By Paul Homewood
According to the Sun,
Britain’s winters are getting colder because of melting Arctic ice, the Government’s forecaster said yesterday.
Met Office chief scientist Julia Slingo said climate change was “loading the dice” towards freezing, drier weather — and called publicly for the first time for an urgent investigation.
Prof Slingo said: “If you look at the way our weather patterns have behaved over the past four or five years, we’re beginning to think that there is something happening.
“Our climate is being disrupted by the warming of the Arctic that we have observed very dramatically since 2007.
“We should pull together the best scientists to see how we can detect the influence of the Arctic on the jet stream, and on weather around the world.”
So just how cold have Britain’s winters become? Well, according to the Central England Temperature series, not very! The winter just gone ranks an unremarkable 187th coldest in the 354 years since the index started in 1660. Figure 1 shows just how unremarkable it has been. The 2012/13 winter finished at 3.83C, a fraction above the mean over the whole record of 3.72C.
Figure 1
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/
Slingo also talks about the 5 year trend, so let’s look at that as well.
Figure 2
There has certainly been a sharp drop away from the abnormally mild winters between 1998 and 2008, but this only takes us back to the sort of winters that were prevalent during most of the last century, and still much warmer than the 19thC. The current 5-year average is 3.6C, exactly the same as the average temperature from 1980-89. And from 1960-69, the average was, you’ve guessed it, also exactly 3.6C.
Previous Predictions For Milder Winters
So why is Slingo so concerned? To understand this, we need to look back at all of the predictions, made in recent years by the Met Office and others, of warmer, wetter winters.
These, of course, were based on the handful of milder winters around the turn of the century. There are too many to list, but here’s a few examples:-
1) In 2006, Met Office meteorologist Wayne Elliott told the BBC
“It is consistent with the climate change message. It is exactly what we expect winters to be like – warmer and wetter”
2) In 2011, Slingo signed off the Met’s “Climate: observations, projections and impacts” Report that had this to say about the extreme cold in December 2010
It is considerably warmer than the winter of 1962/63, which is the coldest since 1900 in the CRUTEM3 dataset. In the absence of human influences, the season lies near the central sector of the temperature distribution and would therefore be an average season.
3) Myles Allen told the Telegraph in 2009
“Even though this is quite a cold winter by recent standards it is still perfectly consistent with predictions for global warming. If it wasn’t for global warming this cold snap would happen much more regularly. What is interesting is that we are now surprised by this kind of weather. I doubt we would have been in the 1950s because it was much more common. “
4) DEFRA’s Climate Change Risk Assessment Report, issued last year, states
“In the UK, we currently expect a shift towards generally wetter winters…..and an increase in winter rainfall volumes of between 3% and 70%.
5) In December 2010, Slingo , talking about the cold weather, told the Independent,
“Global warming is continuing and we know that from the global trends. There will, of course, be large local and regional variations from year to year. So this event that we’re currently experiencing is not unprecedented.”, adding “A final complication is that a regular pattern of natural climate change over the North Atlantic, called the multi-decadal oscillation, may be about to enter a cooler phase, just as it did in the 1960s, when Britain also experienced colder-than-normal winters.”
6) And the Met’s own private briefing for the Environment Agency last summer admitted
If low levels of Arctic sea ice were found to be affecting the track of the jet stream, for example, this could be seen as linked to the warming of our climate – but this is currently an unknown.
7) And in 2010, Slingo presented a “Briefing on the likelihood of severe winter weather over the next 20-30 years “to Sir John Beddington, which concluded
a) Prolonged snowfall and low temperatures, comparable with conditions seen during November and December 2010 are within the range of natural climate variability observed over the past 50 years.
b) The latest available regional climate projections for the UK (UKCP09) indicate a reducing likelihood of severe winters in future, due to the long-term warming climate. Natural climate variability implies that severe events remain possible but with reduced likelihood.
And we won’t even have to mention David Viner’s famous “Snow is a thing of the past”.
Backtracking
It is understandably embarrassing for the Met Office to see so many of their predictions blowing up in their faces. But, instead of simply accepting that they were wrong in misinterpreting a few years of data in the way they did, they are desperately searching for a way to pin the blame for a return to normal winters on global warming.
