From the Institute of Physics and the “children won’t know what snow is” department:
The likelihood of record-breaking warm years in England is set to substantially increase as a result of the human influence on the climate, new research suggests.
In a study published today, 1 May, in IOP Publishing’s journal Environmental Research Letters, an international team of researchers has shown that the chances of England experiencing a record-breaking warm year, such as the one seen in 2014, is at least 13 times more likely as a result of anthropogenic climate change.
This is according to climate model simulations and detailed analyses of the Central England Temperature (CET) record–the world’s longest instrumental temperature record dating back to 1659.
The results of the study showed that human activities have a large influence on extreme warm years in England, which the researchers claim is remarkable given England is such a small region of the world.
Lead author of the study Dr Andrew King, from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science at the University of Melbourne, said: “When you look at average annual temperatures over larger regions of the world, such as the whole of Europe, there is a lower variability in temperatures from year to year compared with smaller areas.
“As a result of this low variability, it is easier to spot anomalies. This is why larger regions tend to produce stronger attribution statements, so it is remarkable that we get such a clear anthropogenic influence on temperatures in a relatively small area across central England.”
To arrive at their results, the researchers firstly used climate model simulations to calculate the likelihood of very warm years when there is just natural forcings on the climate and no human influence, and then when there is both natural forcings and human influence. The change in the likelihood of warm years due to human influences on the climate was then calculated.
The researchers then observed the CET and picked out the warmest years from the record since 1900. The warmest years were then plotted onto a graph which the researchers used to calculate the likelihood of warm years happening now and warms years happening 100 years ago.
The model-based method suggested at least a 13-fold increase (with 90% confidence) due to human influences on the climate, whilst the observation-based approach suggested at least a 22-fold increase in the probability of very warm years in the climate of today compared with the climate of a century ago (again with 90% confidence).
“Both of our approaches showed that there is a significant and substantial increase in the likelihood of very warm years occurring in central England,” Dr King Continued.
According to the CET, 2014 was the warmest year on record in central England. It has been reported that during the last 60 years there has been rapid warming in the CET in line with the anthropogenic influence on the climate, with the highest average annual temperature of 10.93 °C recorded in 2014.
The Central England Temperature (CET) series, which is the longest instrumental time series of temperature in the world, has monthly recordings of average temperatures dating back to 1659 and recordings of average daily temperatures dating back to 1772.
The CET is designed to represent the climate of the English Midlands, which is approximated by a triangular area enclosed by Lancashire in the north, Bristol in the south-west and London in the south-east. The CET has undergone thorough and extensive quality control, making it an ideal resource for studying long-term temperature trends across the region.
As to whether these results can be seen to be representative of areas outside of central England, Dr King said: “I would expect that other areas near the UK would produce similar results.
“For larger regions, stronger attribution statements can often be made. For example, we performed a similar attribution study for Europe as a whole and found a 35-fold increase in the likelihood of extremely warm years using model simulations.”
###
This research was undertaken with the assistance of resources from the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI), which is supported by the Australian Government.
From Friday 1 May, this paper can be downloaded from http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/10/5/054002.
Full paper: http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/10/5/054002/pdf/1748-9326_10_5_054002.pdf
Warmer weather for England? Yes please!
I’ll believe it when it actually happens, though.
Yep. I’ll have plenty of that, please. Bring it on!
30 years ago we were promised that London would have the climate of the Loire Valley in France by now. Warm, fruitful lazy long summer days. Mild winters. Luvverly.
I’m still waiting.
bring the vineyards back!
It would be great if it was true. However, using computer models, programmed to give the pre-determined results required for additional grants, does not provide much confidence.
More to the point, we need warmer weather to counteract the absolutely catastrophic effect of the UK’s current energy policy, which was crafted by the opposition leader Ed Milliband, who may shortly become the country’s next prime minister. Then we shall have to pray these models are correct.
5 years from now when the AMO is cold and the UK is cooler than normal, this article will be long forgotten.. only to be replaced by another one predicting the same thing.
As in climate, they cycle repeats.
Not sure if we know the AMO will be cold in the next 5 years. It could be 10
or 20 years. We do know that this weak solar cycle will be in what may be
a long minimum in just a few years. Will be interesting to see if that has
any effect or not. It does not seem to with other minimums, but with ice
increasing a bit and the PDO turning down, small decreases in TSI (or
other solar effects) could have a bigger effect due to coupling/feedbacks.
Researching the future implies omnipotence.
I wonder what God have say about that!
We’ll have to wait to find out, Mother Nature sure can keep a secret.
If I predict that when I drop a ball, it will fall until it hits the floor, am I claiming omnipotence?
So people in England no longer get cold? They sure did in the 1600’s.
I lived in England for two years and can’t believe that this is anything but a good thing for England if it happens, especially for those who cannot afford the expensive heating without sensible use of coal.
I tried one vacation to the South including Lands end an had to wear a winter coat on the 4th of July.
Got off the island for all subsequent Holidays to Tunusia, Greece, Spain or Italy and France.
