From the GWPF: Met Office To Hold Crisis Summit On Epic Forecast Failures
The Met Office’s temperature forecasts issued in 12 out of the last 13 years have been too warm. None of the forecasts issued ended up too cold. That makes the errors systemic and significant.
Met Office To Hold Summit On Disappointing (sic) UK Weather
The Guardian, 14 June 2013: Climate scientists and meteorologists are meeting next week to debate the causes of UK’s disappointing weather in recent years.
Washout summers. Flash floods. Freezing winters. Snow in May. Droughts. There is a growing sense that something is happening to our weather. But is it simply down to natural variability, or is climate change to blame? To try to answer the question the Met Office is hosting an unprecedented meeting of climate scientists and meteorologists next week to debate the possible causes of the UK’s “disappointing” weather over recent years, the Guardian has learned.
Met Office 2008 Forecast: Trend of Mild Winters Continues
Met Office, 25 September 2008: The Met Office forecast for the coming winter suggests it is, once again, likely to be milder than average. It is also likely that the coming winter will be drier than last year.
Reality Check: Winter of 2008/09 Coldest Winter For A Decade
Met Office, March 2009: Mean temperatures over the UK were 1.1 °C below the 1971-2000 average during December, 0.5 °C below average during January and 0.2 °C above average during February. The UK mean temperature for the winter was 3.2 °C, which is 0.5 °C below average, making it the coldest winter since 1996/97 (also 3.2 °C).
Met Office 2009 Forecast: Trend To Milder Winters To Continue, Snow And Frost Becoming Less Of A Feature
Met Office, 25 February 2009: Peter Stott, Climate Scientist at the Met Office, said: “Despite the cold winter this year, the trend to milder and wetter winters is expected to continue, with snow and frost becoming less of a feature in the future. “The famously cold winter of 1962/63 is now expected to occur about once every 1,000 years or more, compared with approximately every 100 to 200 years before 1850.”
Reality Check: Winter Of 2009/10 Coldest Winter For Over 30 Years
Met Office, 1 March 2010: Provisional figures from the Met Office show that the UK winter has been the coldest since 1978/79. The mean UK temperature was 1.5 °C, the lowest since 1978/79 when it was 1.2 °C.
Met Office 2010 Forecast: Winter To Be Mild Predicts Met Office
Daily Express, 28 October 2010: IT’S a prediction that means this may be time to dig out the snow chains and thermal underwear. The Met Office, using data generated by a £33million supercomputer, claims Britain can stop worrying about a big freeze this year because we could be in for a milder winter than in past years… The new figures, which show a 60 per cent to 80 per cent chance of warmer-than-average temperatures this winter, were ridiculed last night by independent forecasters. The latest data comes in the form of a December to February temperature map on the Met Office’s website.
Reality Check: December 2010 “Almost Certain” To Be Coldest Since Records Began
The Independent, 18 December 2010: December 2010 is “almost certain” to be the coldest since records began in 1910, according to the Met Office.
Met Office Predicted A Warm Winter. Cheers Guys
John Walsh, The Independent, 19 January 2010: Some climatologists hint that the Office’s problem is political; its computer model of future weather behaviour habitually feeds in government-backed assumptions about climate change that aren’t borne out by the facts. To the Met Office, the weather’s always warmer than it really is, because it’s expecting it to be, because it expects climate change to wreak its stealthy havoc. If it really has had its thumb on the scales for the last decade, I’m afraid it deserves to be shown the door.
BBC Analysis: A Frozen Britain Turns The Heat Up On The Met Office
Paul Hudson, BBC Weather, 9 January 2010: Which begs other, rather important questions. Could the model, seemingly with an inability to predict colder seasons, have developed a warm bias, after such a long period of milder than average years? Experts I have spoken to tell me that this certainly is possible with such computer models. And if this is the case, what are the implications for the Hadley centre’s predictions for future global temperatures? Could they be affected by such a warm bias? If global temperatures were to fall in years to come would the computer model be capable of forecasting this?
A Period Of Humility And Silence Would Be Best For Met Office
Dominic Lawson, The Sunday Times, 10 January 2010: A period of humility and even silence would be particularly welcome from the Met Office, our leading institutional advocate of the perils of man-made global warming, which had promised a “barbecue summer” in 2009 and one of the “warmest winters on record”. In fact, the Met still asserts we are in the midst of an unusually warm winter — as one of its staffers sniffily protested in an internet posting to a newspaper last week: “This will be the warmest winter in living memory, the data has already been recorded. For your information, we take the highest 15 readings between November and March and then produce an average. As November was a very seasonally warm month, then all the data will come from those readings.”
