From the University of Sheffield:
Winter is coming: British weather set to become more unsettled
- Britain hit by extremely unsettled winter weather
- Three all-time high and two all-time low NAO values recorded in the last decade showing huge contrast in conditions
- Month of December shows biggest variation in weather.
British winters are becoming increasingly volatile due to extreme variations in pressure over the North Atlantic according to scientists from the University of Sheffield.
The new research, published today (9 September 2014) in the International Journal of Climatology, shows that weather patterns over the UK have become distinctly more unstable, resulting in contrasting conditions from very mild, wet and stormy to extremely cold and snowy.
Winter weather conditions are commonly defined using the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). The NAO is a south-north seesaw of barometric pressure variations over the North Atlantic which indicates the strength of westerly winds impinging on the UK shore and resulting weather patterns.
When westerly winds are strong, known as a positive NAO phase, Britain experiences mild, wet and often stormy weather – like last winter. Weaker or reverse airflow, known as negative NAO phase, typically brings cold, snowy weather, which featured prominently in the winters of 2009/10 and 2010/11.
Climatologists Professor Edward Hanna and Tom Cropper from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Geography and the rest of the team of scientists from University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit and the Met Office Hadley Centre, analysed year-to-year monthly and seasonal changes in the NAO since 1899.
Although the experts found that most seasons didn’t show overall long-term NAO trends, winter – especially early winter including the month of December – showed a significant systematic rise in variation over the last century.
The researchers found that over the last 115 years, three out of five all time record high NAO values and two out of five record lows for the month of December occurred over the last decade (2004-2013) , indicating that British winters have become increasingly unsettled.
Researchers found from their statistical analysis that there was a less than 0.04 per cent probability of getting such a clustering of extreme NAO years by chance.
Though this trend could be due to random fluctuations in the climate system, it could equally have been influenced by various driving factors including changing pressure/weather systems over the Arctic, especially Greenland, and changes in energy coming from the Sun.
Professor Edward Hanna, from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Geography, said: “Our study highlights the changing nature of North Atlantic atmospheric circulation patterns that has given the UK more variable winter conditions in recent years.
“We cannot use these results directly to predict this winter’s weather but according to the long-term NAO trend we can say that the probability of getting extreme winter weather – either mild/stormy or cold/snowy – has significantly increased in the last few decades. Further research is needed to show whether or not this increased volatility is linked to global warming. ”
The University of Sheffield and Met Office Hadley Centre are now carrying out further collaborative research to better understand these possible links. If this trend of increasingly variable winter NAO continues, we can expect more volatile UK winter weather in decades to come.
Dr Adam Scaife, Head of Monthly to Decadal Forecasting at the Met Office, said: “This new analysis of historical observations shows intriguing signs of a trend towards more variable winters over the last century.”
Meanwhile snow is visiting the Montana plains. http://www.glacierelectric.com/webcam-gec.html
Don’t they already know that all extreme weather, including extremely cold weather, is tied to global warming?
Yes of course extremely cold weather is tied to global warming and extremely hot weather is tied to climate change. It’s all very sensible, if you ask me. Barkeep, another pint if you please.
I mean, of course, they must surely be see all the mass media news, and found those “truths” already well established. How dare they consider it a question for further research? (Oh the money, I forgot).
Next: extremely normal weather tied to climate change.
I saw the guy on UK TV news last night, he looked very shifty, had his arms crossed ver defensively and kept gazing furtively to the right. Even he new that this “newsworthy” item was totally vacuous. A new low.
There are many things to be thankful for in Englands Climate.
Instead of mild, wet, and stormy it could be severe, dry, and storm-lacking which would turn England into a desert. And of course instead of cold and snowy, hot and rainy would make England tropical.
A lot of positives with climate change I’d say as I tip back another pint.
Maybe The MET isn’t telling the public something?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/11070173/Emergency-measures-to-prevent-blackouts-this-winter-as-power-crunch-worsens.html
No, the Telegraph isn’t telling the public something – the presence of another 5GW of backout generation that doesn’t appear in the estimates. If the journo read her own paper she would know that Chris Booker (together with Richard North) has already covered this and explained why the lights won’t be going out. Not all good news though as this back up power will come at a huge cost which could have been avoided by a sensible energy policy. Of far more interest is the UK gas situation. Because of a lack of storage, the UK is vulnerable to any interruption to the supply during the winter but also to a prolonged cold winter such as the year before last when the gas nearly ran out before warmer weather arrived.