That’s just daft! I’ve lived here for 56 years. The average temp is just under 10c (50f) and winter days average 3c (37f). We can see summer days of 30c (86f). The wind at Land’s End is a chill factor, as it’s coming straight off the Atlantic! Don’t make out England to be Iceland! We all wish it were warmer, but let’s keep this sensible.
Sorry we also visited Devon Torquay, and Cornwall on a one wèek trip. ALL COLD IN JULY.
http://www.london.climatemps.com/temperatures.php
Beyond my paygrade except that I would agree a small region seems more likely to vary than the whole of Europe. I wouldn’t try to compute national MPG based upon one car.
“When you look at average annual temperatures over larger regions of the world … there is a lower variability in temperatures from year to year compared with smaller areas”
Holy crap!, An “international team of researchers” made it out of fourth grade 🙂
then they write “The CET has undergone thorough and extensive quality control, making it an ideal resource for studying long-term temperature trends across the region.”
Sounds like what they do is study temperature trends, doesn’t it?
yeah but unfortunately someone gave them a computer “To arrive at their results, the researchers firstly used climate model simulations … blah blah blah”
Sometimes I wish I had sweet fantasy gig like these people
Apparently, in their statistics, they suppose that years are independent. It is not the case, the outcome of one year would not depend on what happened the previous year. Actually, they don’t. Temperatures, as statistical variables, vary more in a random walk like way than like independent dice throws.
CET has not been quality controlled. It was not continuous, not from fixed stations, not read by trained meteorologists, not accurate, not measured with callibrated instruments.
Apart from that, use it.
… they write “The CET has undergone thorough and extensive quality control, making it an ideal resource for studying
long-term temperature trendsUHI acrossthe</strike a densely populated region.” …There, fixed it for them.
Oops – not quite!!
… they write “The CET has undergone thorough and extensive quality control, making it an ideal resource for studying
long-term temperature trendsUHI acrossthea densely populated region.” …There, fixed it for them.
They also claim a load of crap about the GHE and global warming!
Another example of negative feedback – warmer winters means less use of fuel for heating – don’t suppose they mentioned that.
“The model-based method suggested at least a 13-fold increase (with 90% confidence) due to human influences on the climate, whilst the observation-based approach suggested at least a 22-fold increase in the probability of very warm years in the climate of today compared with the climate of a century ago (again with 90% confidence).”
Well, that’s a switch. The model-based method suggested less probability of very warm years than the observation-based approach — almost half. Did they take the pause into account, or has there been no pause in warming in England? I’m also curious about how you get 90% confidence with both methods when the results are so far apart from each other. You can’t put 90% confidence in both results, can you?
Statistics , can give you any results you want if you ‘select’ the right method and data .
And in a world where CGW causes cooling and in area that considers ‘tails I win heads you lose ‘ to be a acceptable scientific approach , your yes/no problem is an none issue .
“And in a world where CGW causes cooling and in area that considers ‘tails I win heads you lose ‘ to be a acceptable scientific approach , your yes/no problem is an none issue .”
Well that sure does simplify the math too.
They had me at “…To arrive at their results, the researchers firstly used climate model simulations…”
Exactly.
So they claim to know:
A) All of the natural forcings.
B) The magnitude of all of the natural forcings.
C) How the natural forcings have changed over the last three centuries.
D) The magnitude of the forcing from GHGs.
E) How the forcing from GHGs has changed over the last three centuries.
But they don’t know that. They just have an opinion.
And their opinion is no more trustworthy for being written in computer code as it would be for being written in Sanskrit.
well they didnt claim to know. All of these they have to estimate.
The nice thing is the observation based approach showed a 22 fold increase.
So I guess we can reject the model based approach.
In fact the two approaches test different things.
The model based approach has little to do with the actual data, it is only used from 1900 to selected the models to be used (and then only against a weak criteria of the distributions of anomalies between model runs and the actual being similar). From that point all the model based approach does is compare the probability of getting an anomaly beyond a certain threshold in runs without anthro forcings and in runs using RCP8.5 models (2006 – 2020). Not surprisingly the probability increases with greater forcing. The actual CET hardly features, it could be any areas of the globe that the models could have been run against, particularly since the analysis all begins in 1900 with no explanation (we perhaps get a clue as to why this wasn’t included – the paper later says the variation in CET pre-1900 gets much greater).
The observation based approach uses a simple linear model to detrend the observations (again only from 1900 so again no real reason to use CET) using CO2 concentrations (this incidentally is noted as a surrogate for global temp). They then model the distribution of observations 20% above this (using a generalized Pareto distribution), run a 1000 simulations (with scant regard for the uncertainty in their model of the distributions) and then asks what would be the probability of getting the 2014 observation if the CO2 concentrations were those of the early 1900s. No statistics are reported for the quality of fit for the CO2 concentrations or the a generalized Pareto distribution.
Different threshold, different comparison. The two are unrelated.
They are also largely unrelated to CET and any useful attribution of anthropogenic influences, despite the claims to the contrary, in both cases the influence is assumed rather than demonstrated from the observations.
More stuff from the marketing department of the Ozzie Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science. Is their grant coming up for renewal?