Met Office 2012 Forecast: Drier than average conditions for April-May-June
Met Office 3-month Outlook, 23 March 2012: “The forecast for average UK rainfall slightly favours drier-than-average conditions for April-May-June as a whole, and also slightly favours April being the driest of the 3 months. With this forecast, the water resources situation in southern, eastern and central England is likely to deteriorate further during the April-May-June period… This forecast is based on information from observations, several numerical models and expert judgement.”
Reality Check: Wettest April for 100 years
April: 2012 had wettest April for 100 years, Met Office says “It has been the wettest April in the UK for over 100 years, with some areas seeing three times their usual average, figures from the Met Office show. Some 121.8mm of rain has fallen, beating the previous record of 120.3mm which was set in 2000.”
June: June on course to be wettest in a century: Flooding, storms and persistent showers have blighted the country in recent weeks putting this June in line to become one of the soggiest in 100 years.
25 June: Spring is wettest in Britain for 250 years – England and Wales are on course for the wettest late spring and early summer for 250 years, experts said yesterday. June has just seen its fourth washout weekend and yet more downpours are forecast. Now it is feared combined rainfall for April, May and June will break the record of 13.2in (336mm) set in 1782 and be the highest since records began in 1766.
Met Office 2013 Forecast: Feb-March Above-Average UK Temps More Likely
Met Office, 20 December 2012: For February and March the range of possible outcomes is also very broad, although above-average UK-mean temperatures become more likely.
Reality Check: Met Office confirms coldest March in more than 50 years
Press Association, 29 March 2013: This March is the coldest in the UK since 1962, forecasters have confirmed. After weeks of speculation about whether this miserable March would top the list, the Met Office has announced it is the coldest in 51 years according to provisional statistic.
Paul Hudson: Met Office global forecasts too warm in 11 out of last 12 years
Paul Hudson, BBC Weather, 10 February 2012: Although this discrepancy is within the stated margin of error, it is the 11th year out of the last 12 when the Met Office global temperature forecast has been too warm. In all these years, the discrepancy between observed temperatures and the forecast are within the stated margin of error. But all the errors are on the warm side, with none of the forecasts that have been issued in the last 12 years ending up too cold. And, in my opinion, that makes the error significant.
Martin Rosenbaum: The Met Office and its seasonal problems
BBC Open Secrets, 23 December 2010
As Britain remains cold and snowy, an interesting little dispute has boiled up between the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) and the Met Office over the quality of longer-range weather forecasting.
And this is illuminated by documents obtained by the BBC under freedom of information from the Met Office. These shed new light on the problems faced by the Met Office in its public communications and the strategies it has adopted for tackling them.
The Met Office is under attack from the GWPF, for its “poor advice” on the likelihood of a harsh and cold winter.
The GWPF is drawing attention to a map published on the Met Office website in October which indicated that the UK was likely to experience above-normal temperatures in the ensuing three-month period.
For the GPWF, which is sceptical of the Met Office and other mainstream analysis of global warming, this is evidence of a Met Office tendency to under-predict cold weather and over-predict mild winters…..
The Met solution will be to ask us UK taxpayers to divvi up a huge chunk of Wonga for a bigger, faster, more expensive computer and a bunch of monkeys to run it………
or…….
a weekly supply of seaweed and a druid to interpret the results.
I expect the seaweed/druid combo to be closer to reality than any Met model…….
Doh!
Why is the weather (or climate since it has been going on for so long) disappointing? Continued warming would have been disastrous, not just disappointing, ‘cos they told us so.
The forecasts have been disappointing, but that is a Met. programming problem.
Also whoever said that weather / climate is not / has not / should not change?
33 million (not including costs) to miss the mark every time! Come on.
Can’t the old temperatures be adjusted up, to match the prediction values?
Peter Stott is Head of “Climate Monitoring and Attribution” at the Met Office. Now if your job is to attribute any changes in weather to human induced global warming, isn’t that exactly what you are expected to come up with?
One fun comparison would be to see try out a forecast that is just the weather from the previous winter. Easy to do, makes more sense than trying to come up with a random forecast, and very unlikely to be warm 12 out of 13 years. Unless it’s getting really cold!
Kasuha says:
June 14, 2013 at 1:32 pm
“Clearly their models are not up to the task yet. And all they need to do is to admit that and continue making their models better.
They definitely shouldn’t resort to tossing coins because while such models may provide better forecasts now, they’re not going to improve over time.”
Just to give a rough impression; the simulation of a chaotic system develops an error that grows EXPONENTIALLY over time. Meaning – each DOUBLING of computer power buys you a CONSTANT increase in forecasting horizon in the optimal case.
