Guest post by Paul Homewood
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/summaries/anomacts
Figures released by the Met Office show the UK mean temperature for the 2012/13 winter finishing at 3.31C. This is below the long term 1981-2010 average of 3.83C.
Figure 1
The winter ranked 43rd coldest since 1910, and continues the trend towards colder winters. In the last five years, only 2011/12 has been above the 1981-2010 average. The average over these five years has been 3.03C.
Interestingly, the average winter temperature for 1911-2013 stands at 3.52C, so by 20thC standards the last few years have been genuinely cold.
The mild winters between 1998 and 2008 increasingly look to be the exception rather than the rule, as Figure 2 shows clearly.
Figure 2
Rainfall
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/summaries/anomacts
After claims and counterclaims of floods and droughts, the winter has been remarkably normal in terms of rainfall.
Total rainfall amounted to 346.7mm, against the 1981-2010 baseline of 330.5mm, although there have been regional variations, with NW Scotland being notably dry.
Figure 3
Met Office Predictions
I am quick to criticise the Met when their 3-month outlooks are so far adrift, so I’ll give them credit this time for forecasting below normal temperatures. Their prediction for rainfall of slightly below normal was not far off the mark either.
I was drawn, however, to this statement in the precipitation outlook:-
“The risk of snowfall over the UK is related to the occurrence of cold winter weather. As probabilities favour for this year a colder season than last year’s, the risk of snowfall is enhanced.”
It appears nobody thought to tell them about the new theory that snow is caused by warm weather!
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/k/a/A3_plots-temp-DJF.pdf
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/j/i/A3_plots-precip-DJF.pdf
NW Europe
It seems it is not just the UK that has had a run of cold winters. NoTricksZone reports that Germany has had exactly the same run of 5 cold winters, and, as they point out, what applies to Germany usually applies to much of Central Europe.
What makes this situation even more remarkable is that we are still in the warm phase of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, that began in the mid 1990’s (and, of course, coincided with the onset of milder winters till 2008).
As NOAA say
“The AMO has affected air temperatures and rainfall over much of the Northern Hemisphere, in particular, North America and Europe.”
We might be in for a few more cold winters when the AMO turns around.
References
All data from the UK Met
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/summaries
R Taylor said:
“In a democracy, you must blame the voters.”
In the last UK election, most voters voted ‘none of the above’, but they got a government anyway. The election before, Labour ‘won’ with around 22% of the votes.
Where I used to live there, I could vote Labour and the Tories would win the seat, I could vote Lib-Dem and the Tories would win the seat, or I could vote Tory and the Tories would win the seat. Some choice.
Ian W said:
“Knowing the EU they have already mandated destruction of the old power plants to prevent them being reopened”
Knowing British governments, they’ve probably sold them to property developers to turn into ‘executive apartments’, as they did with most of the factories that closed over the last twenty years.
Dan Ronald says:
March 24, 2013 at 2:26 pm
What’s the point of the UK demolishing coal power plants when China and India are building about 1000 coal power plants and have over 10 times the population as the UK?
/////////////////////////////////////////////////
You have cut straight to the chase.
If CO2 does not cause warming, then there is no point at all in the UK de-commissioning coal fired generators.
If CO2 does cause global warming, then the UK decommissioning a handful of coal powered generators does almost nothing at all on a global scale and is merely gesture politics.
No legitimate and respected government would engage in gesture politics when those gestures lead to some 20,000 to 30,000 needless premature deaths each year and/or which inflicts fuel poverty and stress on many millions (maybe 20 million) of its citizens. It is a particularly miserable experience shivering in one’s home because one cannot afford to properly heat the house and very stressful not being able to make ends meet. It also leads to more colds and general poor health which has a knock on effect on work; more sick days are taken off work to the prejudice of industry and the economy. The government should be thoroughly ashamed of itself.
Why is the UK so determined to freeze its own people by prematurely shutting down its coal fired power stations? It has just escaped catastrophe with the arrival of an LNG ship from Qatar. Why didn’t they turn this nasty fossil fuel shipment away and rely instead on wind power and solar? Only a disaster will wake people up.
Gareth Phillips says:
March 24, 2013 at 3:02 pm
“True Paul, the Summers were cooler, but cool dry summers are a lot more reasonable than slightly warmer wet ones…..”
—————————————————————–
Not if you want to feed people or is that an issue not deemed to be worthy of consideration?
Hi Green Sand, having worked in agricultural botany for some years I’m not sure that is true. Very wet summers are worse for agriculture than dry slightly cooler ones. Look at what happened to the price of veg in the UK after last summers wash out.