However, you don’t need models. After having lived in Britain for many years, I am well equipped to make predictions without using computer models. Here are my predictions.
1. There will be a lot of weather.
2. Summer will be marginally warmer than winter. Perhaps even for two days in succession.
3. There will be some days on which there will be no rain. But not many.
4. It will be windy in Wales. This has nothing to do with the eisteddfodau.
5. In general, the climate will be cloudy and miserable. (The people will be miserable as well. This will be a great comfort to them, because, as a previous commenter noted, they know this is the natural and proper condition for humanity.)
Tell me how I’ve done at the end of a year.
Great! But we’re not really miserable, it just gives us a sense of humour!
I predict the future climate in Britain to be:
Sunny periods with scattered showers.
Their data appears to show about 3 times more warming than satellite data. UHI?
Yes. UK is more densely populated than much of Europe, with greater local UHI effects – 2 days ago a friend of mine 3 miles away in a village got wet snow falling, I got light rain in the town. The local UHI effects affect temperature and weather within very small distances, leading to almost microclimate pockets. Unless you factor in varying UHI, all you’re getting is a noisy signal.
So they’ve failed at predicting global weather and now they can predict accurately for a single country?
So now the prediction is that the British people will all melt in a stinking pile of flesh, whilst the island sinks beneath the waves…
No, the headline says “England”. Scotland and Wales will not be affected.
At last, at last. My Mediterranean climate in central England I was promised by the Met Office.
I don’t care if it comes from “Dr Andrew King, from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science at the University of Melbourne”, just give it to me Andrew, give it to me.
More food production, less spending on heating. What’s not to like?
There isn’t a food production problem in the UK. Up to 40% of food, I am talking mostly veg, finds it’s way in to landfill. It’s mostly due to consumers wanting to buy perfectly shaped vegetables for instance. Many farmers can’t sell their “ugly veg” to supermarket chains and yet there is no difference, only the shape!
@Patrick did the English give up canning?
Warmer years ahead? That ought to help lower the death toll from the cold, pensioners wont have to spend as much money on heating. It’s a win for everyone. Let me know when the first Cab Sav vintage is ready for drinking.
You are going to be waiting a very long time for that Cab, I would wager ice beer is more likely.
‘simulations’ you say.
Imagine going to court with just a similation as ‘evidence’. Civil or crimnal case, the result would be much the same. A halfwit magistrate migh roll over for you to tickle his philosophical tummy but the appeals court would throw it out and into the garbage.
“the researchers firstly used climate model simulations to calculate the likelihood of very warm years when there is just natural forcings on the climate and no human influence”
No one knows how to do this in any way, shape, or form!!!!
Seriously, how can you use unknown and poorly understood processes and variables to determine another unknown variable? These guys would die in the private sector.
Buy they couldn’t do it themselves. They had to enlist the underutilized folks from Australia. I am sure they are “experts” on CET climate as they are more than 100 km from home — “This research was undertaken with the assistance of resources from the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI), which is supported by the Australian Government.”
I lived in England (assigned to RAF Greenham Common as a USAF missile launch officer) from 1985- 1987 near Newbury, Hants. Coldest summers of my life. Never again. I lived in Florida, two hurricanes right over my house in the mid-90’s, lotsa damage. Germany too – windstorms and unusual snow in 1990-91. I now live in Tucson, Arizona now thank you. Sitting by my pool as I write this looking at a near full moon on a gorgeous warm last evening of April. I haven’t run my HVAC since March 10. Probably a still week before AC is needed. No blizzards, no earthquakes, no tornadoes, no hurricanes, no ice, no mudslides, no fires. When it floods the washes, I break out the kayak and have fun.
As for England with warmer years ahead, … since your climate is determined by the temp of the Gulf Stream, how does AGW via CO2 do that? Sunlight penetrating to water depth is what warms the Gulf Stream.
I froze my butt off in the summer of 1985 and 86 in Southern England. I would think warmer would be welcome. (BTW, the Iron Lady and Ron Reagan knew what they were doing in those days).
And I left England for good in 1974 following the winter of our discontent – 1973 (the Arab oil shocks and the three day week with the heating turned off) – now reside in Australia after many years in Africa – nothing like a bit of warm weather to settle the bones – No – I think we are all missing the main point here.
If we were to come up with some impact like this on a temperature series as evidence the world was not warming – or even a part of it – we would be howled down as extending the results of purely local data to the global case.
The graph also looks dodgy to me given that it appears almost completely to ignore the cold winters around 2011. Seems like another case of data torturing to get the ‘right’ result.
If my memory serves, 85, 86 and 87 were faily cold winters as I recall. Lots of cold, lots of snow drifting many feet think. Where I lived, there is a road called Drift Road. It’s called that for a reason! That was Hants, just north of Portsmouth. Newbury is in Berkshire, but its a minor point. Yes, I recall one night missiles were dlivered. GCHQ was just up the road too.