It is hard to see just how much credibility they have left when it comes to predicting climate, or even understanding past climate. As their Chief Scientist, Julia Slingo must surely accept overall responsibility for this sorry state of affairs.
According to the Met Office Accounts for 2011/12, Slingo was paid a salary of £135000 – £140000, with an additional bonus of £25000 – £30000. This is a cost that can no longer be justified.
She should go now.
Love the photo of Julia Slingo above. Looks cold to me. She should have had a photo done with her sweating profusely with a caption underneath: “It is not the heat you know, its just that I sweat heaps when I lie.”
And since Overland and Wang are at it again with Arctic Sea Ice, it’s going to get colder… sarc/
I’m curious about the attitudes of average people in Britian towards global warming and specifically toward the MET. From what I hear on this blog, it sounds like you’ve had the worst forecasting, bouts of nasty cold weather, and the most damaging policies of any country. Does the common man still believe in this nonsense? (I live in Boulder, CO so hard for me to assess reality in US much less UK.)
I live in the UK and when people tell me this winter has been cold I can’t believe them.
When I was a lad in the fifties we used to go sledging nearly every year. That meant days of lying snow every year for days on end. We had one significant splodge this year (OK it was lateish) and that was it. I think we do get more White Easters than White Christmasses – in spite of Bing.
1979, I think it was, had deep ruts on the main roads for weeks. 1963 had unbelievable amounts of snow for the UK midlands. My father told me that 1947 was similar. They used pneumatic drills to clear the roads locally then. The ice was solid and immovable.
Incidentally, those years 1947, 1963 and 1979 were all separated by 16 years. We were told that this 16 year cycle would continue to get colder and colder until we were plunged into the next ice age. Then it got warmer.
I can see no evidence that natural variability has been exceeded because it is not the warmest winter I can remember either.
Prof Slingo said: “If you look at the way our weather patterns have behaved over the past four or five years, we’re beginning to think that there is something happening.” The explanation is simple. What is happening is that the whole CAGW Theory is falling apart and failing. The source of funding is faltering. It is time for Professor Julia Slingo to go.
Here is another Dr. Viner moment.
Recently we had:
and
and
Viner and others were wrong, again, but this is a sure sign of global warming. I don’t know ‘weather’ to laugh or cry. Yet they call us deniers, doubters, contrarians. Sheeeesh!!!
Ms Julia Slingo needs to a have look at this graph, which is from the site linked to below, needs to have the sun-climate connection 101 brief, and needs to have a look at a comparison of solar cycle 24 to other solar cycles. It appears due the sun is moving rapidly to a Maunder like minimum and we are observing the start of global cooling do to the solar magnetic cycle change. It will be interesting to hear the public reaction to global cooling, after 20 years of stating there is a dangerous problem with AGW and anyone how points observations and analyze does not the extreme AGW hypothesis is a denier. Based on what has happened before the most amount of cooling will occur in the regions that had the most amount of warming which makes sense based on the mechanisms.
Greenland ice temperature, last 11,000 years determined from ice core analysis, Richard Alley’s paper.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
http://www.climate4you.com/
At the above site, the following graph, a comparison of the past solar cycles 21, 22, and 23 to the new cycle 24 is provided. That graph is update every six months or so.
http://www.solen.info/solar/images/comparison_recent_cycles.png
This is a graph, that is also located at the above site, that compares solar cycle 24 to the weakest solar magnetic cycles in the last 150 years.
http://www.solen.info/solar/images/comparison_similar_cycles.png
There are cycles or warming followed by cooling in the paleoclimatic record in the Northern Hemisphere and to a lesser degree in the Southern Hemisphere. The cycles are called Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles (named after the paleoclimate scientists that discovered the cycles) cycles and have a periodicity of 1450 years plus or minus 500 years. Each of the nine cycles of warming followed by cooling, in the last 11,000 years, correlate with cosmogenic isotopes changes. (Cosmogenic isotope changes indicate the sun was very active when the warm period occurred and that the sun went into a Maunder minimum after the warm period. Paleoclimatologist have been able to track 23 D-O cycles in the paleo record.)
Cosmogenic isotope changes are caused by changes to the solar magnetic cycle. The sun produces what is called the solar heliosphere, pieces of the solar magnetic flux that are carried off into space by the solar wind. When the sun is very activity as it was in the last part of the 20th century (highest activity and longest time at high activity in 8,000 years) there is a very strong solar wind and a large amount of magnetic flux that is carried off into space.