The smartmoney’s on mild, wet, and stormy… considering that it is written that children won’t know what snow is anymore.
One day, throwing warmists’ words back in their faces might get old. That day hasn’t come, yet.
A day may come when throwing warmists’ words back in their faces get’s old. But it is not this day.
Sorry, just thought the form of Aragorn’s speech had a more dramatic impetus. 🙂
Wasn’t that the king of Rohan?
In the film, it definitely was Aragon outside the gates of Moldor.
There was a rousing speech by the King of Rohan oustide the White City (Gondor).
LeeHarvey, the exact quote from The Independent, Monday 20th March 2000.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
“According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.”
Reminds me of that old Cole Porter song “Anything Goes” (especially in Climate Science).
Complete and demonstrable nonsense. Phil Jones ought to know better.
Looking at the mostly benign 115 year record tells us nothing of the climate that has existed through the warm and cold phases that we can observe over the last 350 years of the Central England temperature dating from 1659.
The seasonality by decade of CET back to 1659 can be seen in this graph
http://climatereason.com/Graphs/Graph04.png
I have numerous references dating to the 11th Century that demonstrates the astonishing changeability of our winters and the extreme events recorded.. Prof Jones is welcome to look at them although as CRU holds the Hubert Lamb archives he ought to be familiar with the research.
In 2006 Phil Jones wrote a good paper that examined the warm climate of the 1730’s brought to a shuddering halt by the very severe winter of 1740. Following that examination he declared that natural variability was greater than he had hitherto realised. Perhaps he has forgotten about it?
tonyb
Looks like English winters are warming at about 1/3 deg per century ? Summers are also warming, just not as fast? Interesting dataset. Thanks.
Wow, the facts are most inconvenient. Good work, Mr TonyB.
But in fairness to my old alma mater, the key question is whether the weather is becoming too inconsistent for us to cope with,
Even if (as you point out) the weather isn’t changing much… it could still be a problem if our modern society can’t cope. If we are forced to build on flood plains or are so over-populated as to be near starvation, for instance.
Of course, I don’t believe that is true.
But if the Green policies come into force and our wealth is reduced (with our resilience) then this study may well be relevant for policy making.
When a man’s paycheck depends on his not remembering, he won’t remember.
– someone else’s quote, not mine. but apropos.
Peter
““We cannot use these results directly to predict this winter’s weather but according to the long-term NAO trend we can say that the probability of getting extreme winter weather – either mild/stormy or cold/snowy – has significantly increased in the last few decades. Further research is needed to show whether or not this increased volatility is linked to global warming.”
British winters are famously varied. The last 100 years are as varied as other century long periods and less so than others. They have the means to look beyond the period they have chosen but have selected a narrow window. then linked it to a suggestion that the non existent volatility (in a broader historic context) could be linked to the input of man.
This from the University Dept concerned;
‘The results of our proposed research will be useful not only for improving the historical record of global storminess but also for feeding into and/or helping validate models of changing mid- to high-latitude storminess under climate-change (eg global warming) scenarios. The proposed work has practical benefits, eg for the insurance industry, as well as helping to improve scientific knowledge of climatic change.’
tonyb
But CET winter (Dec to Feb) temps have fallen nearly 1.5 degC since 2000.
All of this shows the misinformation behind global warming. Climate is regional, and its implications are felt on a regional basis. Some parts of the globe are warming, some are staying fairly static and some parts are cooling, but the material point is what is happening where ‘you’ live.
UK policy needs to address what is happening to the UK, not what might be happening globally. The UK has been under prepared these past 6 or so years, because the Met Office refused to consider what was happening to UK winters since 2000, ie., they were cooling.
Richard
It seems to me that Britain, like most countries, gets fixated on one view point and fails to look at any other.
We can see it at the moment with Scotland, whereby there is no Plan B for if they want to leave just like there is no plan B if climate change should happen to turn out to be a cooling world (or regions) instead of a warming one.
tonyb
” Perhaps he has forgotten about it?”
That’s because he’s been paid to forget about it.
I wonder if the UK and European foreign policy is being informed by their adherence to a belief in Catastrophic Human-Caused warming?