Seriously, I don’t know what Joe is on about. I remember ’87 being not so good. Average summer temps are here (in degerees C, remember, Americans!) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7561411.stm
The winter of 1985/86 was an odd one. November was colder than usual but December was unusually warm with a max temp of 17.7 deg C in Devon. Then cold winter weather arrived in January dumping several inches of snow over the midlands. After another mild period the weather turned absolutely acrctic in Febuary with the month being the 5th coldest in the CET record. So in two months we had
The mildest CET maximum day: 14.4 2nd December
The coldest CET maximum day: -0.7 6th February
the coldest CET minimum night: -8.7 10th February
Dunno – if the weather got warmer we’d have to start serving cold beer.
It’s Newbury, Berkshire, but I concede it is very close to the Hampshire (Hants) border!
“To arrive at their results, the researchers firstly used climate model simulations to calculate the likelihood of very warm years when there is just natural forcings on the climate and no human influence, and then when there is both natural forcings and human influence …”.
==============================
I detect the application of good old circular reasoning.
There’s no obvious human influence apparent in the complete, as opposed to cherry-picked, record.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/CentralEnglandTempSince1659.gif
That’s not to say there is none.
Thanks . That was my immediate question . If they have records for 350 years , start by showing them .
I don’t see a hockey stick .
Doesn’t 350 years pre-date scaled? I think it does, as it’s 300 years.
http://inventors.about.com/od/tstartinventions/a/History-Of-The-Thermometer.htm
I also wondered why they excluded the CET data available from 1659 to 1899 – too hard to get the models to model it?
Odd that 1659, 1676, 1754, 1902, 1956 and 2010 all have the same mean annual temperature in the CET and June 1676 was the second warmest June in the entire record including 2014 (beaten by 0.2°C by June 1846).
,
MSM have jumped on this immediately:
1 May: UK Daily Mail: Hannah Parry: Brace yourself for heatwaves: Man-made climate change will lead to more record-breaking temperatures across Europe
Commenting on the research, Dr Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the Met Office Hadley Centre, said: ‘This new research adds another piece of evidence that human-induced climate change is increasing the chances of record-breaking temperatures around the world including in the UK.
‘At the Met Office we produced similar research late last year showing how climate change had made UK record breaking temperatures about 10 times more likely.’…
COMMENT by Kathy: If the ‘scientists’ spouting this drivel took the time to read the comments here, they would realise that no one believes them.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3063475/Brace-heatwaves-Man-climate-change-lead-record-breaking-temperatures-Europe.html
extend to see Hannah’s total output. how on earth is she equipped to write the CAGW nonsense for Daily Mail?
Journalisted: Hannah Parry
http://journalisted.com/hannah-parry
England faces major rise in record hot years due to climate change …
The Guardian-54 minutes ago
Heatwaves ‘more likely’ in England
BBC News-2 hours ago
Record breaking temperatures ‘more likely in future’
ITV News-5 hours ago
get up close & personal with Dr. Andrew King. no surprise that David Karoly is involved!
2 mins 55 secs: 30 April: Youtube: Andrew King – England temperatures increasing because of climate change
posted by Science at Melbourne
Video Abstract by Dr Andrew King for from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne, for the paper “Attribution of the record high Central England temperature of 2014 to anthropogenic influences” by Andrew D King, Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, David J Karoly, Sophie C Lewis and Heidi Cullen in Environmental Research Letters. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBttxI1H5w0
Frankly, like many here, I’m growing very tired of all these ‘because our models tell us so’ claims. The repeated formula goes along the lines of this:
“When I awoke this morning, it was 2 degrees centigrade.
Now, an hour later, it’s 5 degrees centigrade.
So, with this hourly warming rate, my computer model tells me it will be a blistering 35 degrees centigrade by tonight.”
On the assumption that we need to frighten everybody, we all know that under no circumstances will any ‘global warming claim’ quote basic facts – even if just for a sanity check.
Fact 1: Excluding CO2 for now, all the other atmospheric gas accounts for 99.96% of the sky.
Fact 2: CO2 represents only 0.040% (400 ppm) of the atmosphere (concentrated in the lower half of the sky up to about 12 miles – due to CO2 being denser than predominant Nitrogen, Oxygen and Argon). That although CO2 may well be 400ppm, this is only ONE 2,500th of all the air we inhale (1M divided by 400ppm = 2,500).
Fact 3: Of the minute amount of CO2 up in the sky, 96.775% of it is Naturally Occurring i.e. produced from Photosynthesis, Respiration, Volcanoes & Geysers, Natural Wildfires, Marine Life, Micro-organisms, Plant Decay, Cellular Respiration, Flatulence, Decomposition, Calcification and Natural Fermentation.
Fact 4: This leaves just 3.225% of the total minute amount CO2 up in the atmosphere being Man-made (anthropogenic) i.e. burning of Oil, Oil Derivatives, Petrol, Kerosene, Paraffin, Diesel, Coal, Natural Gas, Peat, Timber, Crops, Wood & Plant Alcohols, man-made fermentation, Lime Kiln Processes, Industrial Waste Incinerators, large-scale burning of household and industrial waste, Limescale removal compounds, Liver Salts, Denture Cleaning Products, anything we throw out for garden composting and Cremation.
