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?
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
DDP, people are taking money from my concerned friends now because of extreme weather events.
Here a few you can consider:
Australians had to pay a $500 flood levy last year to pay for flood damage in Queensland
My electricity bills have increased by 25% to cover infrastructure replacement due to bush fires, and to make existing infrastructure better at preventing bush fires and more fire resistant.
My insurance premiums have increased by 25%, and when I queried the insurance company they told me it was to cover the extra claims by flood and bushfire victims.
People who live in low areas or in high risk bush have had their insurance premiums increase by in some cases by 1,000 percent. Other people cannot get insurance as it is prohibitively expensive.
Numerous people have donated to various disaster appeals, and even if they didn’t donate they still ‘paid’ because other people’s donations were tax deductable.
Various governments had to spend tax money replacing infrastructure destroyed by disasters. This money would have been used to build new infrastructure which now won’t happen.
Food prices have increased (for example bananas became very expensive after a cyclon wiped out the entire crop)
Governments have been providing ‘drought aid’ to farmers, some for over a decade when Australia experienced 13 years of drought.
We have also introduced a nationwide carbon price so we are now paying either way for climate change. No wonder people are worried it is starting to effect them personally.
[snip – “lower up” been banned for repeated violation of site policy (multiple screen names), don’t respond further – Anthony]
Philip Shehan says:
January 9, 2013 at 10:56 pm
“The BBC has not been “forced” to admit anything.
It reports that the MET office has announced “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.”
That is an increase of “only” 0.43 C instead of 0.54 C, but still an increase.”
Wrong. This is not what the MET office has announced.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2013/jan/09/global-warming-met-office-paused?commentpage=4#block-50ed7557b5798da9a21a2a4f
If you look in the “article” at what is posted at 1.49pm GMT:
“1.49pm GMT
Richard Betts, head of the climate impacts strategic area at the Met Office Hadley Centre, has posted a comment below to help clear up any possible confusion caused by the BBC article I quoted at the beginning of this Eco Audit:
Please note that, as @bbcbias correctly states, the 0.43C warming is relative to 1971-2000, *not* this year. Also, the 0.43C is the average over 2013 – 2017.”
What the MET office has actually announced is that they are forecasting that the average of temperatures from 2013 – 2017 will be 0.43C higher than the 1971-2000 baseline.
Whereas, as you will note from the graphs posted at 11:19am GMT, the 1998 El Nino year is 0.4C higher than this same baseline.
So what they are predicting is that temperatures over the 2013 – 2017 period will be 0.03C higher than the temperature in 1998, which is the same thing as saying “0.43C higher than the 1971-2000 baseline”.
They are certainly NOT predicting that “the temperature will rise by 0.43C by 2017” FROM NOW, as that would imply a trend of approximately 1C per decade, which is 5 times higher than any previously observed trend. The BBC got it wrong. Hope that clears it up for you.
Graham W says:
January 10, 2013 at 5:22 am
the 1998 El Nino year is 0.4C higher than this same baseline.
So what they are predicting is that temperatures over the 2013 – 2017 period will be 0.03C higher than the temperature in 1998, which is the same thing as saying “0.43C higher than the 1971-2000 baseline
I am still confused. Are they talking about Hadcrut3 or Hadcrut4? And neither shows the 1998 El Nino as being 0.4. Note the bolded parts below.
With the Hadcrut3 anomaly for November at 0.480, the average for the first eleven months of the year is (0.217 + 0.194 + 0.305 + 0.481 + 0.473 + 0.477 + 0.445 + 0.512+ 0.514 + 0.491 + 0.480)/11 = 0.417. This would rank 9th if it stayed this way. 1998 was the warmest at 0.548. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in February of 1998 when it reached 0.756. One has to back to the 1940s to find the previous time that a Hadcrut3 record was not beaten in 10 years or less. The anomaly in 2011 was 0.340 and it will come in 13th.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3gl.txt
With the Hadcrut4 anomaly for November at 0.512, the average for the first eleven months of the year is (0.288 + 0.208 + 0.339 + 0.525 + 0.531 + 0.506 + 0.470 + 0.532 + 0.515 + 0.524 + 0.512)/11 = 0.45. This would rank 9th if it stayed this way. 2010 was the warmest at 0.54. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in January of 2007 when it reached 0.818. The anomaly in 2011 was 0.399 and it will come in 13th. 1998 was third at 0.523.1998 came in third at 0.523.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut4/data/current/time_series/HadCRUT.4.1.1.0.annual_ns_avg.txt
I really must defend the Met. Office against these scurrilous attacks regarding their use of apparent standstill.
