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.”
This “extreme” variability is their way to get the horrible forecasts of the past decade inside the parentheses to ‘correct’ them. Gee they turned out right after all with their BBQ summers and children won’t know what snow is. Here is a more reliable forecast: with the halt in global warming for 18 years and with the cooling trend beginning in 2005, expect more cold and snowy winters, blizzards that shut down the highways, growth of the new glacier on Ben Nevis, and with the melt and spring rains some serious flooding. Hey, I’m only a geologist.
Their horrible forecasting record for which they bought a several million quid super computer (and they didn’t know how to use exel) to make, has neutered these once bold climate buccaneers. How shameful and impotent they all are.
“UK winter weather to be ‘ very mild, wet and stormy to extremely cold and snowy’”
Out on a limb. What option is left out, other than “tropically sunny”?
What option is left out, other than “tropically sunny”?
Er, cool dry and rainless?
So that’s probably what it will be.
It has been odd this year. spring summer and the fall seem to be early this year.
And if you like old wives tales, the amount of berries and winter food about presages a bitter winter.
Coupled with a crisis in electrical power generation margin, we have laid in wood for fires, and candles.
And will be filling the oil tank
Well, ya know: heavy political headwinds. Very difficult to forecast under those conditions… Best to toss in a bit of everything, just to be sure you please everyone…
Be afraid…be very afraid: “Weather variations” are upon us.
When every observable weather phenomenon is the direct result of Climate Change, then the term ceases to have meaning. The warmistas are rapidly approaching that point.
They already there , noticed they no longer use the ‘weather is not climate ‘ trick , so often have they jumped on ever extreme but not usual weather has ‘proof’ this no longer make sense so its been drooped.
The Farmer’s Almanac is probably right as often as climate scientists — and more fun and less expensive.
That’s my tax money these clowns are wasting; and they want to waste more of it. The education system in the UK sure has been dumbed-down.
I’d rather believer the Farmer’s Almanac than the pribble-prabble of those half-masters of the obvious.
I can with all honesty say that in the 59 years I have lived in England, I have not noticed any change in winter weather, we have had mild ones and cold ones. I can make this highly accurate prediction of my personal circumstances next week.
On Tuesday morning starting at 07:15 the outside temperature will fall from 8-9 Celsius to -60 Celsius and stay at that for 3 hours, it will then gradually rise to 30-32 Celsius. For the next 11 days night time temperatures will be around 16-18 Celsius with day time temperatures reaching 29-35 Celsius. After a severe cold spell of -60 Celsius on Saturday lunch time 27th September they will rise to mid teens and gradually cool as we go into October and Novermber.
I am flying from Newcastle to Malaga and back on those dates! Can I have £1000 grant money for this “research” please?
Over my 67 years of life the UK weather has been extremely volatile. Deep snow, no snow. Hot, cold. Storms, fine weather. Drought, flood. Thick fog/smog, light mist. You name it, I’ve seen it.
In my 63 years in England I can say that the weather did get milder – mostly expressed as less sub zero weather – in the 90s. In that period I grew some escallonias. They are all dead now. Prolonged severe frost kills them.
The last two years take me back to my boyhood in the 50s. The weather ‘feels’ similar.
What is fundamentally certain, is that the climate hasn’t changed at all. 1962/3 remains the coldest winter I can remember and 1975 the hottest summer.
That’s how I felt about the latest winters…very normal to anyone who remembers the 1950s.
“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.”
Throw a dice five times. Now, no matter what result you got, there was less than 0.04 per cent probability of getting it by chance.
Is that 4 times in 10,000 years or once every 2,500 years?
Looking at winter as a whole, and not just December, there is no evidence that the NAO is more volatile, or that extremely cold winters are increasing.
Indeed, the opposite is true.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/09/09/new-attempt-to-claim-more-extreme-weather-not-supported-by-data/
To be honest this is a not of a joke. First its supposed to be geting warmer. Then cold snaps can be explained on it. Now global warming is making it more volatile. All thats left is to have series of years with very boring weather and that will be our fault too.
Their maths is also suspect. Need to look at any month in any 10 year period. Also need to look at all other months in last 10 years. Also look at 3 month seasonal records clustering. If the weather is getting more volatile then you will see it in other analyses.
At the London Daily Telegraph where this paper is being discussed largely in the bun fight mode, one of the authors has made some contributions regarding the choice of NAO datasets.
May interest:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/11084066/Winter-weather-is-growing-more-extreme-say-scientists.html#comment-1580914819
The originator of the thread has made a follow up comment expressing disquiet about the study
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/11084066/Winter-weather-is-growing-more-extreme-say-scientists.html#comment-1582352192
As one of the poor OAP’s,
that has to live through this forecasted weather.
I just pray that I do not become a statistic.
Like the 12,000 EXTRA OAP’s that expired.
No our children will doubtfully see snow in the Coming years. NOT! :-{
One things for sure, soon ever this place (UK) gets a bit of snow or rain, most everything stops. Not the power totally yet, but the same transmission lines come down here and there. After so many years of knowing that and not preparing adequately it all happens again.
I hope its pretty cold because that needs to kill the insects that cause problems later in the year. Unfortunately though and due to another type of preparedness the cold calls for higher power consumption that is at a high KW/h premium. Thanks to the sh*teheads of the UK Gov/EU.
This tells us nothing we didn’t know from a nursery rhyme, artfully rendered by Flanders ans Swann:
The NAO index goes back to 1870 why is their analysis back to 1899 the answer is pretty obvious if you look at the graph?
Are they hiding the incline?
Why do they continue to get taxpayer funding when a dartboard in a garage would suffice?
“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)”
For the all time record high NAO, there is definitely one in Dec 2011, I cannot confirm three. Apart from a couple of positive spikes in 2011, the trend is clearly an increase in negative NAO:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/nao.timeseries.gif
To summarize this article: “All of our forecasting models are crap, and we have no idea what’s going to happen next. And this proves CLIMATE CHANGE!!!!”
All this global warming – over the last 17 years – has rendered weather to be entirely unpredictable? It’s global warming’s falult that we suck?
If we’d suddenly had, say, an unprecedented 50-year period of variation at the end of 575 years of records, I’d start to be interested. But surely a sample of just 115 winters is way too small to start labelling a decade which includes some varied weather as anything other than a sequence to be expected at some point.
British weather to be variable? Never! The classic British weather forecast is:
Sunny periods with scattered showers
I’m suspicious of why only the last 115 years were chosen. Why not, say, 125 years? I can’t find a list of monthly NAO values anywhere, but the Met Office does list the monthly CET values, so I had a look at the December values for the last decade of the 19th century, thus increasing the sample size to 125 years:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/mly_cet_mean_sort.txt
At the top of the page there’s December 1890, with the coldest December in the whole 355-year sequence at -0.8, colder even than Dec. 2010, the only December from this last, supposedly extreme decade to feature among the 20 coldest or 20 mildest Decembers.
Scroll down the page and there you’ll find 1898 as the 9th mildest and 1900 as the 11th mildest December of the last 355 years.
It turns out that, according to the CET, if the sample size had been 125 years rather than 115 years, then the three Decembers with the highest and lowest CETs all occurred in the last decade of the 19th century.
Maybe the NAO values say something different, but for now the choice of 115 years as a sample rather than 125 years looks like someone’s attempt at deliberately ignoring contrary evidence in order to generate a deliberately misleading conclusion.