-up to the publication of the next assessment by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in September.
Source:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20947224
=========================================================
Re: that last paragraph, with the release of the IPCC AR5 leak #2 today, ya think?
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Oh sure, he “covered” himself later on with a contradictory statement. That was a necessary CYA maneuver. But his wildly misleading lead planted the seed that much of the audience will retain.
Well halleluiah and jolly hockey sticks! Julia Gillard’s, Greg Combet’s and Christine Milne’s dreams have all come true. We are having a heat wave in Australia and we can justify the carbon tax.
But it is not just a plain, common garden variety heat wave, this is a record breaking, worst by far, super catastrophic, mind blowing, blistering, scorching thermageddon and the MSM has run out of expletives to describe it.
And although it has been claimed that a new national high was established by taking an average of the maximum temperatures across the country, Sydney only reached 42 deg C after it was forecast to break its 1939 record high of 45.3 deg C. (Wonder if they did a 1939 maximum national average?) And the Oodnadatta 50.7 deg C 1960 record also is still standing.
Now before I begin to get criticised for downplaying this extreme event and not waiting until it is all over, let me pause for sincere thoughts for all those affected by the heat and resulting bushfires and all those gallant emergency service personnel, many of whom are unpaid volunteers who have so far done an exemplary job of amazingly preventing any loss of life. Fingers crossed. This pales dramatically with the 1939 heat wave and bush fire where three quarters of the state of Victoria was directly or indirectly affected by the disaster and hundreds of people lost their live because of fire or heat:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_%281939%29
So I suppose we must have learned something. But now we are told that this is just a taste of things to come with records set to tumble in the coming years. That seems a bit funny as I did not have to use the air conditioner here for the past 18 months until a week or so ago and in 2007-8 the temperature never once went above 31 deg C.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/records-will-keep-tumbling-with-blistering-heatwaves-here-to-stay-20130108-2cetq.html
But then again I can pick cherries as well as any-one else. It will remain to be seen whether heat waves are going to be the norm like children are going to have to get used to never seeing snow again in Europe. But I would not be too keen to jump on the prediction band wagon if I were Ben Cubby. Predictions about climate have a habit of coming back to bite you and he better hope that temperatures in 2013 do not quickly get back to normal like in the last couple of years or keep flattening out.
And I would really love to hear an alternative meteorological theory as to why we are having a heat wave this year rather than it is because of increased CO2 in the atmosphere. I am sure that there is one as there was with these others:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Australian_history/Heatwave_disasters
But no-one seems to be keen to explore it.
Met Office news release dated 20 th December giving the 2013 annual global temperature forecast is totally different from Met Office statement in the above article. Notice the best estimate of O.57C , significantly higher from the 0.43 C projected for the period 2013 -2017 and the probable for 2012 of about 0.417C for 2012[ up to Nov 30,2012 HADCRUT3GL].
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2012/2013-global-forecast
It is the fate of True Believers to slavishly adhere to the dogma until the last of them as has been trampled by reality. It simply take geologic time to accomplish it.
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 8, 2013 at 1:28 pm
“‘The earlier model had projected that the period 2012-16 would be 0.54C above that long-term average – within a range of uncertainty from 0.36-0.72C.
By contrast the new model, known as HadGEM3, gives a rise about one-fifth lower than that of 0.43C – within a range of 0.28-0.59.’
within their stated uncertainties there is no difference between the two predictions…”
Yes, and the comparison above (that claims it is static) is to the el nino year of 1998.
The headline is misleading.
About an hour ago the BBC announced that according to the Met Office the UK was going to have 10 years of extreme rain. Apparently this is the New Normal.
Strange they didn’t bother to forecast this when they were telling us it was going to be a long drought last year. At least the Met Office are doing long range weather forecasts again.
There’s only one thing to do. Get out the Barbie!
Ric Werme on January 8th 2013 at 2:24 said the following:
Scute says:
January 8, 2013 at 1:40 pm
“It says that the average temperature is likely to rise by 0.43 C by 2017.”
That’s nearly a degree a decade
No, it is not. Read the text:
The forecasts are all based on a comparison with the average global temperature over the period 1971-2000.
See the image (fie on WordPress):
[http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/65157000/jpg/_65157024_65157023.jpg ]
According to that we’re about 0.35, so the projected range 0.28-0.59 says we could have cooling. If we go to 0.43, that’s 0.08 in 4 years, or 0.10 C° per decade.