Everyone is saying they have looked at the data and the standstill is real.
I put it to you that to you it is apparent that there is a real standstill; therefore, the standstill is apparent to you, therefore it is an apparent standstill, QED!
I rest my case. 😛
DaveE.
@Werner Brozek: It’s not terribly clear, but it seems like the 0.4C figure for 1998 is specific to this forecast. See the post at 12.41pm GMT in the Guardian blog (main article text not comments) I linked to with my last post. Sorry I’m not sure it answers your question very well though. I will have to look into it more.
Are temperature variances on other planets due to alien’s CO2 emissions?
[snip. Multiple sock puppetry violations. Permanently banned. — mod.]
[snip]
[snip. This commenter is banned. — mod.]
Here you go, a more useful link!
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/seasonal-to-decadal/long-range/decadal-fc
According to Figure 1, the data is from “the Hadley Centre, GISS and NCDC”. So…pretty vague.
from my stats I worked out that we fall 0.3 degrees K in the next 8 years.
that means by 2020 we will be on the zero line.
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/#comment-215
such cooling could become a bit of a problem here and there….
Graham W says:
January 10, 2013 at 1:11 pm
Here you go, a more useful link!
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/seasonal-to-decadal/long-range/decadal-fc
According to Figure 1, the data is from “the Hadley Centre, GISS and NCDC”. So…pretty vague.
Thank you very much! Unless someone can convince me otherwise, I am becoming increasingly convinced someone is trying to hide something. They say:
“The warmest year in the 160-year Met Office Hadley Centre global temperature record in 1998, with a temperature of 0.40°C above long-term average.” So that means they are talking about Hadcrut3 and not Hadcrut4. I am aware of three different versions of Hadcrut3. They are listed below along with the 1998 anomaly for each. The range is from 0.52 to 0.548. All of these are above 0.40. Can someone please tell me what I am missing?
This version has 1998 at 0.529 and 2010 at 0.470.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3vgl.txt
This version has 1998 at 0.548 and 2010 at 0.478.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3gl.txt
This version has 1998 at 0.52 and 2010 at 0.50.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2012/hadcrut-updates
By the way, Hadsst2 for 1998 was 0.451.
Werner,
The answer is that they keep changing their baseline average used for the calculation of temperature anomalies !
– The new forecast uses a baseline of 1971 – 2000.
– The published Hadcrut3/4 datasets all use a baseline of 1961-1990.
This would seemingly all be designed to confuse us !
PS: their model comparisons often then use a baseline value of (average(1961-1990) -0.4) as an arbitrary reference point meant to represent pre-industrial temperatures .
“Graham W says:
January 10, 2013 at 5:22 am
Philip Shehan says:
January 9, 2013 at 10:56 pm
“The BBC has not been “forced” to admit anything.
It reports that the MET office has announced “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.”
That is an increase of “only” 0.43 C instead of 0.54 C, but still an increase.”
Wrong. This is not what the MET office has announced.”
Thank you. You agree I was commenting on the BBC’s interpretation of the Met office statement and that its interpretation is wrong.
I was aware that they were refering to a baseline figure based on an average. I did not assume, nor did I assert that it was from “now”. It clearly could not be as a 0.4c increase in 4 years would be a huge acceleration compared to the warming of about 0.9 C over the preeceding century.
My analysis stands on that basis. Note that in my post I also disagree with “The BBC interpretation of this is that “the global average temperature would have remained relatively static for about two decades” noting this interpretation relies on camparison “to a single year, the exceptional el nino year of 1998.”
