By Paul Homewood
From YAHOO News:
The UK is on course to experience the warmest and one of the wettest years since records began more than a century ago – sparking fears that future droughts and flash floods could cost lives.
New figures published by the Met Office show the period from January to October this year has been the warmest since records began in 1910 while it has also been the second wettest.
Unless November and December are extremely cold, 2014 will enter the record books as the hottest ever.
Experts say the increase is the result of climate change and warn that it could place a burden on the NHS as Britons struggling to cope with predicted heatwaves end up in hospital.
Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics and Political Science, said the elderly and those with health problems are particularly at risk and could end up dying in the heat.
He warned that as Britain warms up it will also grow wetter – raising the spectre of flash floods with could cost lives and cause billions of pounds of damage to households and businesses.
Only a paid propagandist for global warming could warn us of droughts, after such a wet spell!
As for Yahoo, I am not sure why a “warning” needs to be issued. Either way, both they and Ward miss the point totally. There have been no heatwaves; on the contrary it has been a very pleasant summer, ranking 15th warmest since 1910.
When the statistics come in later this month, we are likely to see premature winter deaths much lower than last year. Meanwhile, a mild winter has enabled everybody to save on energy costs.
But the biggest news story of the lot has been the fantastic news that agricultural yields and output have hit record highs, thanks to the mild, wet winter, early spring and sunny summer.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/05/hot-dry-weather-cereal-harvest-british-farmers
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/14/ideal-weather-brings-bumper-uk-apple-harvest
DEFRA have now published full, provisional statistics for this year’s harvest.
And they comment:
Wheat yields now stand at record high levels, recovering from low levels last year (cold spring) and 2012 (cold,damp summer).
All of this is excellent news for farmers, the nation and families who will benefit from lower prices.
Of course, none of this has the slightest to do with “climate change”. With three of the last four years being the coldest since 1996 in the UK, this year’s warm weather has been just that – weather.
No month this year has been the warmest on record. It is simply that nine out of ten months this year have been above average. As the Met Office say,
“Things like climate change you look at over a long period of time because we look at trends. So we can’t say it is warmer than other years because of climate change. It could just be natural variation”
But with the Met Office projecting milder, wetter winters and sunny, dry summers, it seems clear that climate change will bring significant benefits to the UK. Not that you will hear any of this from the “expert” Bob Ward!
Paul Homewood: “There have been no heatwaves”
Heatwave: “a heat wave is measured relative to the usual weather in the area and relative to normal temperatures for the season” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_wave
HadCET maximum daily temperatures above the 95% percentiles through the end of October
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/graphs/HadCETx_act_graphEX.gif
looks like a heatwave to me…
With a couple of coldwaves earlier in the year (as normal). I put the chains in the car whenever the Met.Office predicts heat.
This summer was nothing out of the ordinary.
July was the hottest month and barely figured for high temperatures compared to many earlier years. Top temp was 27.6C on CET.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/08/08/daily-cet-temperatures-for-july/
Did Greenland experience any heatwaves in these 15 years?
Are you stupid or disingenuous? The first line of your Wiki reference reads:
A heat wave is a prolonged period of excessively hot weather …
I don’t think temperatures of 19 or 20°C in October count as ‘excessively hot weather’. They’re hardly likely to have people turning up in droves at hospitals with heat related illnesses. We did get a few people on the beach at the weekend though.
BTW
The official NHS definition of a heatwave is 30C for two days running.
The top temp this year on CET was 27.6C
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/310598/10087-2902315-TSO-Heatwave_Main_Plan_ACCESSIBLE.pdf
Also Met Office say similar
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/learning/learn-about-the-weather/weather-phenomena/heatwave
You may have noticed,for the BBC and the grauniad,every silver lining has a cloud.
“Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics and Political Science, said the elderly and those with health problems are particularly at risk and could end up dying in the heat.”
Where does one start with Bob Ward’s highly misleading comment?