The magnetic flux in the solar heliosphere deflect high speed cosmic particles, mostly protons, so that they do not strike the earth (the high speed protons are called galactic cosmic rays (GCR), as the first discovers thought what they observed might be a new type of radiation). The high speed protons (GCR) strike the earth’s atmosphere and produce cloud forming ions. So when the solar magnetic activity is very high the solar heliosphere is more affective at deflecting GCR and there is hence less cloud cover on the planet. As clouds reflect radiation into space when there are less low level clouds the planet is gets warmer. (The sun modulates clouds in other ways. Clouds also warm the planet do to the greenhouse effect of the water or ice in the clouds. The net affect (reflection of radiation into space Vs water/ice GW) for low level clouds is cooling and for high level wispy cirrus clouds warming.)
The regions where the GCR create the most amounts of clouds is over the ocean which is ion poor (there are more ions created over the continents as the continental rock is slightly radioactive which produces ions) and in the latitudes of 40 to 70.
https://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/74103.pdf
The Sun-Climate Connection by John A. Eddy, National Solar Observatory
Solar Influence on North Atlantic Climate during the Holocene
A more recent oceanographic study, based on reconstructions of the North Atlantic climate during the Holocene epoch, has found what may be the most compelling link between climate and the changing Sun: in this case an apparent regional climatic response to a series of prolonged episodes of suppressed solar activity, like the Maunder Minimum, each lasting from 50 to 150 years8. The paleoclimatic data, covering the full span of the present interglacial epoch, are a record of the concentration of identifiable mineral tracers in layered sediments on the sea floor of the northern North Atlantic Ocean. The tracers originate on the land and are carried out to sea in drift ice. Their presence in seafloor samples at different locations in the surrounding ocean reflects the
southward expansion of cooler, ice-bearing water: thus serving as indicators of changing climatic conditions at high Northern latitudes. The study demonstrates that the sub-polar North Atlantic Ocean has experienced nine distinctive expansions of cooler water in the past 11,000 years, occurring roughly every 1000 to 2000 years, with a mean spacing of about 1350 years.
Each of these cooling events coincides in time with strong, distinctive minima in solar activity, based on contemporaneous records of the production of 14C from tree-ring records and 10Be from deep-sea cores. For reasons cited above, these features, found in both 14C and 10Be records, are of likely solar origin, since the two records are subject to quite different non-solar internal sources of variability. The North Atlantic finding suggests that solar variability exerts a strong effect on climate on centennial to millennial time scales, perhaps through changes in ocean thermohaline circulation that in turn amplify the direct effects of smaller variations in solar irradiance. (William: The cause of warming and cooling is not changes to the total radiation of the sun. The sun does not get significantly warmer or colder. The cause of the warming is solar cycle changes that modulate the amount of planetary cloud cover.)
Comments
If you are interested in watching the anomalous solar cycle 24 unfold real time, this site provides an interesting summary.
http://www.solen.info/solar/
As noted in this paper the magnetic field strength of newly formed sunspots is decaying linearly for some unknown reason.
http://www.solarspots.net/Documenti/teoria_LP.pdf
Joseph says:
April 12, 2013 at 12:14 pm
Seriously how often must a public sector employee fail in their job before being penalised?
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Don’t ask us…….we had Hansen, Lisa Jackson and Obama all at once.
No penalty just extra money for them to spend.
cn
The root cause of this humongous mistake has been ‘back radiation’. It does not exist. It is mistaken radiative physics [most scientist fail to understand the S-B equation] and a miserable failure, originating in Meteorology, to understand how a pyrgeometer works.
Take this out and correct the physics and these models exaggerate GHG energy absorption by 6.85x and none of the IR absorbed is CO2 – Yup – there can be no CO2-AGW.
P. Solar says:
April 12, 2013 at 2:22 pm
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Your review about Thatcher is wrong wrong wrong.
Unemployent was about 1.4 million in 1979 but alreay sharply rising, and 2 million when she let in 1990.
Inflation was at about 10% in 1979 sharply rising to 22% in 1980, then going down to 3% and up to 9% in 1990.
