Newsbytes: "Dry Winter" Could the Met Office Have Been More Wrong?

Met Office Warning (2012): Climate Change Linked To Colder, Drier UK Winters

The Met Office’s ‘pitiful’ forecasts were under fire last night after it was revealed it told councils in November to expect ‘drier than usual’ conditions this winter. In the worst weather prediction since Michael Fish reassured the nation in October 1987 that there was no hurricane on the way, forecasters said the Somerset Levels – still under water after more than two months of flooding – and the rest of the West Country would be especially dry. Last night, it was confirmed the UK had instead suffered the wettest winter since records began. –Tamara Cohen, Daily Mail, 21 February 2014

UPDATE: Verity Jones from “Digging in the Clay” has this hilarious game addition…

See: http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/place-your-bets/

MPs and environmental planners yesterday said the long-term forecast had been a ‘mistake which could have cost Britain dearly’ and questioned whether the forecasting methods were fit for purpose. The three-month forecasts are now sent only to contingency planners, such as councils, government departments, and insurance companies. Using the Met Office’s super-computer, which can perform 100trillion calculations a second, experts in November predicted there would be high-pressure weather systems across Britain ‘with a slight signal for below average precipitation’. –Tamara Cohen, Daily Mail, 21 February 2014

The reduction in Arctic sea ice caused by climate change is playing a role in the UK’s recent colder and drier winter weather, according to the Met Office. Speaking to MPs on the influential environmental audit committee about the state of the warming Arctic, Julia Slingo, the chief scientist at the Met Office, said that decreasing amounts of ice in the far north was contributing to colder winters in the UK and northern Europe as well as to drought. She added that more cold winters mean less water, and could exacerbate future droughts. –Adam Vaughan, The Guardian, 14 March 2012

Half of all UK households face the threat of drought restrictions in the new year if rainfall does not return to normal this winter. With temperatures in parts of England still exceptionally mild, there is now growing concern about what will happen if – as some forecasters expect – there is a second dry winter in a row. The latest drought scenarios follow some of the driest weather since the Met Office records began in 1910, with rainfall in much of central England below 60% of the average for the last year. Water companies and environment regulators are expecting the UK to have more frequent dry winters as a result of climate change. –Juliette Jowit, The Guardian, 17 November 2011

Half of all households in Britain could face water restrictions unless exceptionally heavy and prolonged rain falls by April, water companies and the environment agency have warned. The environment secretary, Caroline Spelman, will hold a crisis meeting next week after the Centre for Hydrology and Ecology (CEH) stated that the average rainfall so far this winter has been the lowest since 1972, and the English Midlands and Anglian regions have had their second driest years in nearly a century. Last year was the driest in south-east England in 90 years. One more dry winter could force then drier areas of the country will have to start looking at more drastic measures like desalination plants or transporting water from wetter areas in the north or west. –John Vidal, The Guardian, 14 February 2012

Surprised by how tough this winter has been? You’re in good company: Last fall the Climate Prediction Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted that temperatures would be above normal from November through January across much of the Lower 48 states. –Peter Coy, Bloomberg, 18 February 2014

Meanwhile, the Met Office has continued to issue questionable long-term forecasts. In mid-November, two weeks before the first of the storms, it predicted persistent high pressure for the winter, which was ‘likely to lead to drier-than-normal conditions across the country’. Infamously, in April 2009, the Met Office promised a ‘barbecue summer’ – which then turned out to be a washout. It forecast the winter of 2010 to 2011 would be mild: it was the coldest for 120 years.  At the beginning of 13 of the past 14 years, the Met Office has predicted the following 12 months would be significantly warmer than they have been. This, says the sceptic think-tank the Global Warming Policy Foundation, indicates ‘systemic’ bias. –David Rose, Mail on Sunday, 16 February 2014

Lord Smith, the embattled Chairman of the Environment Agency (EA), ignored multiple warnings that his policies would lead to serious flooding in Berkshire. The warnings came in 2009 from then Lead Member for the Environment at Windsor Council, Cllr Colin Rayner, who spoke exclusively to Breitbart London about numerous meetings with Smith, who has presided over some of the worst flooding to hit Britain in many years. Rayner claims to have told Smith that unless the Environment Agency took urgent action, the villages around Wraysbury, in the Thames valley, would flood. But Smith appears to have ignored Rayner’s warning, preferring instead to blame climate change for any future floods. —Breitbart News, 18 February 2014

It will hardly come as a surprise to anyone mopping up after the floods, but this has been the UK’s wettest winter since records began in 1910, the Met Office said on Thursday. –Pilita Clark, Financial Times, 21 February 2014

Based on the Met Office’s provisional numbers, it is true that, for the UK as a whole, this has been the wettest Dec – Feb period on record since 1910. However, the Met Office’s claims only tell half the story. Unless there is a Noah like deluge in the next week, the 3-month periods of Oct – Dec, and Nov – Jan, during the winter of 1929/30 will remain as by far the wettest on record. -–Paul Homewood, Not A Lot Of People Know That, 21 February 2014

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This Newsbytes Summary from Dr. Benny Peiser and The GWPF