Jimbo, I am aware of the dangers of correlation, it’s been discussed further back in the thread. They are not causation, proof or whatever, but they can be strong evidence. To be honest in all aspects of science, especially medicine, correlation forms the vast majority of information informing health strategy and treatment. The earliest showing that locking a certain water pump checked the spread of typhoid fever was classic correlation. The Doctor who did it did not know why it worked or what the connection was, but it was a critical piece of evidence.
Gareth Phillips,
You need to address the long list of harsh winters pre-1979. We have had runs of cold, snowy winters pre-1979. This is where you need to show correlation too otherwise your current argument cannot hold much sway. I grant you the satellites over the Arctic came into operation in 1979, but even if I accept your argument then are you saying that the Arctic also had very low September extent prior to 1979? If natural climate variability can explain past cold, snowy winters then it can also explain the present run of winters? No?
Gareth Phillips,
A single period of observed correlation is not “strong evidence” but a pointer for further investigation. It’s tantamount to Pons and Fleischman doing their experiment and it could not be replicated by others. Correlation needs to be repeatedly observed over other timescales to get anywhere near to being “strong evidence”.
PS there was a run of mild winters in the UK pre-2008 and the Arctic was very low in mid-Septembers. The winter of 1979 was bad at a time when September extent was at its maximum on the satellite record. If I can’t see correlation in the past why should I accept it as evidence for the current cold and snow?
@EJ & Mark & Frank:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/why-weather-has-a-60-year-lunar-beat/
It’s closer to 55 years, but it varies some. There is also a 1500 – 1800 year cycle based on lunar tidal effects. The moon does not just go around once a month, it also shifts up and down and has other wobbles to it. That tends to pull the water more north or south, or to one ocean more than another. It also mixes more, or less, cold water to the surface.
In short, tides matter.
@gareth Phillips:
Repeat after me: “Correlation is not causality”…
Now, think on this, if you have a cycle of warming, then cooling and a lag time to melt and form ice, when does the largest ice melt arrive? Yes, that’s right, just after that flat top reversal toward cold. Now, what happens then? Here, let me help you: It gets COLDER and SNOWS a lot. The ice melt is only related in that it indicates the end of the warm cycle peak.
@John Peter:
Here in California, some years back, we had a Democratic Governor who played with our electricity pricing (for who knows what reason). Part of the result was Enron (as we were mandating out power companies to by power on the spot market and not contract for it long term). Another result was frequent brownouts & blackouts. During that time I got very good at coping with power outages and at one time had 2 generators. We eventually voted out Governor Grey “out” Davis… and I sold one of my generators….
What I found was that a nice, very quite (56 dB) Honda 1 kW that’s about the size of an airline carry on bag would power more lighting than the whole house needed, the refrigerator, and the entertainment / communications gear. (We have an efficient fridge). I ended up just having “prelaid” power cords (“drop cords”) in strategic places (like from the comm / entertainment center to behind the couch near the back door). I also put things like the TV / recorders / electronics on a small ‘computer UPS’ – uninterruptible power supply. In each room, one lamp was also put on a very small one. When the power would go out, we would just notice the main room light go out, and some soft ‘chirping’ from the UPS boxes. (Sometimes with the main light already off, only the ‘chirp’ would let us know). That saved a lot of resetting clocks as we had them on the same box as the lamp…
So then I’d give it about 5 minutes to come back on. If it didn’t, I’d go out the back door, start the Honda Generator, and unroll the drop cord from it to the ‘prelay’ behind the couch. At the other end, the UPS would be unplugged from the wall and plugged into the other end. Then the other cords stashed out of sight would be unrolled. One to the kitchen for the fridge. The other down the hall to the bedrooms for those lights. All up, about 2 minutes max to swap things over.
The only thing I’d change, for a cold place like the UK, is instead of having the cord in a partly cracked open door; I’d make a fitted bit of wood with a notch for the cord and close the door or window against that to keep the cold out.
The Honda runs about 8 hours on 0.9 L of fuel, IIRC. They also make a similar 2 kW if you have a larger Fridge 😉
During one long outage of most of a day, I used the 4 kW cheaper generator to run A/C and do the washer / dryer as well. It made so much noise it was abominable. Yes, we got the wash done, but it would not have been possible to sleep with it going. The Honda is hardly a murmur in the distance, even with the door open an inch…
So “enough preparation” can be just getting one of those little guys… I have the little dinky first one listed here:
http://hondagenerator.co.uk/pages/Honda_Portable.htm
but paid US prices… I have no relationship to Honda other than satisfied customer.
Paul,
Your comment “the winter has been remarkably normal in terms of rainfall.” misses an important point. You are referring to the quantity of rain received, however the Met Office map: Winter 2013 Rainfall Amount (% of 1981-2010 Average) tells an important story. This map shows that the distribution of the rainfall in the north of England and in particular the north of Scotland, is above average in the east and below average in the west.