Why can’t they state that almost 97% of ‘evil’ CO2 is actually entirely natural. Whilst all our WUWT community already knows this, we continually question whether those hoodwinked in to the alarmist camp actually do understand it at all. Why is it that no ‘catastrophic claim’ starts by saying that “there is just a 3.225% man-made contribution to the ‘almost microscopic’ total amount of CO2 up there in the sky (when compared to all the other atmospheric gas)”?
Why can’t they admit that, in hindsight, any drastic measures taken to reduce man-made CO2 will make not the slightest discernible difference to how warm or cold it gets?
After all, human life evolved with CO2 levels 10 times or more than the present 400ppm.
Friend of mine said it best the other day–“Never let facts get in the way of a good story.” The politicos know damn well it’s just that, a “story”–but they’ve got too much invested in policy now to admit it. Personally, I’m just delighted to know I’m not committing a crime against nature every time I turn the key in my big-ass Tundra pickup. ; )
Then why do I constantly read that over 30% of current atmospheric concentration of co2 is completely from man. Especially in those brilliant debunk the denier articles or on the skeptical science website that many people take as gospel?
Fact 2: CO2 represents only 0.040% (400 ppm) of the atmosphere (concentrated in the lower half of the sky up to about 12 miles – due to CO2 being denser than predominant Nitrogen, Oxygen and Argon). That although CO2 may well be 400ppm, this is only ONE 2,500th of all the air we inhale (1M divided by 400ppm = 2,500).
These tedious arguments are in no way helpful to the sceptic argument. Jack Barrett, a long time sceptic of CAGW and expert in the spectroscopy of small molecules, gives this response to the ‘puny’ CO2 argument.
The ‘Fact 3’ and ‘Fact 4’ arguments are equally ridiculous. It may be true that the relative proportion of human emitted CO2 is very small compared to that of the biosphere – in any given year but this ignores the fact that before fossil fuel burning the natural emissions and sequestrations were roughly in balance and, hence, the level of atmospheric CO2 remained broadly the same. Since humans began fossil fuel burning a small excess has remained in the atmosphere following each annual carbon cycle. This has accumulated over time CO2 levels are now around 40% higher than they were in the mid-nineteenth century.
To John Finn (May 1, 2015 at 12:55 pm)
Re Fact 2: Whilst mindful of the scientific expertise of Jack Barrett, his simple water analogy lacks detail. I disagree that my fact (quote) is a “tedious argument which is in no way helpful to the sceptic argument”. Allow me to qualify (as I have done many times during the last 6-years as a rational and logical supporter of WUWT):
With CO2 @ 0.040% of total atmosphere, it roughly represents ONE unit of volume to every 3,200 units of volume (give or take a few minor decimal points).
Now, of this single ONE unit of volume, we already know that almost 97% is natural CO2 (96.775%) and over 3% is anthropogenic (3.225%).
So, if we now imagine that our ONE unit of volume is an imperial gallon of clear water (8 pints), then 97% of natural CO2 roughly translates to SEVEN and THREE QUARTER pints. This leaves the 3% of the man-made contribution as a QUARTER of a pint – or 5 fl. oz. Are you still with me?
Now let’s say that the 5 fl. oz (the man-made stuff) was a small bottle of the strongest concentrated dye known to man.
We originally had 3,200 units of volume. This now becomes 3,200 imperial gallons.
So please pour your 5 fl. oz. of concentrated dye in to the 3,199 gallons (plus the 7 and three quarter pints) of the purest clearest water imaginable. We’ll even provide a huge whisk so you can mix it up really well.
What colour would the water be?
Additionally, I fail to understand why my Fact 3 and 4 arguments are (quote) “equally ridiculous”.
Frankly, we really don’t know where all the CO2 sources and sinks are – all we see is the net result of all of them expressed in the average atmospheric concentration. Like your bank balance representing the net effects of all deposits and withdrawals without viewing your bank statement.
The increase in the level of CO2 since industrial times around 1860 has never been proven to be wholly attributed to burning fossil fuels. Much of the increase is natural from ocean outgassing, sequestration, changes in land use, increased oxidation of organic matter, deforestation and population growth. There is also a long-term natural imbalance between natural sources and sinks of CO2, which is also contributing to the observed increase. As you know, CO2 is thought to have been in the atmosphere for over 4 billion of the Earth’s 4.6 billion year geological history and in much larger proportions (up to 80%) than today.
I’ll just stick to common sense facts thank you. Man-made CO2 has a miniscule effect in ‘warming’ when compared to that great ball of fire in the sky. How I can survive a 20 degree change in temperature when walking between a freezing cold kitchen conservatory and a warm lounge is simply astonishing. Nuff’ said.
Re: GeeJam May 2, 2015 at 3:16 am
It’s not an analogy. A concentration of 500 ppm of milk in water significantly reduces the transparency of the liquid to visible radiation. A concentration of 400 ppm of CO2 in air reduces the transparency of the atmosphere to LWIR radiation.