Coal production was contnuing in 1990 with a reduction of only about 25% versus 1979 levels.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22070491
The current problems have little to do with deregulation of the financial sector.
The opposite is true. The main reason is state interference. After all, we experience a government debt crisis allover Europe, the US and Canada.
The main reason for the desaster are far too low interest rates since the 1990s until today, and those reponsible are Greenspan, Krugman, Clinton and their counterparts in Europe.
Too low interest rates means a transfer of wealth from savers to speculators and debt makers.
The financial sector grew to its monstrous dimensions in the 1990s. Hedge fonds emerged like mushrooms and individuals with connections and access to credits got unbelievably rich by pure speculation.
The first malfunctions in the 1990s (Asia Crisis, Mexico, Crisis, Long Term Capital Hedgefond collaps) were “repaired” by even lower interest rates and bailouts. This was the emergence of the “Greenspan put” – speculators will eventually bailed out at taxpayers expense and lead inadvertedly to the stock market bubble in 2000.
Though the stock market bubble collpase would have already requied a 1930s style depression to clean up the system and return the size of the financial sector back to Thatcher/Reagan times, it did not happen, because soon after, the housing bubble took over, also initiated in the 1990s with innovations like NINJA credits – housing for everyone, even without job, income or assets – and the subprime credit bundles.
That eventially blew up in 2008. And the response was … government intervention at taxpayers expense and creation of massive addtional debt.
Money printing has continued since then and is accelerating. In the West the cheap money is still flowing into speculation and assets price inflation and still taken out of the pockets of ordinary people, savers, pensioners and working midlle class, while in emerging market, the ultracheap money is creating overproduction which in some sectors already resembles the US 1929 economy.
This has absolutely nothing to do with Thatcher and Reagan’s reign, the economy then was characterized by very high interest rates, which gave savers a decent return, avoided speculation and new industrial capacity was only financable with very sound fundamentals.
What caused the previous cold, harsh winters in England?
Soon to be former Met Office chief scientist Julia Slingo says: “I look forward to my forced retirement when UKIP is elected, as it will free up my days to research the most optimal placement for tinfoil around my cranium.”
Yes indeed Julia, your life will be well spent on that pursuit. Carry on…
In the past some of us speculated that it wouldn’t be long before Warmists declared normal weather a sign of global warming. That moment has arrived with Julia Slingbat. Trenberth has also recently explained how in fact the world is still warming………..it’s just hiding in the oceans somewhere. Let me speculate here, right now: If we entered a globally synchronous Little Ice Age Warmists would still say that global warming is happening. Think pension funds, retirement, lavish funding, shame of name calling people deniers, [Ig]Nobel prizes, scientific superstar status, jaunts to tropical located conferences, government policy influence, etc.
These people have absolutely no shame.
Go now, Julia. (That’s two Julia’s who should go now)
As someone who is paying taxes to pay for this crap, I would like to point out the latest trends in long term temperature records from around the globe – not just in England. It should be noted that many of these records were started by the British back when we had serious meteorologists.
All of these show that we are well on our way back to 1960s temperatures around the world. Nothing to do with the spurious and unfounded claims of our redundant (but still employed) chief alarmist.
Hong Kong:
http://www.hko.gov.hk/climate_change/obs_hk_temp_e.htm
Australia:
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/timeseries.cgi?graph=tmean&area=aus&season=0112&ave_yr=5
Germany:
http://www.dwd.de/bvbw/appmanager/bvbw/dwdwwwDesktop?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=P28800190621308654463391&T3200049671164966387518gsbDocumentPath=BEA__Navigation%2FKlima__Umwelt%2FKlimaatlas.html%3F__nnn%3Dtrue&lastPageLabel=dwdwww_start
Sweden:
http://www.smhi.se/polopoly_fs/1.2435!image/temp_ar_tom_2012.png_gen/derivatives/fullSizeImage/temp_ar_tom_2012.png
United States:
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/indicators/contiguous-us-temp.gif
And of course, England:
The only reasonable conclusion from examining these is that overall, the world is now getting colder, having reached a peak about 5 years ago. Ms Slingo: you are wrong.
Jeff says:
April 12, 2013 at 3:02 pm
…I say give Slingo and the Met a Trash-80 (TRS-80) complete with tape unit
(and a couple of audio cassettes….see if they can tell the difference [the data say….oops])
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Get one for Phil so he can lose non-reproducible historical data even easier.