In Europe, many more people die of winter cold than summer heat – that is why there is a “Coefficient of Seasonal Variation in Mortality”, a nicer term for the “Excess WINTER Mortality Rate”. This is the greater percentage of people who die in the four winter months (December thru March) than in the warmer eight months of the year. These rates range from a low of about 10% in Scandinavian countries that adapt well to the cold, to about 20% in the UK, and up to about to 30% in Portugal. In England and Wales that is about 25,000 excess WINTER deaths per year. All across Europe these excess WINTER deaths of real people in an AVERAGE winter probably equals about one-quarter of a million souls.
The forecast for this winter is for brutal cold across Russia, with somewhat lesser cold reaching across western Europe and to the UK. Given Europe’s very high energy costs and possible energy shortages, I suggest that few rational people will be worried about global warming after this winter is over.
Bundle up good people – stay safe and warm.
Best to all, Allan
Excess Winter Mortality in Europe: a Cross Country Analysis Identifying Key Risk Factors
http://jech.bmj.com/content/57/10/784.full
Table 1 – Coefficient of seasonal variation in mortality (CSVM) in EU-14 (mean, 1988–97)
CSVM 95% CI
Austria 0.14 (0.12 to 0.16)
Belgium 0.13 (0.09 to 0.17)
Denmark 0.12 (0.10 to 0.14)
Finland 0.10 (0.07 to 0.13)
France 0.13 (0.11 to 0.15)
Germany 0.11 (0.09 to 0.13)
Greece 0.18 (0.15 to 0.21)
Ireland 0.21 (0.18 to 0.24)
Italy 0.16 (0.14 to 0.18)
Luxembourg 0.12 (0.08 to 0.16)
Netherlands 0.11 (0.09 to 0.13)
Portugal 0.28 (0.25 to 0.31)
Spain 0.21 (0.19 to 0.23)
UK 0.18 (0.16 to 0.20)
Mean 0.16 (0.14 to 0.18)
******************
Two months to go yet and anything can happen. It might be the warmest year but there hasn’t been any exceptional high temperatures. It’s only the warmest because we have not had any cold weather which you would expect with lots of cloud cover. There was a record set 31 of October at a fairly new weather station but the heat was coming up from Africa.
As others have commented, it’s been a mostly pleasant summer with one or two cool periods. I actually needed to put on the heating a couple of times in June or July. August was actually the coolest for a few years.
But overall it’s been very nice, and the harvests have been excellent.
So, according to these morons, it seems we’re doomed by nice weather….
Chris
Like Bob Ward, I live in Britain. Unlike Bob Ward I look at the actual evidence. 2014 was unusually wet because the jet stream moved south. It also meant that the winter was significantly warmer than usual. There were about 3 nights of frost in Manchester last year and no snow. The summer was pleasantly warm until mid August, but with lower rainfall than in the last few years. Late August there was a cold period. September was warmer, (especially for Anthony’s visit) and October still quite pleasant. There were no extreme heatwaves – in British terms that is maximums above 28 degrees.
In Britain the people are most vulnerable in the extreme cold. That is when daytime temperatures fail to get above zero. My elderly mother is scared of going outdoors when it is icy in case she falls. If there is snow, or a hard frost the hospital A&E depts are quickly overloaded with (mostly elderly) folks with broken bones.
To a much lesser extent the vulnerable suffer in the extreme heat. But not this year.
All-in-all, the weather has been quite good this year, with an unusually long period with daytime max > 18, night time min > 12. Below this members of my family switch on the heating, and I switch it off.
We can get a very mild winter if the Siberian high reaches Western Europe but not Britain, when Europe can be cold. We can get a very mild winter whilst Western Europe gets the same, if the Siberian high doesn’t breach the old Iron Curtain line.
We can get a very wet winter if the eastern USA has a very cold one, as the moist air originating the Gulf of Mexico tracks up the Eastern Seaboard and across to Britain rather than going due north into the mid-West. Over a winter, the colder it is on the continental USA, the more likely it is that more depressions come from GoM to Britain. 2014 was just such a winter. If US predictions of another cold one are right, we might get another wet winter in 2015. We’re certainly having a wet autumn, with both October and November looking like replenishing water tables splendidly.
Just a taste of things to come if climate change were to evolve into another “Medieval Warm Period”!