Shehan says:
“That is an increase of ‘only’ 0.43 C instead of 0.54 C, but still an increase.”
No, it is not an “increrase”. Note that Shehan is repeating the Met’s prediction, as if it were reality. It is not. There has been no “increase”. They are speculating, and putting a value of exactly 43 hundreths of a degree on their prediction. As if.
Looking at this article’s title, we see: BBC forced to admit global warming ‘static’
Static = no global warming. That is reality.
Philip Shehan says:
January 10, 2013 at 6:45 pm
Note that in my post I also disagree with “The BBC interpretation of this is that “the global average temperature would have remained relatively static for about two decades” noting this interpretation relies on camparison “to a single year, the exceptional el nino year of 1998.”
That partly depends on how precisely you define “about two decades”. For example, see the flat slope below since May, 2000. It has nothing to do with 1998. And if the trend continues to 2017, you have 17 years which could be arguably “about two decades”.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2000.3/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2000.3/trend
D.Boehm Stealy, I am commenting on the BBC’s interpretation of the data. That is not an endorsement, although you again appeal to its authority yourself at the end. What else is meant by the sentence “BBC forced to admit global warming ‘static’” and running a thread on it if the premise is not that the BBC is correct. It should be headed “BBC claims… if you wish to remain impartial on whether the clainms are true.
On the other thread you failed to understand the meaning “for the sake of argument” and then proclaim that I finally agree with your viewpoint. I don’t, and you clearly do not understand what that caveat means.
Your argument there was about a post of mine that has not yet appeared. (You should really explain how you know these things. People have suggested you are also a moderator here.)
@Philip Shehan: Perhaps I was not specific enough in my earlier comment. I was only commenting that the opening paragraphs of the BBC’s report were incorrect, and that you had quoted it without noting that it was incorrect yourself. I was not commenting at all on anything else the report had to say. Fortunately for us all, they have now corrected their mistake themselves:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20947224
Note the revised paragraph at the beginning, and the comment at the bottom of the article: “Update 10 January 2013: The second paragraph of this report has been changed to clarify that the Met Office forecast refers to a long-term average.”
Something from Carbon Brief that may be of interest to some:
“A sentence in the Met Office’s revised global temperature forecast reads “The warmest year in the 160-year Met Office Hadley Centre global temperature record in 1998, with a temperature of 0.40°C above long-term average”. This was quoted by several newspapers.
We queried this with the Met Office, as according to a separate Met Office statement released in December last year, the latest HadCrut4 temperature dataset puts 2010 as the warmest year, followed by 2005, then 1998.
The Met Office told us that the 0.40 degrees figure is “based on a 12-month period which isn’t synchronised with the calendar year – in which case 1998 is the warmest on record”. But they do allow that this isn’t particularly clear, and the reference is apparently going to be updated to be in line with the HadCRUT4 records.
It’s worth noting that the temperature averages in the 2013 Met Office annual forecast and the figures in the revised decadal forecast are comparisons with different long term averages (1961 to 1990 and 1971 to 2000, respectively) – which adds an extra level of complication to comparisons.”
Looks like the UK media is now breaking ranks regarding global warming. We have already had the Daily Mail and Telegraph. The Sun and Express below are daily national papers.
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/369564/Surprise-Surprise-Global-warming-has-stalled-admits-Met-Office
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/4735928/Worlds-cooler-than-we-thoughtand-Chinese-aerosols-stop-global-warming.html
The longer the stall continues the worse it will get. It was only a matter of time.
Clivebest.
You are correct that the selection of years to serve as a baseline data is arbitrary. It is confusing if people change their definitions. Graham W informs me that they have ammended their opening paragraph to stress their figures are relative to a baseline average (1971 -2000). Not before time. Graham notes that I did not say in my post that I thought the opening paragraphs were incorrect. True but I was not actually commenting on whether I though the figures themselves correct or incorrect, only their interpretation of the figures, accepted at face value. What he means is that I did not indicate that I understood that the figures were not relative to now.