Refusal to accept this basic fact simply denies the many observations of earth’s emission spectra. If you’re not convinced by Barrett then try this Climate Audit link
http://climateaudit.org/2008/01/08/sir-john-houghton-on-the-enhanced-greenhouse-effect/
Scroll down to the section headed “Some Comments” where you will find an emission spectrum plot. Below the plot, Steve McIntyre writes
As far as Facts 3 and 4 are concerned you seem unable to grasp the concept of equilibrium. Here I will use an analogy. Consider a large bucket which is holding 5 gallons of water. Now add exactly 1 gallon of water per minute while at the same time unplug a hole in the bucket which allows exactly 1 gallon per minute to flow out of the bucket.
The result should be no change in the level of water in the bucket, i.e. the bucket will still contain 5 gallons of water.
Now add 0.1 (one tenth) gallons of water per minute from a new second feed. Now we have 1.1 gallons per minute . going into the bucket but still only 1 gallon per minute flowing out of it. RESULT: After 10 minutes the bucket will contain 6 gallons of water .
Although the second feed is only 10% of the original feed it has increased the .contents of the bucket by 20% . After 50 minutes the amount of water in the bucket will have doubled. This is similar to the way human CO2 emissions have caused atmospheric CO2 to increase.
Find out more about what goes on at Melbourne University here: “How Green Academics fill their days”.
http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2015/05/green-academics-fill-days/
John, thank you for replying. Although interesting narrative between us, two ‘climate skeptics’ (assuming you are) splitting hairs over these areas also does nothing helpful to unite our belief in the whole ongoing CAGW nonsense, but hey, we’ll continue our debate for now.
Regarding your perfectly reasonable ‘equilibrium bucket’ analogy, I agree. But many also consider the hole in the bottom of the bucket is now slightly bigger than it first was – mainly due to the overall increase in natural greening (thus photosynthesis) due to increased CO2. Can you answer that one?
To arrive at their results, the researchers firstly used climate model simulations to calculate the likelihood of very warm years when there is just natural forcings on the climate and no human influence, and then when there is both natural forcings and human influence. The change in the likelihood of warm years due to human influences on the climate was then calculated.
I usually find the grammar police irritating but I find the use of “is” when it should be “are” even more irritating. Makes it look like a press release by an 8 year old.
That aside, they cleverly left out that the “human influence” is an assumed forcing of a given amount. No evidence to show it does, or what its magnitude actually is. So essentially they’ve done a study that amounts to proving that turning the dial on the stove from low to medium heats the pot of beans to a higher temperature. No sh*t. Given the scenario they’ve created for themselves, one can only wonder how they only managed to get to 90% confidence. I’d have gotten 100%. Or perhaps I don’t understand what the definition of “is” is?
How can they run a model with only natural influences when no-one knows how any natural influences work? (They don’t even know what all the natural factors are. AMO, PDO for example : the modellers know these exist but not how they work or what they will do in future. It’s a long list.) Well, actually it can be done in the world of climate science…
To get natural influences into the models, they think up a load of nice-sounding factors which they don’t understand and which don’t even have to exist, and parameterise them so that they get a historical estimate that gives a decent match to history. Anyone looking at the output would inevitably be impressed by the models’ accuracy.
The really strange thing is that the modellers themselves are among the impressed! And they are “scientists”?
david,
It turns out you might just be one of the grammar police when you say “it should be…”
Of the following two sentences, which form do you prefer?
There was a believer, a skeptic and a dog in a boat.
There were a believer, a skeptic and a dog in a boat.
No quarrel with your real point, however.
Then again, Bill said it depended on the meaning of ‘is’, not the definition of ‘is’.
“Lead author of the study Dr Andrew King, from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science at the University of Melbourne,…”
And…
“To arrive at their results, the researchers firstly used climate model simulations to calculate the likelihood of very warm years when there is just natural forcings on the climate and no human influence, and then when there is both natural forcings and human influence.”
GIGO!
Does anyone who actually lives in England recognise those graphs? What about the hot summers of 1975 and, especially, 1976, or even those in the mid-1990s – in a different league from the so-called “hottest ever year in 2014”. And what about those very cold winters we had only a few short years back eg 5 years ago when we got a foot of snow in parts of the south east? Where are they on those graphs?
There is a disconnect between reality and those, clearly modelled and adjusted statistics.
As a previous blogger wrote – GIGO!
Good point Ian. In the last one hundred years, us Brits have endured summer washouts on the whole – most recently in 2011 and 2012 when UK climatologists changed their predictions (again) to “Colder and wetter summers with an increased risk of severe flooding could become the norm for Britain.” The following year, 2013, was a beautiful scorcher of a summer (ha, ha) and joins the seven occasions when our century of summers were gorgeously comparable to southern Spain, namely, 1915, 1949, 1959, 1976, 1990, 2003 and 2013.
Incidentally, last year (March 2014), Met Office ‘scientists’ backpedalled on their original predictions and said “on average the UK will see hotter, drier summers in the long term due to global warming”. What’s not to like?
The summers of 1975 and 1976 were warm but, overall, those years were pretty average.
Warm? The summer of 1976 was the hottest in the entire 355 year record! However the hottest May and hottest June both occurred in the nineteenth century.
Of course the models show that, in fact the models show the “green” frauds everything they tell the models to show .. Fake data and tweaked data models do exactly that. Are they complete morons? (pardon my french ..)