Compare Aberdeen on the east coast of Scotland (>170% of Average) with the highland Ben Nevis area in the west (50 to 70 % of Average). Compare also the Northumberland coast of northern England (150 to 170 % ) with the Cumbrian Fells in the west (70 to 90 % of Average). The fact that in percentage terms the highland areas in the west are receiving less rain than normal, while low lying coastal areas in the east have an above average amounts tells us two things; The rain bearing winds are coming from the east and that the source of the moisture is locally derived from the nearby North Sea, (a similar but less pronounced east/ west effect can also be seen in Northern Ireland).
This pattern of rainfall distribution is clearly anomalous and the weather pattern that created it consists of persistent cold east winds coming from Scandinavia. The dramatic orographic effect on rainfall distribution as this airstream collects moisture from the North Sea, reaches the coast of Aberdeenshire and rises up to the Grampian Mountains in the west, is text book.
In the British Isles we know about winter rain, we have many colourful vernacular words to describe the numerous different types, so when someone tries to kid us that snow in winter is caused by warm air, we know that they are “agenda talking”.
For the record here is the NIC snow and sea ice distribution map of 24 March 2012 and here is the same map for 24 March 2013. Can anyone see the obvious sea-ice pattern difference in the Arctic that accounts for the warm March of 2012 in Britain and the cold March of 2013. No? Neither can I, Guys /SARC!!!
I am lost for words
“Government’s outgoing chief scientist says existing CO2 levels in the atmosphere will cause storms and droughts for next 25 years”
see here
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2298719/Governments-outgoing-chief-scientist-says-existing-CO2-levels-atmosphere-cause-storms-droughts-25-years.html
The rest of the article is just as bad as the headline
oops further to last comment, the bbc is running with it also, so no surprise there then!!!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21357520
Gareth Phillips says:
“There seems to be some pretty good correlation between colder winters with wetter summers and the drastic reduction in the Arctic ice cap.”
Generally a negative AO/NAO equates with less ice extent, but that does not mean the lack of ice is causing our colder weather.
Sir John Beddington recently said to the Daily Mail,
‘In a sense we have moved from the idea of global warming to the idea of climate change, and that is rather important – yes, indeed, temperatures are increasing but the thing that is going to happen is that we are going to see much more variability in our weather,’ he told BBC Breakfast.
It sounds like the chief scientist of UK does not even know or acknowledge that global climate has now been flat for 16 years and the global temperatures are actually declining during the last decade. One wonders if some of these scientific chiefs really live on this same planet when you read their comments.The temperatures are predicted to be flat or decling further for at least the next 5 years and possibly for the next 2-3 decades . He says there will be a world problem in the future . I agree, but not for the reasons he states . If we do have a problem, it is because of the bad advise that he and his colleages give the government about the non existing global warming and the pouring of badly needed funds into green energy subsidies which will do very little for the climate and which are really needed to buy extra fuel for winter heating in order to save lives during very cold periods like we just had . Uk and some parts of Eastern Europe now find themselves ill prepared for the colder climate that is already here.
Global climate is always changing and sometime it varies more . There was nothing new in predicting more variablity in our weather.
When I did Environmental Studies back in the early 1980s and a predicted new Ice age was what was expected, the lecturers said that in an Ice Age high pressure systems will persist and remain stationary. Last year in the UK the high pressure system was difficult to move leading to a drought in the early part of the year. Then we got persistent rain, because jet stream persistenly pushed wet weather over the country. This year the high pressure is not moving, bringing cold temperatures
I mentioned in an earlier post that the presence of negative AO wasone of the key climate factors during past cooler weather periods like 1962-1987 when 20 of 26 or 3 out every 4 winters had neagtive A0. A negative AO means more colder Arctic being pushed further south to Europe and North America as the westerlies become weaker. During the 1960’s every winter had neagtive AO. Currently or during the last 4 winters we have again had neagtive AO for 3 out of the last 4 winters and during this month it was as low as -5 to -6, This accounts for the much of the recent colder winters in Europe and Uk. During the 1990’s and 2000’s we had four during the entire decade . So to my simple mind we are starting to have negative AO levels and frequency comparable to past colder periods. Colder winters could be a reality of our future climate for the next 20-30 years and those that still only push global warming must have an ulterior motive to mislead the public .
“It sounds like the chief scientist of UK does not even know or acknowledge that global climate has now been flat for 16 years”
He used the word “unequivocal”. The last person to use the phrase was Tony Blair about WMD … weather of mass distraction.
I love how East Anglia has the coldest anomaly. Take that, you buggers at UEA!
The winters have been cold since the end of the last sun spot cycle in 2008!
It is remarkable that a Trend can be pulled from the weather records for UK, where the weather naturally varies from year to year, from decade to decade, from century to century. Such statistical acrobatics deserve applause.