1) You chose to omit the short sentence I wrote prior to the section you did choose to quote before going on to misrepresent what I said. This omitted sentence completely negates what you went on to interpret of my comment. I had better quote it here.
“…and it seems that despite this admission David Shukman wants to take that good old Warmist semantic machine for another spin:”
It would have been a simple thing to keep it with your copied text as it’s the only other sentence in my short comment. But you actively avoided highlighting it. It is interesting that, by omitting that first sentence, you were able to requote my quote of Shukman, leaving the impression that I had said those words and fallen for the .43 C rise myself. I was simply quoting him to point out his semantic acrobatics- but if you had quoted me in full that would have been blindingly clear.
2) As you can see, that first sentence includes the word “semantic”. That means using words or phrases that have one meaning but which could be interpreted another way. No serious science reporter could write, “It says that the average temperature is likely to rise by 0.43 C by 2017”, without knowing that would prime the average reader, from the get-go, into thinking there would be a 0.43 rise in 5 years. The fact that Shukman goes on to cite the 1971-2000 average doesn’t detract from the fact that he has started off his article with the same old drip-feed spin which is more digestible than talk of averages for non-mathematically minded readers. The reader has been primed and any counterveing statements are more likely to be missed. That is the essence of semantics and spin. Besides, any master of spin needs a counterveiling point as a fig leaf with which to claim he meant one thing all along when he was actively inculcating the exact opposite theme.
3) By quoting me out of context, I think you’ve successfully portrayed me as an SkS type troll, parachuting in to pluck a sentence from an article and spinning it up to make the case for runaway warming. The main reason for my frequenting WUWT is to get to the bottom of how and why the alarmists can keep telling us the temps are going up when they are not. That was quite clear for anyone who read my comment and knows the meaning of the word ‘semantic’.
4) Any who reads WUWT on a regular basis knows that my main concern is researching right to the bottom of complex, highly-spun spats such as the recent IPCC/media mauling of Alec Rawls and the mealy-mouthed Met Office response to the Daily Mail’s “Global warming stopped 16 years ago” article. I then present my findings with closely argued points showing up the spin for what it is- because unfortunately, understanding the spin from first principles is as important as understanding the science from first principles. I certainly shouldn’t have to be directing these energies to my own comments-as-quoted-out-of-context. Please read more carefully in future and quote in full.
Scute
So I’m just wondering where the Met Office thinks all this extra future heat is going to come from?
The Pacific, nope, the Sun, nope, South Atlantic, nope. The only warm spot on the planet at the moment is the North Atlantic (hence the low ice extent in the Barents Sea) and that is headed towards its cooling phase. Maybe they think the hot spots in Australia (it is mid summer down there and oddly enough big dry deserty places have a history of being hot) are going to be shipped around the world? My thoughts are that it will slowly get colder globally, after a period of stasis, but due to lower energy differences we will see weather in certain places that hasn’t been seen there in a lifetime or indeed recorded anywhere. But hey, what would I know, I don’t have a big shiny supercomputer…
So we are now getting (finally), “its not as worse as we thought”
“We thought it was worse!”
Surely the logical headline?
How do you confuse a warmist?
Write 1) on one side of a piece of card and 2) on the other; it will keep he/she perplexed for hours!!
1) “The science is settled” – AGW is happening!………PTO
2) “It’s worse than we thought”- No, AGW has stopped!!………PTO
rogerknights says:
January 8, 2013 at 3:35 pm
> ENSO meter has swung into negative territory.
I forgot to check on Monday. (Let’s blame it on the cold my boss gave me.) Data with too much precision:
data from 00Z24DEC2012 to 00Z07JAN2013
“———-”
-0.045533
-0.228761
9.999e+20
Length of data file 82, most recent value: -0.228761
file_last -0.045533
anomaly -02
That’s pretty substantial for a one week change. Don’t expect that rate to continue!
I’ll change the program to get more weeks of history sometime, it’s fairly interesting, huh?
Such a shame the experts don’t read the actual experts commenting here. After reporting this on the news tonight the final sentence was ‘Of course this does not change the long term man made warming’. How the heck do they know that? What model could override this one? The simple rule in life they have not operated is we only know what we know now, and that is enough. Just stop when they’re ahead, they’ve finally managed to be honest and then ruined it at the end by telling stories again. But people should hear it all and only listen to the first part if they’ve got any sense at all.