So you might be able in the next years to increase the weather model forecasting horizon from 5 to 10 days; but don’t even dare to simulate stuff out to years.
I know, next the alarmists will tell me that they only do projections not predictions and that the chaotic aspect is not important because they explore the boundary conditions; I say HOGWASH. Clouds are the major determinant of the radiative balance and they develop dynamically in the system and determine its future development. No GCM has ever managed to get cloudiness right.
Actually, the warm bias of the Met Office predictions is slightly worse than Paul Hudson (of the BBC) notes. He reported in 2012 that the Met Office forecasts had been warmer than the actual temperatures turned out in 11 of the last 12 years. In fact it was 12 out of the previous 13 years. And with the 2012 figures in that is now 13 out of 14 years that the Met Office predictions have been on the warm side of reality. I last posted on this in Dec 2012: http://climateedinburgh.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/met-office-forecasts-show-something.html
Here are the figures:
Year Forecast Actual
1999 …0.38 …0.26
2000 …0.41 …0.24
2001 …0.47 …0.40
2002 …0.47 …0.46
2003 …0.55 …0.46
2004 …0.50 …0.43
2005 …0.51 …0.47
2006 …0.45 …0.43
2007 …0.54 …0.40
2008 …0.37 …0.31
2009 …>0.40 . .0.44
2010 …0.58 …0.50
2011 …0.44 ….0.35
2012 0.48 ….0.45 (Jan-Oct)
2013 0.57 .. ??
During my economics degree in the 1980s something dawned upon me about economics forecasts. Their accuracy was inversely related to the utility to be derived from the forecast. That is, when you most need an accurate forecast, because there is an abrupt discontinuity from trend, the forecasts are most likely to fail.
The Met Office has too many believers in the climate models with an underlying warming trend. So that is their starting point. The usual starting point is the dumb forecast of same as last year, then build in the historical cycles. This is what economics forecasters do, and they probably do better directionally than the Met Office.
My expectation is that the Met Office had used the dumb forecasts it would have had a better hit rate. Which for me would indicate that the theoretical model they cling onto is, at a minimum, far the less significant than they assune.
The Met Office forecast on the BBC at 23.30 BST Friday for Sunday has just correctly advised that it will either be wet or it won’t in southern England. They have advised me to listen to future forecasts – doh!
The travesty of science and celebration of elaborate belief continues unabated because it is so thoroughly institutionalized.
It is time to convene a mechanism by which the landscape may be swept clear of the entrenchment. The life cycle of the Met Office has reached its twilight time. The kindest thing to do is to ease its passage into history. A far reaching Royal Commission is needed to separate science from politics. It was once managed for government and religion. The question remains, is it too late to accomplish such a feat without a bloody war?
I have learnt that the Guardian lost 33 M pounds last year…. The readership dropped 12.5 % to 261,000.
Perhaps if they stopped publishing their Global Warming bullsh, the readership would pick up.
Back in the Sixties – we schoolboys, Dixon, Nancekievill, and Upstill, and self – managed to approximate the Met Office with ‘same as yesterday’ for about a month. We were about nine years old . . . .
I guess the Met Office has improved, so it’s a decade or more since ‘same as yesterday’ has out performed their forecasts.
But the British Isles have chaotic weather systems – so my guess is that trying to ‘forecast’ a week ahead is no better than guesswork.
A month ahead – astrology or – more likely – faith.
Auto
This is what happens when you allow number crunching men in white coats with too much funding at hand. Time to take stock of the last sixteen years and ask the question ” Do we really know anything ” .
The Met Office is staffed by bigoted, overpaid, morons. They believe so much in AGW that they have forgotten their main function; to produce accurate weather forecasts! If they reprogrammed their computers and took out the annual temperature rises that AGW claims will occur, they might actually produce the accurate forecasts that we as taxpayers pay them to do.
If I had followed their advice I would have vines, cacti and other tropical plants dead in my garden, instead I followed my own counsel. I have a 4WD Audi S8, 360BHP,V8, 4.2litre (to hell with CO2 emissions) sat in the garage that has dealt with the snow and ice of last winter very comfortably. My garden, with snowdrops, apple trees, a lawn, elder and beech is doing well. Why? Because I didn’t listen to the Met Office, who are not fit for purpose and are a national embarrassment!
CAGW is PROVED! CAGW is now causing events of extreme differences between reality and weather forecasts. SOON, just a little after I’m no longer around, there is going to be disastrous irreversible worldwide weather forecasting.
Met forecasts are easy to interpret.
Dry summer..Buy a dinghy,welly boots.