That might explain the ability to convince themselves that warmer winters will allow them to weather a cut-off of natural gas out of Russia (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-09-08/here-why-europe-just-launched-nuclear-option-against-russia) and that making themselves slaves to Russian gas and not building nukes or new coal was a great idea…
I wonder if the UK and European foreign policy is being informed by their adherence to a belief in Catastrophic Human-Caused warming?
You betcha:
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2014/9/8/your-taxes-at-work.html
No – Sorry it is just because the politicians are just self-serving idiots…
“it could be due to random fluctuations………could equally been influenced be various driving factors including changing pressure systems over the arctic…….”which are not random?
Are they trying to imply, without mentioning it, “climate change ” is the cause? A change of climate caused by climate change? Or are they just shielding their arses because, as usual, they havn’t got a clue.
As Stephen Wilde will no doubt point out, this ‘changeable weather is due to the latitudinal jetstreams and the progression of the Rossby waves in them. UK and western Europe are alternately in the cold or warm side of the jetstreams and as the weather in the Ferrel cells passes South over or North the weather changes considerably. The US is seeing the same effect but it has become known colloquially as ‘the Polar Vortex’. As the Arctic ice appears to have recovered from its ‘death spiral’, the meteorologists are going to need a new excuse for why the jetstreams have become latitudinal. I will leave it for Stephen to repeat his arguments for that.
“Further research is needed to show whether or not this increased volatility is linked to global warming.”
Surprise, surprise, a call for more $$$$ because they can’t figure this out with their current funds. Nice money making scheme.
That is a lot of words they wasted just to say “Due to our lack of understanding we have no clue what the weather will be this winter”
British winters are becoming increasingly volatile…..
translation
….we can’t predict squat
You hit the nail on the head!
Natural Variation.
Nurse, please show in the next pile of doodoo……..
+1
Another dollop of guesswork from the department of ‘I’m sorry, we haven’t a clue’.
It would be more believable if it was endorsed by Dr David Viner …
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
I have lived close to the west coast of England all my life i.e. 75yrs. At school I learned that we had a mild, wet climate due to proximity to the Atlantic plus the Gulf Stream. Nothing has changed.
Tom
I live in the south west. We were taught at school about our climate being dominated by ‘warm wet westerly winds’
When those winds cease and they come from the east in winter we get severe cold weather . The jet stream and the direction of winds are key to our weather as they have been as far back as the records can be traced.
Tonyb
Tonyb: when was the jet stream first understood? IIRC it was first widely noticed (and became very important) during WWII with flights of high-altitude bombers, particularly B-29s. So what basis do we have to believe we know what the jet stream was doing 200+ years ago?
The jet stream was actually first discovered på Japanese meteorologists in c. 1940 and was used by the japanese to carry inciendiary balloons from Japan to USA in 1944-45.
Now their weather predictions will be correct, no matter what happens — like the old stock market aphorism, “The market will fluctuate.”
Using data from 115 out of 4.54 billion years –
Inspired, brave or naively arrogant?
Naively arrogant? Or arrogantly naive?
Yup, could be more appropriate, however I occasionally try to be understanding. But mostly when I read such “research” findings, I am left to wonder at just how effectively we have dumbed down our education system.
Given the vagaries of natural climate variability, I think this forecast “UK winter weather to be very mild, wet and stormy to extremely cold and snowy” may be the most intellectually honest forecast I have seen out of the University of Sheffield.
What a bunch of clowns.
I believe the correct term is “ass-clowns”. There is a difference. Myself, I’m a dumb “ass-clown” because I’m paying for this “research”.
The key question is whether the public and governments would have been as tolerant of this type of prediction product 30 or 40 years ago. Universities have found a way to flaunt union (tenure) brazenness with low-quality agenda output. Society loses all around as institutions are hollowed out.
“University of East Anglia” – ‘nough said. Their reputation was destroyed by Phil Jones et al., and unfortunately we now have one of their gang in New Zealand who is regularly quoted in the New Zealand Herald. However, that rag is so determined to push the AGW agenda that they will publish anything as long as it supports AGW!
It sounds more like a crap shoot than explanatory insight.
Researchers found from their statistical analysis that there was a less than 0.04 per cent probability of getting such a clustering of extreme NAO years by chance.
That’s strange! It’s exactly the % of CO² in the atmosphere. Perhaps they were looking at the wrong output;
George R. R. Martin said it better: “Winter is coming.”
It’s the winter of enlightenment.
The only thing those posers can guarantee, is that there will indeed be weather, and at times, the climate will change. That’s all they’ve got! 😉