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.”
I am very impressed that they listed solar activity as one of the possible causes.
You took the point right off of my fingers.
I think Jeremy Paxman put it better…
“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”…..after a few years of making total fools of themselves……have finally given up trying to predict the weather
This is exactly right. They have been fools for 20 years – BBQ summers, dryest spring, warm wet winters. They are totally full of BS but they are essentially using this for correcting their former miserably failed forecasts by ‘discovering’ widening variability. If it weren’t for WUWT, they wouldn’t even have considered the NAO, PDO, etc. Their full belief in the CO2 control knob was the problem and their miserable failure in relying on it is perhaps the greatest falsification of the theory possible. They will include all these bad forecasts as part of that era of greater volatility. Shameful.
To what use is the supercomputer they have?
“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.”
I thought that the models and computers had outdated the old way of prediction weather.
The models could see what no one else could see, and it was based on pure physics, so how could it fail.
Not sure who did the math, but if they assume a totally random distribution of 5 of the top 10 extreme weather months occurring in the last 10 years of a 115 year period, it is 0.08% not 0.04%. If you take any ten year period instead of just the last 10 in the 115 years it would be 0.8% chance. If you take any month in any 10 year span instead of just December, the chances of finding 5 of 10 extremes within a 10 year period is 10%. If you assume that extreme hot or cold temperatures may cluster instead of being totally random, then the chances can quickly go above 50% of finding this anomaly in any month of any ten year period of any 115 year period. Talk about cherry picking data!!!!
Let’s say I don’t know statistics – how did you figure out 0.08%?
But the model shows it’s going to be winter? I mean, it’s definitely going to be winter, right?
/sarc
know it will be cold here in Maine this year.
already had 41 deg F mornings 2 days ago.
The humming birds near Monument, CO, USA usually leave Sept. 15. This year they left two weeks early. This time of the year we are usually producing 20 cups of fluid (4 water, 1 sugar), for their feeders. The only birds we have been seeing since 1 Sept. are the tailend Charlie’s flying through.
Our hummers (southern NB in eastern Canada) seem to have left with the full moon a couple of days ago. Do they fly at night? Anybody know?
Ian M
rest of the team of scientists from University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit
The home of Phil ‘the dog ate my data ‘ Jones who would rather delete data than let others ‘find something wrong with it .
a’nd the Met Office Hadley Centre, ‘who stopped making long and mid term forecast public because they got them wrong so often even they got embarrassed by them , and by ‘lucky chance ‘ they were always wrong in a manner which supported ‘the cause ‘ the head of the MET is so clearly a addicted follower of.
I rather take race relations advice from the KKK than trust these people on this subject , so often have them proved themselves unable to put facts before dogma in this area . Although to be fair if they forecast winter will possible be a wetter or direr , colder or warming , or average , then they stand a chance of being right . And although its sounds a joke they actual done that in the past . come up with a ‘forecast ‘ with range so wide that no matter what happened they be right
They have both sides of their bread buttered with that forecast and I bet they will still get it wrong. They will find out they should have remembered to butter the crust as well.
The current narrative has no predictive value for time periods of 10 years or less and yet the science is settled and the models useful? Not even temp up vs down, dry vs wet, cloud vs sun?
I wonder how many governments in the world really intend on bringing in harmful policies to themselves in order to potentially help other people to an unknown extent at some unknown point in the future. Including the Maldives.
Well they seem to have learnt their lesson after some appallingly bad predictions in recent years that made them a laughing stock.
So it will be either “extremely” mild (ie extremely not extreme ) this winter or snowy. I’ll bet ten quid each way if it’s even odds.
And the weather for this evening, the 9th or September: there is a significant probability that it will either rain or go dark before the night’s out.
If it is extremely not extreme, of course that will be extremely “consistent” with climate model predictions of what we can expect as the world warms.
I think we’re looking at a new kind of mental illness – the belief that anything that happens MUST BE A TREND.
Also, the belief that anything that happens MUST BE HUMAN CAUSED sounds like a mental illness, because of the sheer absurdity of it. I mean, billions of years this planet coasted along with absolutely no human intervention, but the moment we start driving cars we’ve ruined it all. Sure.
So the forecast this winter is from cold to warm, from mild to bitter, from record dry to record precipitation. Townships should stock up on extra grit, but they won’t use it. Whatever happens, though, it will fall within the range predicted for climate change, and WE TOLD YOU SO. It’s worse than we thought. Oh, lord, won’t you think of the Children!
Mr Layman here. My impression has been that weather patterns tend (I didn’t say “trend.8-) to repeat every 60 years or so. (If that’s full of sh*t, please tell me but please do so nicely.)
Are they positioning themselves to be able to protect us from harsh winters (human caused, of course)?
“This new analysis of historical observations shows intriguing signs of a trend towards more variable winters over the last century.”
What are these fraudsters playing at.
Am I stating the bleeding obvious that we have variable weather conditions every season and not just winter?
Since time and eternity.
In Australia we were getting crystal ball predictions during autumn (fall) that we were in for a poor ski season.
Due to the unseasonably mild weather.
Blind Freddie could see what was happening down south of the continent( think Turkey and the ship of fools) was at some stage going to impact Australia big time during the winter.
I said as much over at Nova in early may and was shit canned by some alarmist “expert”.