Ironically, the above BBC article is obscurely tucked away on the BBC Science pages but the FRONT HOME PAGE of the BBC states
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20953882
2012 ‘hottest US year’ on record
The US sweltered under its hottest year on record in 2012, breaking the previous high temperature record by a full 1F (0.6C).
Quoting from above:
“It describes the decadal projections as part of an experimental effort launched in 2004 to fill the gap between daily weather forecasts and century-long estimates for climate change.”
“But this is an emerging and highly complex area of science because of the interplay of natural factors and manmade greenhouse gases at a time when a key set of temperatures – in the deep ocean – is still relatively unknown.”
=============================
Here they spring open the hinges of their brainpans and allow us to peer inside-
at the mushrooms and beetles.
In 2004, it dawns on them that they really don’t understand how climate works, that daily weather forecasts are not the cutting edge of climate science, so they launch an “experimental effort” [ ! ] to “fill the gap”. Then, after eight years of scratching their heads in confusion, they jettison their current ignorance on the matter into “the deep ocean”, a la Trenberth. There can be no doubt, the “key temperatures” fell overboard and settled into the cold, dark ocean deep where climate research becomes colorless, odorless, and tasteless. Davy Jones’ locker is now the repository for the hopes of the CAGW crowd. We will hear more of the “deep ocean”, I predict. Their aim now is to boil the ocean from the bottom.
Quoting directly from the article…
“this is an emerging and highly complex area of science because of the interplay of natural factors and manmade greenhouse gases at a time when a key set of temperatures – in the deep ocean – is still relatively unknown.”
“Decadal climate prediction is immature, and uncertainties in future forcings, model responses to forcings, or initialisation shocks could easily cause large errors in forecasts.”
…and yet…
“…it still stands by its longer-term projections.”
Sigh!
I quote:
“An apparent standstill in global temperatures is used by critics of efforts to tackle climate change as evidence that the threat has been exaggerated. Climate scientists at the Met Office and other centres are involved in intense research to try to understand what is happening over the most recent period. The most obvious explanation is natural variability – the cycles of changes in solar activity and the movements and temperatures of the oceans.”
This is just about as worthless as a supposedly knowledgeable article can get. First, calling it an “apparent” standstill is misleading. It implies that it is not real which is bullshit. It is very real, all temperature data say so. Temperature is not increasing and shows no sign of increasing in the future, but this is implicit in their use of the word “threat.”. They don’t know what is going on and state that the “most obvious” explanation is “natural variability.” A more honest explanation would be that “we don’t know because we are ignorant.” Ignorant of what the climate is doing now and what it might be doing in the future. And that despite the fact that their “Climate scientists at the Met Office and other centers are involved in intense research to try to understand what is happening…” This research has been going on for years and is costing taxpayers huge amounts of money. Uncle Sam alone spends over two billion dollars each year directly on climate research. If you add departmental and other expenditures it’s more like seven billion dollars. The others – UK, Germany, Australia etc are not far behind. So far there have been no breakthroughs and as far as I am concerned the output of this climate research industry amounts to nothing more than large numbers of technician-level papers. As to the future, they are trusting it to the greenhouse theory of warming which is actually dead. It is dead because its predictions are wrong. In science, a theory that makes wrong predictions is cast off into the trash pile of history. In 2007 IPCC used the greenhouse theory to predict the twenty-first century climate. They knew that just doubling the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will only raise global temperature by 1.1 degrees Celsius. This does not threaten anybody so they brought in water vapor to help out with warming. It works like that: first, carbon dioxide warms the air. Warm air can hold more water vapor and the additional greenhouse warming from this water vapor is added to to original from carbon dioxide. Their computers tell us that this can triple the original warming or more. It is called positive water vapor feedback. Using that method they predicted that warming in the twenty-first century shall proceed at the rate of 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade. We are now in the second decade of this century and there is no sign whatsoever of this predicted warming. Hence, off to the trash pile of history with that theory. That is not the only prediction that it made that has failed. If you put positive water vapor feedback into the computer and let it run it will tell you to look for a hot spot at ten kilometer height in the tropics. Well, radiosondes have been searching for this hot spot but simply cannot find it. The conclusion from this has to be that the positive water vapor feedback simply does not exist. Hence, all the predictions made using positive water vapor feedback are wrong. But worse yet comes from Ferenc Miskolczi. In 2010 he used NOAA weather balloon database to study the absorption of atmospheric infrared radiation over time. The greenhouse theory tells us that carbon dioxide in the air absorbs infrared radiation, that radiation turns to heat, warms the atmosphere, and we get global warming. Miskolczi found that the transparency of the atmosphere did not change over a 61 year period while carbon dioxide simultaneously increased by 21.6 percent. Greenhouse theory requires that addition of this substantial amount of carbon dioxide should show up as absorption, but nothing happened – the atmosphere was as transparent after the addition of CO2 as it had been before the addition of CO2. That is what Miskolczi theory predicted. This observation is a clear win for Miskolczi, and a loss for greenhouse and IPCC. Put that greenhouse into the trash pile for sure now and learn some real climate science! A good place to start would be my book called “What Warming?” that you guys probably don’t know about despite the fact that it has been out for two years now.