Firstly, I’m not sure how much CET will have been directly affected by UHI – but I am certain that London especially, and the likes of Birmingham, Coventry, Oxford and such like have all expanded over the last 5 or 6 decades. UHI will have occurred. UHI will also likely have increased during the 60’s and 70’s as many more houses were built and ‘cheap’ gas central heating became the norm. I lived in Birmingham and our 30’s house was first fitted with gas central heating by us, in 1981 – and there was no loft insulation! I’m not sure on the population front – but I’d guess it also rose quickly. I’ll briefly mention cars too. In the 60’s the rise of the motorways and common car ownership began and has continued inexorably ever since. These mobile environmental heaters don’t seem to be ever considered as having affected measured air temps? I would ay that traffic today is 10 times what it was in the 70’s (but thats just a guess!)
This is make believe. Pure make believe.
2014 was the warmest year on record for central England? Really? The warmest on record? Jeez, what kind of data torturing did they have to do to get THAT result? The last few summers here have been remarkably cool, which I’ve been loving since I’m very fair skinned and don’t like the heat. Absolutely no way was last year a particularly hot summer.
” ….. clear anthropogenic influence …. ”
How do they know?
Link to relevent papers and research, please.
“How do they know?”
Don’t be silly, the article clearly states; “according to climate model simulations…“.
Yeah right. Even more remarkable with OCO-2 measurements over the same small region.
I believe that OCO is due to report its first year’s results in October, about the same time as the Paris Conference. Could be an exciting time!
Based on the physics and empirical evidence, I guess one could argue that an increase of CO2 from 280ppm to 400ppm has added about 0.2C of warming to planet.
Who the heck cares?…
By 2100, CO2 may add another 0.3C of CO2 induced warming for a total of around 0.5C since the end of Little Ice Age in 1850, which is a good thing. Moreover, the added CO2 will increase crop yields and forest growth 50% from the CO2 fertilization effect, which is fantastic!
Ocean levels have increased about 6 INCHES per century over the past 200 years, and if CO2 caused about 0.2C of added warming to date, CO2 may have helped increase sea levels by 1.5 INCHES over the last century….
Again, who the heck cares?
CAGW alarmists are stuck with hyping new global temp records, because warming trends have stopped dead for 18+ years. Alarmists’ claim last year was that, “there a 38% probability that 2014 was 3 one-hundredths of degree warmer that 2010″… Oh, the humanity….
Again, who the heck cares?
Given the that 2015 is an El Nino year, 2015 will likely be warmer than 2014 by a few hundredths of a degree C…
Again, who the heck cares?
Taxpayers are getting sick and tired of CAGW. It has become a joke.
One could, but one would be standing on very infirm ground. We just don’t know.
As a resident of these isles who looks at short term forecasts almost daily and notes the constant corrections in these predictions that only go out to about 3-5 days, I am seized with wonder. Of course these forecasts are not always wrong, from time to time a particular flow pattern sets in and the weather people get it right, but the weather here is subject to near constant shifts that make accurate forecasting beyond a few days or a week or two difficult. Yet once again we have researchers making confident claims about what is going to happen in future decades.
We already know that spreading urban development and other changes in land use results in local shifts in temperature. I can easily illustrate this by driving from the suburb where I live out into the country for a walk, this short five mile drive tends to see the temperature drop by 1-3 degrees C, it can be more in the winter. Yet despite the trend towards more urban sprawl the bulk of the land in Britain is still rural, which tends to imply that averaged temperatures are showing little overall deviation from historic norms.
What really annoys about this sort of reporting however is the idea that if some future rise happens, and this is not a guaranteed outcome, the result is going to be disastrous. Southern Britain during Roman times was known to have had a climate capable of vine production, while grape growing takes place today, it is not that widespread. The endless gloom and doom really is tedious.
Cherry picking. Why not use all the data?
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/files/2010/01/Centralenglandtemperature.-355×288.png
VerdeViewer,
What’s the source of that chart?
Three-tenths of a degree rise in 3 centuries isn’t very alarming.
dbstealy, the source is a work in progress. Current version is at http://verdeviews.com/climate . No user instructions yet, but hopefully not hard to figure out. Select ranges in drop-down boxes or by grabbing end points on a chart and dragging them. Start year for the chart can be selected in a drop down box or by clicking on a particular year. Data can be displayed as anomalies or absolutes. Moving the cursor over the chart displays temperatures on a thermometer. When you drill down to individual stations, you can display overall average, average high, average low, and extreme high/low temperatures. You can save a particular view, switch to another, and then toggle between them.
Inspired by a blog post at suyts space ( https://suyts.wordpress.com/2014/05/27/how-global-warming-looks-on-your-thermometer/ ), programming began last December as a simple Javascript exercise to animate temperature changes on a virtual thermometer. It evolved into something else.
Cherry picking…
Doesn’t it depend mainly on the Gulf Stream? I know my friends in Finland are thankful for the Gulf Stream, otherwise they would be like southern Greenland which is at the same latitude. All the countries like the UK, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark benefit from the warm waters of the Gulf Stream…
I didn’t read the whole paper, but do they mention the great influence of the Gulf Stream?
