By Paul Homewood
Last July, the Met Office published the second in a series of papers, discussing the recent pause in global warming.
On page 6, they state:
The start of the current pause is difficult to determine precisely. Although 1998 is often quoted as the start of the current pause, this was an exceptionally warm year because of the largest El Niño in the instrumental record. This was followed by a strong La Niña event and a fall in global surface temperature of around 0.2oC (Figure 1), equivalent in magnitude to the average decadal warming trend in recent decades. It is only really since 2000 that the rise in global surface temperatures has paused.
Source: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/q/0/Paper2_recent_pause_in_global_warming.PDF
They accept that the pause is unequivocal, certainly since 2000. They also seem to accept that the pause really started in 1998, although the period 1998-2000 was complicated by El Nino/La Nina episodes. (It is worth noting here that the two La Nina years of 1999/2000 more than offset the 1998 El Nino year – the average temperature of the three years together come out lower than 1997. It is arguable, therefore, that 1998 is a fair start point).
But, regardless of the exact start point, they fully accept that the pause is real and long lasting.
So why, in January 2012, in response to an article in the Mail by David Rose, did they issue a press release saying:
Today the Mail on Sunday published a story written by David Rose entitled “Forget global warming – it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about”.
This article includes numerous errors in the reporting of published peer reviewed science undertaken by the Met Office Hadley Centre and for Mr. Rose to suggest that the latest global temperatures available show no warming in the last 15 years is entirely misleading.
Instead, they themselves fell back on the misleading “hottest decade ever” red herring.
However, what is absolutely clear is that we have continued to see a trend of warming, with the decade of 2000-2009 being clearly the warmest in the instrumental record going back to 1850.
And they were at it again a few months later in October that year. Again David Rose had published an article, pointing out the pause in global warming.
The Met Office had this to say:
An article by David Rose appears today in the Mail on Sunday under the title: ‘Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released… and here is the chart to prove it’
It is the second article Mr Rose has written which contains some misleading information, after he wrote an article earlier this year on the same theme – you see our response to that one here……
The linear trend from August 1997 (in the middle of an exceptionally strong El Nino) to August 2012 (coming at the tail end of a double-dip La Nina) is about 0.03°C/decade, amounting to a temperature increase of 0.05°C over that period, but equally we could calculate the linear trend from 1999, during the subsequent La Nina, and show a more substantial warming.
As we’ve stressed before, choosing a starting or end point on short-term scales can be very misleading.
So, who is actually doing the misleading? If the Met Office now openly accept that the pause is real, and started at least 13 years ago, why did they try so hard to cover this fact up two years ago?
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Considering their track record on temperature predictions for the UK, I can see why they cannot get even their fudged numbers correct.
Factoring out the effect of increased CO2 since 1998 we find not a pause, nor a plateau, nor a halt but a downturn. That extra CO2 is keeping us warmer than we would otherwise be – and a good thing too.
I would like to make a prediction. I believe it is true that if you live in the UK and are still young enough to play football (not soccer) you’re 95% less likely to know the difference between they’re, their and there, as well as you’re and your. I am 100% more certain of my prediction than the Met Office can be about tomorrow’s weather.
Here’s what the first google dictionary definition says:
Nothing there about it being at the end of a slope. That’s why “plateau” is a nice, neutral word. It has no baggage.
Only for as long as the plateau lasts. No plateau is endless. The plateau atop Table Mountain ends in a descent. Others (smaller, probably) end in ascents.
troe says:
January 29, 2014 at 4:11 am
Agree with the post that UK should consider reducing the MET to a few weather forecasters and staff. Try it for 5 years and see if anybody notices.
=================
In Oz they found that if they simply forecast yesterday’s weather today it was more accurate than the official forecast. Sacked the whole lot of them and replaced the forecast with yesterday’s weather.
If someone was to conduct the same study in the UK, odds are that the findings would be the same. In chaotic systems, today provides a better forecast of tommorrow than do the computer models.
The MET will not change until its current leadership goes for its very much a case of the leader setting the stage for the whole place and that leadership is fully politised to promote ‘the cause’ and dam the actual data.
And it work to , more cash for the MET , so that they can be wrong faster , and honours for its leader . Shame none of that has helped them to get their day job right.
Reblogged this on wwlee4411 and commented:
Figures don’t lie, but liars do figure.