It doesn’t come loaded with Excel, does it?
cn
In two months time, we will see temperatures as high as 30C in Southern Alberta. In records going as far back as 6 months, this is unprecedented. Following this trend, we should see temperatures approaching 8 million degrees centigrade by the following summer, …….
Do I get my supercomputer now?
The warmists are the only group that trys to argue both sides of the coin (warming and cooling) and blame global warming. I said to my friends many years ago that they would try and do it.
I wonder who she takes her orders from ?
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mdqPlkPZ4a4/UPoJ89cSaYI/AAAAAAAAfLM/Mf8TrBc7gjY/s1600/Blofeld+You+Only+Live+Twice.jpg
Greenland ice core shows Arctic was warmer than today during the MWP.
That Arctic warming never caused cooling in Europe.
Manfred says:
April 12, 2013 at 3:45 pm
###
Very well put…. Been saying similar for years but no one listens
Met Office chief scientist Julia Slingo said climate change was “loading the dice” towards freezing, drier weather — and called publicly for the first time for an urgent investigation.
No the call was for more money. Julia Slingo,you do not have a clue what is happening with either the weather or the climate, since you seem to mix up the two totally different natural phenomena.
P.solar, you seem to have the same traits as Julia Slingo! You cannot remember the UK with the trade unions in control, inflation running at 25%, Britain being the “Sick man of Europe” , income tax top rate at 97.5% ensuring that anyone with any brains left the country!
Margaret Thatcher brought the UK from it’s knees back to being a country to be proud of. Unfortunately, since then, we have had Major, then Blair and finally the worst of the Stygian witches, Brown! Now we have a Coalition and Slingo:
It’s worse than we thought!!
Since 1910 there have been three separate periods of warmer winters namely 1910-1938, 1971-1976 and 1987 2008. , a total of about 55 years out of 102 years. The rest of the time the winters fluctuated but were mostly below norm. So it is quite normal for UK to have cold winters at least half the time and sometime even longer . Prior to about 1860, the winters were cold for at least a hundred years in a row. The cold winters are returning because, the solar cycle has been declining since 2000, the global SST is declining .and AO is mostly negative. We are experiencing the pattern of 1880-1910 when we had similar situation with three low solar cycles and cooling oceans. That is why many of the winter records of this year are comparable to those about a100 years ago. The future trend of UK winters will most likely be colder winters like the pattern of 1880-1910. The problem is with the Met Office who seems to be unable to read or interpret their own climate data because they seem to have their global warming glasses on which distorts all their thinking in the wrong direction .Meanwhile their whole nation suffers as a result of wrong advice as the nation wrongly prepares for global warming only. .
The more I see people like Slingo blame everything on Global Warming the more I am convinced that there is some sort of mental illness at play, or ar least some sort of phobia.
Not too long ago AGW was going to cause warm dry winters, now it’s causing cold wet winters. Seriously???
andrewmharding:
I remember the 70s and 80s in our country. Your memory seems to be of a different land than the UK.
It is a matter of opinion as to whether what Maggie Thatcher did as PM was good or bad. Decades after she left office she has died. Opinions are polarised about her, and there are many who mourn while many others celebrate her passing.
Many people will attend her funeral and many will have great sadness. Many others are organising street parties to celebrate her passing, and ‘Ding, Dong, The Witch Is Dead’ by Judy Garland is topping the Hit Parade.
This division is because some did well under Maggie but many suffered terribly. As a matter of deliberate policy she destroyed 20% of the UK economy during her premiership, and she switched from productive industry to what she called “service industry”; i.e. banking and related financial services. About 40% of our economy became banking and financial services. “All eggs in one basket” eventually loses the eggs when the basket gets a hole. A generation passed before the inevitable crisis, and then the US had a banking crisis which hit the UK with devastating effect so we have had a triple-dip recession from which we have yet to have any recovery.
Importantly, in the context of this thread, Maggie was personally responsible for starting the AGW-scare.
I appreciate your mourning and you have my genuine sympathy. However, using this thread to express those feelings is not appropriate. It threatens to create the same divisions on WUWT as are apparent in the UK.
Richard