A data review to supplement the UK Met Office 'Disappointing Weather Meeting'

A graphical review of 14.5 years disappointing UK weather

Guest essay by Neil Catto

A meeting today (18th March 2013) took place at the UK Met Office HQ in Exeter. See the report here: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2013/meeting-unusual-seasons

It was arranged to include the best climatologists and meteorologists to gain better understanding of the ‘disappointing UK weather over recent years’.

Now, that the AGW debate with regard to the relationship between CO2 and temperature has been shown to be insignificant, I can only imagine the next course of action. Listening to Roger harbinger of doom on BBC Radio 4 this morning; weird weather, extremes this and that…blah blah!

I thought I would have a look and see how unusual (oops! disappointing) it has been for the last 14.5 years at a southern UK location.

Fig 1 Average daily (24hrs) pressure Well that’s not very worrying, almost a straight linear trend.

Fig 2 Daily rainfall duration (any hour of 24 reporting precipitation) Well that’s not very worrying either, a very small decline in rainfall duration. It appears wet every day, it isn’t of course, it’s only the large amount of information (5353 days) makes it look that way on these compacted graphs.

Fig 3 Daily (24hrs) Rainfall volume As with rainfall duration, there is a very small linear decline. There are certainly LESS number of high daily amounts in the last 8 years (2004-2013) than the previous 6 years.

Fig 4 Average daily (24hrs) relative humidity Getting bored with the flat line trends yet? How boringly normal the weather is!

Fig 5 Daily (24 hrs) maximum hourly wind speeds It is getting a little windier about 2.5mph/day, but hardly anything to worry about.

Fig 6 Daily (24 hrs) maximum temperatures Slightly COOLER, oh dear there goes the CO2 driving temperature rise theory!

Fig 7 Daily (24 Hrs) minimum temperatures Yet another boring straight line trend, shaking in your boots yet?

Fig 8 Daily (24hrs) average temperatures Slightly COOLER, so it’s lower maximum temperatures driving the average down! And still CO2 levels continue to rise.

Fig 9 this is my weather ‘feel’ index This index is how the weather makes us feel. On a scale of 0-60; 0-6.9 (feel bad), tired, lethargic, miserable and despondent: >7.0 (feel good) full of energy, bright, lively and dynamic. As ‘disappointing’ is an emotion and this index is a measure of emotion, it shows the weather has been making us feel a little worse.

There has been less hours of sunlight.

I know the comments have been a bit cynical and light hearted but honestly where is the gloom, the doom, the despondency and catastrophe in 14.5 years of perfectly normal very stable weather.

On a last note, I think we can all agree the Earth has been, at stages in its past history, covered or mostly covered in glacial ice. Most people will agree that global temperatures have been much higher than today, based on paleo-geology and archaeology. Well I suggest, in very simplistic terms, the difference between the two extremes of cold and hotter, is natural variation. Is climate change real? – isn’t the change between the wide divergence of natural variation, stating the obvious.

Related articles

• UK Met Office convenes meeting to make up excuses for lack of global warming (junkscience.com)
• Meeting on UK’s run of unusual seasons (metofficenews.wordpress.com)
• Met Office, do I see a prediction? (tallbloke.wordpress.com)