From the MO blurb: “Although 1998 is often quoted as the start of the current pause, this was an exceptionally warm year because of the largest El Niño in the instrumental record.” [my bold]
For the benefit of Mann and Briffa, I wonder how they would have characterised the temperature in the proxy record.
Alan the Brit says:
January 29, 2014 at 4:39 am
“Yes the WO has always come in for some stick through honest misjudgements, & we here in the PDREU sub-state of the UK just love talking about the weather, but now no one is allowed to get it wrong, the “State” is always right!”
Well, sounds like it’s time to close the shop. Entire EU has become an empire of lies. Probably the disappearance of the USSR removed the need to keep moral posturing up and all the small and big bureaucrats in EU and NATO felt it’s time to do what they always wanted to do, change the world, become corrupt, lie and steal and murder and that’s where we are now; there’s no credibility left to ruin, good riddance, just sit out the collapse. This regime will go.
Here is the Met Office and their cousins at CRU again.
And what is “recent”? 2005? 2009? 2013?
These fellows have been aware of the ‘no upward trend’ since at least 2009 but resisted until 2012 / 2013 before finally accepting defeat. The longer the pause the harder it is for them to argue about dangerous warming for the rest of the 21st Century.
Typical ideologue behavior – so long as the noise of contrary evidence isn’t too loud, you simply pretend it isn’t there. But when it gets loud enough that the general public begins to notice (as with the spate of severe winters and poor summers in the UK over the last decade), then various contortions, rationalizations, and just plain bullshit must be resorted to. And when those fail, simple religious faith takes over: “Yes, we know our models are worthless, we know the evidence is against us, but we still BELIEVE!!”
Dr. Phil Jones – CRU emails – 7th May, 2009
‘Bottom line: the ‘no upward trend’ has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried.’
This really says it all, because the implication from this statement is that Jones doesn’t give a hoot what happens to the planet as long as his pet CAGW theory is intact.
If you study the UK met forecasts as I have since 1962 you will note that they have good times and bad times of forecasting ability. Look at these periods closely and you will conclude that whilst the Met Off are not entirely useless they do not provide value for money.
The point is (briefly) that when the weather is fluid (NH strong jet stream) it’s predictability is high but it is high for those without a computer as well as those with. When the NA jetstream is not fluid, not powering across the atlantic, it is usually because there is an anticyclonic block over scandinavia and/or russia and this is when the UK needs good forecasting but precisely when the Met Off models fail. At critical times in this unpredictable period, such as the approach of snow; they are unable to be certain more than 6 hrs ahead. So I advocate a new way of measuring forecast efficiency by using a predictability index. When the weather is easily predicted the index goes down, when it is difficult the index rises. So if they are accurate in an unpredictable period as measured by time of arrival, intensity, disruption, etc they would receive a bonus for an accurate forecast 24, 48,72 hours ahead.
DirkH says:
January 29, 2014 at 6:48 am
I couldn’t agree more. The Met Office is overstaffed to the tune of 1,800 people, what on Earth they all do in their leaky trendy eco-building in Exeter I shudder to thing. I suppose one has to have their pencils sharpened, & another to shuffle paper on a desk, or to strenuously move a piece of paper from one in-tray down to the next level!
May I remind bloggers that the UK Meteorological Office is shortened to the “Met Office”. The “Met” is UK short parlance for the Metropolitan Police (there’s another story) based in London!
Maybe it’s because somebody made the MET office aware of provisions within the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010
This legislation placed the Civil Service values on a statutory footing and includes the publication of a Civil Service Code.
Integrity – putting the obligations of public service above personal interests
Honesty – being truthful and open
Objectivity – basing advice and decisions on rigorous analysis of the evidence
Impartiality – acting solely according to the merits of the case and serving governments of different political parties equally well
Paul Homewood
I emailed Time Yeo yesterday. Explaining that temperatures, from proxy ice core data, were warmer in the Medieval, Roman and Minoan Warm Periods. The longest instrument record being the CET only started in 1659 after these periods, and was near the bottom of the Little Ice Age and therefore temperatures have risen since, making the last decade the hottest on record. However also to note that the temperature between1659 to 2013 has only risen by 0.73 Deg C in 354 years..
I also pointed out that although the very short measurement of global temperatures rose for a period there has been no rise since 1998. And finally, nearer to home, the UK temperature trend has been in decline for 21 years.
As if it will make any difference.
@Paul Homewood
did You ask the Met office, to answer your question? Open letter? In the end: FOIA?