What David Shukman did not convey in his article is that the decadal forecast made in December 2011 which predicted the 0.54 C average figure that he refers to in his article, also said the following:
” From 2017 to 2021, global temperature is forecast to rise further to between 0.54 C and 0.97 C with the most likely value of about 0.76 C above the average”. This illustrates how significantly they have lowered their predictions of global warming. It is possible that by 2020 the actual observed global temperature anomaly may even be much lower than the new 0.43 C figure if things continue as is.
Scute says: “December 24th…a good day to bury bad news, so the saying goes.”
You cynic! It was just their way of giving us all an Xmas present we would all appreciate.
“An apparent standstill in global temperatures is used by critics of efforts to tackle climate change as evidence that the threat has been exaggerated.”
An apparent standstill? Surely you mean a very much real standstill.
As for characterizing it as being “used by critics as evidence that the threat has been exaggerated”, how about you be more honest and tell your viewers that the 16 years of non-warming was your own climate alarmist ‘scientists’ metric for proving their own theories and models to be false.
And whats with the shifting goal posts and obfuscation for why your junk science failed? The BBC reporters are clearly science deniers if they want to have a theory that can never be falsified.
What a bunch of crooks – they should have their public funding and broadcast license pulled for their continuing violation of their charter.
“some blogs” is akin to Assad’s “terrorists”. or Stalin’s oft used term “criminals” to describe the opposition. And this passes for professional journalism at the Beeb. Shame. Defund it.
“The Met Office stresses that the work is experimental and that it still stands by its longer-term projections.”
EXPERIMENTAL IS THE KEY WORD
There should be a big red stamp on every Met Office decadal and long range forecast which says . THIS WORK IS PURELY EXPERIMENTAL AND MAY BARE LITTLE RESEMBLANCE TO REALITY. DO NOT USE THIS FORECAST TO SHAPE PUBLIC POLICY IN THE AREA OF ENVIRONMENT OR ENERGY. Unfortunately , in my opinion ,these forecasts are being paraded as “solid” science with 90 confidence or with “most likely” accuracy by the spokespersons for the AGW supporting scientists leading to a tragic waste of money and manpower to solve a problem that is not happening as predicted nor is there an imminent threat . We clearly have the time to do this right , whatever the real problems if any turn out to be.
It is nice to know that the MET Office has discovered that:
1) there exists a natural variability;
2) that there are cyclical patterns in the climate;
3) that it is necessary to take into account this variability to properly interpret and forecast climate changes.
Of course this things are not new and are already published in peer reviewed literature. For example my numerous papers make these things quite clear since at least 2010 with this paper:
Scafetta N., 2010. Empirical evidence for a celestial origin of the climate oscillations and its implications. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 72, 951-970.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364682610001495
A summary with realistic climate forecasting using natural cycles (since 2000) is here:
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/#astronomical_model_1
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/7E__CV_figure7.png
A more detailed discussion based on the origin of these cycles is here:
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/#astronomical_model
I expect Simon Cowell might be pretty good with some of these models.
When the BBC 28 reconvene they should invite him along to the strategy meeting. That’ll be 29. A nice round number by BBC calculations.
Most posters here are missing the point. The MET prediction was dropping/had dropped below the uncertainty bounds of their model. It was, technically, “falsified” using current data. With their updated prediction, so long as global temperatures do not begin a cooling trend, it will not be falsified until around 2020 or longer.