The resultant winter has just been declared the best snow season in the last 50 years.
Some resorts saying ever.
So much so they have extended the season into October.
Not unprecedented but all the same pretty rare.
So again.
What are these fraudsters playing at now?
Outright funny. If you have no clue of what is going on – especially as a scientist – just say nothing. The take away is: snow is a thing of the past, present and the future…. Congrats to the British education system – money wisely spent on this one.
Who would ever have imagined that a British winter could ever have been: “very mild, wet and stormy to extremely cold and snowy”….Wow!, thanks Profs. Don’t forget to pick up your cheques on leaving the Hall.
Well.
What can I say. ‘Weather Happens’?
Unfortunately, IFF there really is a large increase in the range of weather events between warm and cold, that is a Very Bad Thing; since that is what happens at the transition to / from a glacial cycle. Since we have been in a very non-glacial, the only direction this transition could be is toward the next glacial.
‘Somewhere’ I have a couple of papers stashed that lay out the volatiliy mechanics. IIRC, it is due to the Gulf Stream / North Atlantic Drift shifting a bit back and forth but slowly drifting more south and getting weaker as the glacial sets in. It was held as something of the hallmark of glacial onset…
sarc;
So one can only hope this ‘prediction / projection / flight of fantasy’ is as accurate as all their past ones…
/sarc;
Sigh….
So English weather is rather like it always has been, or we are entering into the next glacial… and somehow this is supposed to be linked to industrial bad breath?
oh well….they were half right
https://twitter.com/trouttroller/status/509127769658523648/photo/1
After my 60+ years of casual observation I suggest they are still wrong because they conflate cold and snow. When the winter weather comes from the west it is usually milder but often wet and windy. When the weather comes from the north-east it can bring exceptionally cold, but is more likely to be dry.
Snow is obviously only going to happen when it’s cold but the heaviest snowfalls are most likely to occur at the changeover of weather direction, often the appearance of snow heralds a let-up after a very cold spell. (MInd you it’s just as horrible).
Can they please explain the physical / physics where CO2 or all the other things they tax and regulate control the NAO? As they cannot, there is no human hand on the ‘control knob’.
“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”
This is not true.with regards to the high NAO values in December. The 3 highest December NAO values over that time frame(2004-2013) were:
2011 +2.52
2006 +1.34
2004 +1.21
Prior to that decade, these values were reported for the December NAO that were all higher than +1.21:
1999 +1.62
1994 +2.02
1992 +1.56
1982 +1.78
1974 +1.50
1965 +1.37
1951 +1.32
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/norm.nao.monthly.b5001.current.ascii.table
If you look at this graphically, the pattern is quite clear:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/month_nao_index.shtml
During modest global cooling, in the 50’s-70’s, the +NAO regime was weak/did not last very long. There were strong -NAO months that greatly dominated.
That pattern took a major shift in the early 1980’s thru the mid 1990’s when +NAO periods were very dominant, along with global warming.
Another shift took place around the end of that period after the mid 1990’s with -NAO’s becoming stronger and lasting longer, especially in the last 5 years. This is strongly correlated with the cold/snowy Winters in the US. The Winters of 2009/10 and 2013/14 were the 2 coldest overall Winters in 30 years in the eastern 2/3rd of the US.
The only way somebody would interpret that last graph as showing 3 out of the highest 5 values of the NAO coming in the last decade and presenting it as evidence of extreme climate is if their cognitive bias disabled their brains from seeing the exact opposite……………….that -NAO periods increased after the mid 1990’s and since then, -NAO’s are stronger and longer than they’ve been since the 1950’s/60’s.
Great points Mike. Tied in with TonyB’s graphs and Dan’s analysis of MetO’s terrifying 0.04% statistical sham it is a slam dunk that the MetO verbiage is pure bafflegab and CYA.
What might be missing from the discussion though alluded to several times is that the MetO not only chose shady records in making their point, but that they completely cherry picked which records to play number games with.
Why use only record highs and record lows?
Precipitation records?
Frozen precipitation records?
Wind records?
Storms?
Sunny skies?
First frost? Last frost?
Winter or Summer Solstice temperatures, weather?
Spring or Fall Equinox temperature, weather?
How about Boxing day weather records, surely they count for something?
Add in all of the MetO’s poor intentions and even poorer use of their intelligence and it looks like their ‘statistical’ 0.04% for unusual records in the last ten years is a easy 100% because MetO would’ve found something to whine catastrophe about.
And get MetO excused from making a legitimate weather prediction for 2014-2015. Weatherbell has already laid out their view of the approaching months, but all of MetO’s super computers and all of MetO’s modelers are unable to Ouija or Tarot a clear view of the approaching weather.
Just completed a marathon statistical analysis of weather patterns in the UK … I can now predict with 99.9999% certainty that this winter will commence “very mild, wet and stormy” becoming “extremely cold and snowy” as the winter progresses.
Get that man a grant!
Weather forecast: Changy
In business, failure isn’t rewarded; change your product or the business folds.
However, in taxpayer supported enterprises, failure results in calls for more power and money; the bigger the failure, the more insistent are the calls for greater funding.
The weather will be cold and snowy or mild and stormy except when it’s not. So they’re going to be at least partly right no matter what happens.