Guilty as charged but the point is that what is being discussed in the BBC’s item is the relative position of data points to their baseline, so knowledge of how they have determined their breferred baseline is not really necessary.
The analysis of the relative figures is as valid (or indeed invalid) with all the temperatures readjusted to be relative to “now” or their value for the 1998 el nino year, had they given that figure which unfortunately they don’t other than to say the 0.43 C figure (relative to 1971-2000) is “only slightly higher that the record year of 1998”
With that established i don’t think there is any disagreement between Graham and myself.
Again I am only discussing the numbers given by the met taken at face value, so contrary to D. Boehm Stealy assertion an increase of 0.43 rather than 0.53 is still an increase. He also complains that their prediction is a mere 43 hundredths of a degree .
He would be absolutely horrified if the arbitrary baseline was taken to be the 1998 el nino year (for the sake of argument lets assume that “only slightly higher” means 0.40C) This would make the numbers 0.03 and 0.13.
Now Stealy hates it when I agree with him, but he is correct to question the usefulness of the numbers.The quoted figures are actually be 0.43 in the range 0.28-0.59, compared to 0.54 in the range of 0.36 to 0.72. In other words the ranges overlap to a large degree.
OOPs. Graham says that according to the Met, the 1998 el nino year is 0.40 C above their average. So “for the sake of argument can be stricken from my above post.
It looks that some of the bloggers do not read the earlier posts on this track. I already posted the fact that the Met Office uses different base periods for different forecasts [ see January 8 post 2:22 am] which confuses all the figures coming form the Met Office. In any case i think regardless of which index or base period they use , the trend of their forecast seems to be wrong still as they use faulty models with faulty assumptions leading to too high temperature forecasts. Experimental forecasts should not be paraded in the public media as solid science when they have continuously been shown by their own data to be wrong. We have seen that their annual and decadal forecasts have been too high for some time now. Why would any one believe that their long range forecast of a rise of 4C by 2060 is any better. It actually looks even more wrong than the annual or decadal forecast.
Shehan says:
“…contrary to D. Boehm Stealy assertion an increase of 0.43 rather than 0.53 is still an increase.”
I asserted nothing. Rather, Shehan believes that the Met’s prediction is reality. I have pointed this out before, but Shehan is dense: the putative increase he cited is a prediction. It has no connection to reality. Further, the Met’s prediction is inaccurate to within hundreths of a degree. As if the Met could predict to within ± 1ºC. They are consistently wrong, and even get the sign wrong.
No one in his right mind would quote a prediction as being a real increase in the current debate. People can and do predict anything. But the Met’s predictions in particular are completely inaccurate. For someone to use a wild-eyed prediction as support for their argument shows how desperate they are to convince people of their belief in ‘accelerating global warming’, which is not, and has not, happened since the end of the LIA. Not only is there no acceleration in the long term warming trend, but global warming has now stalled — as even the Met Office now admits.
Jimbo
Thanks for the additional news clippings from Uk. The news seems to be ignored by North American media.
In the article by Express.co.uk, the Met Office chief scientist Julia Slingo said:
“This forecast does not alter long-term climate change.
“This and previous forecasts tell us that the Earth will continue to be in a very warm state compared to, say, the Sixties.
“There’s nothing in these forecasts that undermines the long-term climate change ¬scenario.”
This is pure nonsense and coming from their chief scientist is even more worrisome . If there has been no warming for 2 decades in a row now by 2017, and there is every indication that this may continue for decades more , how on earth is the global temperature going to rise by 4C by 2060. It would require the average decadal temperature to rise by some 0.83 C every decade for the next 4 decades
Their entire long range projection is completely undermined by what has happened over the last 2 decades The center piece of their science has been shown to be completely wrong . Man generated greenhouse gases do not raise global temperatures in any significant way .She is the same scientist who on December 21.2010, in the middle of 2010/2011 UK very severe winter claimed to the Independent that and I quote “ the key message is that global warming continues “
There is another cold spell about to hit UK shortly