Wet summer….Pending hosepipe ban.Bathe with friends
Cold summer …Invest in air con,and factor 100 sunblock
Hot summer…Thermal underwear,woolly hats.
Here right now, in the centre of England..cool,damp and miserable.
Gardeners have surrendered.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/13/met-office-uk-bad-weather-cause
Fortunately, if one longs for Arctic sea ice, there will soon be record Arctic sea ice. Unfortunately the result of record Arctic sea ice and record Northern Sea ice will be very, very, cold winters in the UK and a disruption of agriculture in the UK and in Europe.
“The one-day gathering will be led by Stephen Belcher, head of the Met Office Hadley Centre and professor of meteorology at the University of Reading, and will include up to 20 experts from the UK’s leading climate research institutions” … William: Meetings of the 20 experts from UK’s leading climate research institutes will not change planetary cooling. The cause of the cooling is the current anomalous slowdown of the solar magnetic cycle. Meetings will not change what is happening to the sun and will not change the mechanism by which solar magnetic cycle changes modulate planetary clouds.
If the planet is cooling and will continue to cool, (due to current solar magnetic cycle change) what is required is low cost, reliable energy to heat homes and to help provide a strong industrial base to provide funds to purchase food from countries in southern latitudes. As the cooling becomes more sever military action might be necessary to resolve problems to ensure sufficient food is available in southern countries, particularly in Africa.
Meetings of the 20 experts from the UK’s leading climate research institutes will not help the UK develop low cost energy sources and will not help the UK develop a strong industrial base to purchase food from southern latitudes. The leading UK climate research institutes are ironically a principal reason why the UK and the EU are no longer competitive.
WaPo offers some explanations for the Met Office!
14 June: WaPo Wonkblog: Brad Plumer: Global warming appears to have slowed lately. That’s no reason to celebrate
So what should we make of this recent “slowdown” in global warming? Is it just a random blip — the sort of natural variation we’ve seen before and will likely see again? Or does it tell us anything interesting about climate change?
Here are are a couple of big points to consider:…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/14/global-warming-appears-to-have-slowed-lately-thats-no-reason-to-celebrate/
smile:
14 June: UK Daily Mail: Are first class passengers to blame for global warming? Flying up front multiplies your carbon footprint by more than nine times compared to economy class
The paper (PDF), published in May, explains that those who enjoy first class service have a carbon footprint that is over nine times larger than the humble passenger crunched up in coach class…
The research does point out that is doesn’t calculate for the relative weight of passengers between classes, but that’s a more controversial issue…
The research was carried out by The World Bank, which is attempting to reduce its own carbon emissions, according to Quartz.com…
The Washington Post stated that employees at World Bank HQ in Washington made around 189,000 trips in 2009, which clocked up 447 million miles…
Quartz reported that by stopping luxury travel for virtually all employees by 2012 the World Bank has reduced its carbon footprint by around 20,000 tons.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2341988/Are-class-passengers-blame-global-warming-Flying-multiplies-carbon-footprint-times-compared-economy-class.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
anthony – your comments on the map please!
14 June: Boston Globe: Kevin Hartnett: Global warming refuges in the 50 states
Forget literacy rates and per capita income. In this age of rising sea levels, elevation is what’s really going to distinguish states in the union. Michael Scott Cuthbert of MIT and designer Nate Barksdale have created and shared on Facebook a map of the United States in which each state is scaled according to its volume above sea level. As you’d expect, Colorado takes over nearly half of the midwest. Elsewhere, doomed California shrivels to half its current size, the Great Plains become a great puddle, Appalachia turns out to be a lot shorter than its reputation, and New England ends up submerged like a penny in a bathtub. The surprise global warming refuge, though? Volcanic Hawaii, which more or less holds its size.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2013/06/global_warming.html
Indeed, very disappointing weather: “You’ve let us down, you’ve let yourself down….”.
Now the weather has human charateristics, can we talk about anthropomorphic climate change?
I hear a lot about the poor Met forecasts on this blog. I’m curious about how well national agencies in other countries are forecasting, e.g., Germany (DWD?)?
@Manfred –
Since global warming is a religion, we need another separation of church and state. And incidentally, stop teaching this religion in the schools.
The biggest problem (okay, just one of them) with the Met Office is the simple fact that they see the weather as being unusual. In other words, if they can’t predict it with a model then it’s the weather that is wrong and not them. Got news for you, nature will do whatever it wants and when it wants. Always has, always will.
Turn off the computers, and break out some pencils and open up the CET. If they did that might notice that all this ‘unusual’ weather happens with regularity and plenty of it was before any pre-industrial CO2 rise.