They signed the Kyoto Protocol and global warming stopped in its tracks.
Who says executive orders have no power or effect? This ‘cessation’ is a documented, data-driven, downright unavoidable fact.
Or is the cessation in the warming trend just an ‘effect without a cause’? I don’t think so people, I don’t think so!
If you can believe that all human CO2 emissions cause global warming, then you can believe that signing a powerful document will have a measureable effect on the global temperature. And now we have proof.
1 x Anti-global warming treaty = 1 x global warming stoppage
Even the Met agrees. It is really elementary, Watson.
Greg says:
January 29, 2014 at 2:05 am
Ken Hall says:
The climate realists need to bury the “warmest decade” image, by stating that a man in his 50s is still the tallest he has been in his life, even though he stopped growing 30 years ago.
===
Bad example, he’s probably slightly shorter than he was in his prime. Especially if he has been involved in physical work , not sitting on his butt in an office drinking coffee and doing climate modelling.
===
Ah but they tiny amount of shrinkage would be natural variability. The overall measured average height of such a man would mean that from his 40th to 50th Birthday, each year would have been the 10 tallest of his 50 years. Once the un-natural growing kicks in again, he would be another foot taller by the time he is 120, and suffering from catastrophic growing pains.
M Courtney says:
‘The “hottest decade ever” line was used by Tim Yeo in the DECC committee yesterday. It wasn’t particularly persuasive there either. Perhaps the MET Office and Tim Yeo share common standards with respect to impartial evaluation of the evidence?’
YES. They both understand from where the money comes .
“Tim Yeo is chairman of Univent plc, Chairman of TMO Renewables and non-executive chairman of Eco City Vehicles plc and AFC Energy plc. Yeo is also a director of ITI Energy Ltd.” -Wikipedia
“Conservative Party members in South Suffolk are being balloted over whether to deselect sitting MP Tim Yeo”. – BBC see below.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-25808012
Every year UKMO has the lowest prediction of the summer minimum arctic ice extenr among 25 or so predictions – I mean 30-40% too low. Two thinks about this. One they do believe in and are the banner carriers of CAGW. Two, they created Hadcrut 4 to “correct” for the underestimate of arctic temperatures. Having added a 0.1C here and there, and GISS’s machete work on slashing down the pesky mid30s – mid 40s US record temps, I would say the pause might in fact be even 20yrs or more.
jim hogg says: January 29, 2014 at 3:07 am
Come on guys. I doubt if anyone on here is as sceptical as I am but I have to disregard ’98 as a starting point because it was a clearly anomalous year in terms of temperature.
Jim, as someone who has followed this since ’98, I would like to remind everyone how many times this ‘anomalous year’ was used to show their computer models were still accurate until well beyond 2005. If you want to disregard the spike, go back and tell everyone you were lying then.
In regard to the Met’s forecasting, I am reminded of a story a co-worker told of a TV weatherman in Denver in the late 60’s / early 70’s. Seems he was almost always wrong, so much that the residence could depend on it. If he said it would be sunny and clear, better take the raingear. Forecast of rain this weekend, go ahead and plan the picnic. Everyone was happy. Then a big surge of outsiders moved in, didn’t know about the system and got him taken off the air. The results, they when from 95% of not what to expect to 60% of knowing what to expect.
“Here in the UK the Met Office is simply seen as a big joke, what my elders used to call ‘A Music Hall joke’. Everyone takes the mick (pokes fun) out of them. They are so incredibly inept at getting our weather right that it’s actually really funny. I’m a tradesman, and I have worked in the home of a guy from the Met Office. When I asked him his occupation, he told me, then apologised.”
The Billions of pounds that Met Office gets are not a joke.
Why does a bureaucracy spin, twist the truth, deny reality?
Surely you jest.
It is imperative not to acknowledge reality when it contradicts the myth your pay check depends upon.
As with most government climate studying agencies, the media and consensus followers worldwide, why has it taken near 2 decades to admit the failure of global temperatures to follow the script?
Imagine the thinking of any teenager, Having been swamped in global warming propaganda, doom and gloom, through out their voyage through public school.
Now they are told there has been no global warming in their lifetime.
Think these kids are going to be good little government trusting citizens?
DEEBEE sez: “It is all in the definition and who is doing the defining. A living being can be a ball of cells depending on it GPS positioning in the birth canal.”
-The proper scientific term is “blob of cells.”