It is even more remarkable that the Government Chief Scientific advisor can detect this trend, he can also predict the future. A remarkable man indeed. I believe his next job is at the “you have got to be f’ing kidding me agency” working on behalf of those unfortunate souls who haven’t looked out of the window lately.
This last election in the US more registered voters did not vote at all, than voted for either presidential candidate, did not want either side of a wooden nickel.
E.M.Smith says:
@gareth Phillips:
Repeat after me: “Correlation is not causality”…
Garethman says, er….. have you read the thread? It’s something I have repeated in numerous occasions. Repeat after me, read the thread before posting!
Correlation is not causation, however there is no proof for many things,the link between HIV and full blown Aids for instance is a correlation as upheld by various dodgy governments. But tell me, as a result of it being a correlation, would you risk it? The reality is that there are potentially various reasons for the cooling of the UK climate,from AOs, Ice melt, solar variation and many others. But just because the lack of direct causative relationships is not proven does not mean any one thing should be dismissed without good cause. It’s good to flag up evidence of additional factors, but bad science to dismiss potential evidence without due reason or rationale.
E.M.Smith says:
March 25, 2013 at 2:35 am
Not for the first time, I must challenge your opinion that it was the ouster of Grey Davis that stabilized California’s energy situation, or that GD was responsible for it, at all.
California’s energy crisis was caused and manipulated by outside interests, and not by Grey Davis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_Davis
(My bold.)
Under Grey Davis, standardized test scores in California improved 5 years in a row, and that was the main reason he was ousted, IMO. Dumbing-down California was a major project, and has been wildly successful, which is why “being on the right side of issues alienated the electorate.” Things quickly got back on the downhill track under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the kind of phony hero they love in California.
You also said:
I’d say i’m amazed that an individual so clueless on his own his own industry can advise the government on policy and where it spends our taxes. Sadly i’m not. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry this morning on hearing him effectively claim co2 causes rain, the models have been accurate and papers such as from BEST back up the AGW theory. So here is a man that ignores the AMO, modelers claims of broken models, 15-18 years of no warming, and then tries to sell a paper that failed to pass peer review. Than god he’s retiring.
Sadly I doubt a change at the top will make the slightest bit of difference, it’s still the same boneheaded deaf government influenced by activists rather than one interested in empirical science and historical reference.
Neither am I amazed that HMGOV threw another snake oil salesman in front of TV screens and news shows to counter the other news items in the same broadcasts on 15 foot snow drifts and coldest March for over 40 years
Gareth Philips says
…..just because the lack of direct causative relationships is not proven does not mean any one thing should be dismissed without good cause…..
Henry says
there is a relationship, namely, with giga tons and gigatons of bi-carbonates being available in the oceans, dissolved in water, more heat causes more CO2:
(more) heat + HCO3- => (more) CO2 (g) + OH-
We know that water absorbs in the UV and IR regions and this is how most heat from the sun ends up on earth, “stored” in the oceans, so to speak.
To prove that the net effect of more CO2 in the air (also) causes warming, and not cooling, you have to come up with a balance sheet, as discussed here:
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2011/08/11/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-aug-2011/
there is no such balance sheet and there is no evidence that the net effect of more CO2 is that of warming rather than that of cooling.
I noted that during the midst of the worst part of December 2010 winter storm, as the entire UK nation was freezing its butt off, the focus of the chief climate scientist was not on how to help the public with better information during the crisis, but was focused on global warming as Professor Slingo said to the Independent newspaper on December 21, 2010“The key message is that global warming continues.”
Now we have the chief science advisor Professor Sir John Beddington in the midst of possibly the worst March winter on record where the CET temperature for the month is running 2.3 C degrees colder and where global temperatures have been flat and more recently dropping for some 16 years and the only thing that he can exclaim is, “yes indeed temperatures are rising…”. Instead of pushing global warming, he should be offering the people sound advise and information in the midst of their crisis and apologize for the bad climate predictions which result in the country being ill prepared for the coming cooler climate..
No wonder UK finds itself with thousands of people dying prematurely because of the cold, with insufficient fuel to help its citizens just to survive and an economy which is loosing hundreds of millions of dollars every day because they are unprepared for the cold winters. I suppose if one pushes global warming on its citizens it could come back bite you sooner or later, because the science may be quite flawed and to base public policy for energy on this can be quite tragic.
The sooner the government drops this global warming nonsense and gets competent people for the climate branch , the sooner they can do proper climate based planning and start caring for their people, which is their prime responsibility.
It is very sad to watch the suicide of one of human history’s greatest countries. The need for another civil war is unfortunately obvious. Of course, with their guns taken away, they do not stand a chance.