Having lived in southern UK during all the later half of the period covered by the graph, I have to say that I don’t recognise the ‘record-breaking warmth’ that is shown post 2000. In fact, there have been rather few heatwaves during that period. If the CET is faithful to the record, and for the moment I’ll assume it is, I think the large departures of the anomaly shown during those years are due to lack of really cold spells in the winter, which does gel a bit more with my experience. The last year, the ‘record breaking’ 2014 was actually notable for an absence of really hot weather, and the record was due to an admittedly remarkable spell in Jan-April and to some extent November-December also when Atlantic depressions ruled and low minima were almost completely missing. The UK lies at the edge of the Atlantic and Continental climate influence – our weather is famously changeable on nearly all timescales from hourly upwards – and is probably the last place you should choose when measuring climate trends.
” due to lack of really cold spells in the winter”
It was the same for the record “warm” year of 2012 in the US.
I think we need a better definition of “warmer for a period” than simply comparing the average temperatures, when the temperatures over the period have varied and distinct phases.
I mean, how does one even say one day is “warmer” than another day, the USCRN network has many days where the average is the same, but the profile of the days vary widely.
I honestly cant fathom the point of the paper besides to garner headlines. If co2 has the effect they believe then of course it is more likely to be warmer more often there. This doesn’t however give us a clearer understanding of co2 in any way, or validate any past work on it. It doesn;t explain why this factor we are told over powers all others isn’t currently doing that. Nope, it just says it will be warmer in the future if it warms. total waste of time. Well unless you just want headlines.
Yes the only thing of certainty in this paper is the tautology “IF it gets warmer, it will be warmer.”
Check out the weather forecasts for 2020, 2050 and 2090…….
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/climateexperiment/whattheymean/theuk.shtml
90% confidence? Are they kidding me? They can’t do better than that after fiddling all the figures to fit.
How to lie with statistics. There is another way to analyse the same data. For example, if you download the CET data here
Monthly_HadCET_mean.txt, 1659 to date
…and have the facilities to plot the results, you will see that the temperature trend is slightly cooling this century ( confirming the pause even in Central England).
Also, iIf you look for ‘heat waves’ you will see that the hottest temperatures occurred last century. The year 1976 holds the record for June and July, and 1990 for August.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cet_record_breakers.html
So how are we going to test this theory “that the chances of England experiencing a record-breaking warm year is at least 13 times more likely as a result of anthropogenic climate change” (or any other cause for that matter).
It is impossible to test, verify or falsify this assertion without waiting for a few hundred years or so. Let’s say that there were just seven ‘heat waves’ last century. How many there actually were depends on how you want to define them, but 7 doesn’t seem many. That gives a historical rate of 7 heat waves per century. The prediction is that we should expect these 13 times more often. So in the next 100 years we should expect 91 of them to be record breakers. That is not going to happen, is it?
Granted English is not my native language, but never heard of ‘extreme warm’. Perhaps a more politically correct adjective to describe local consumer feelings towards UK Department of Energy & Climate Change, British gas et al.
http://www.blogcdn.com/money.aol.co.uk/media/2012/04/energygraph.jpg
But the UK domestic gas prices are still amongst the lowest in Europe, so, if you live somewhere else in Europe you are probably paying more.
The reason for the rise in recent years is that the government has heaped on a lot of environmental costs on to the energy bills. For example, subsidies for renewables, free insulation for households etc., all of which are added to the domestic gas price bill. In this way, they hope that these charges are ‘invisible’ or the energy suppliers get the blame.
Yes, but the climate change levy is only about £100. Let’s not forget that energy companies are selling energy to themselves, in some instances, then say that they have to charge more as the cost of the fuel has risen!
jaakkokateenkorva, electricity prices have also increased – but don’t forget that many homes in England’s attractive rural villages burn kerosene to heat their homes as there is no available gas supply. Counties like Rutland and Lincolnshire are good examples. Unlike gas, homeowners are saving a fortune right now.
In 2011, a top-up of 1,000 litres of heating oil cost £770 ($1,186).
In 2015, a top-up of 1,000 litres of heating oil cost £457 ($704).
It’s also ironic (and totally hypocritical) that the local councils who run the very same rural areas, allow planning permission for renewable energy monstrosities – yet won’t fight for securing a ‘clean’ gas supply to eradicate burning of kerosene in most of their villages.
As several people have already said the claim that “2014 was the warmest year on record in central England” will strike most people in England, apart from those earning a living as climate researchers, green activists, politicians and employees of the BBC and the Guardian, as pretty dubious.
If the claim is true then the temperature record will be due more to the mildness of the winter than the warmth of the summer. A few more mild winters like that and somebody would be claiming that “snow will soon be a thing of the past.” However some parts of Britain had quite a lot of snow earlier this year so we are unlikely to hear that claim again for a while.
Having grown up in Nottingham (middle of the Midlands) I know warmer weather there would be a wonderful thing. Hated the lukewarm summers and cold, grey, wet and miserable winters. I would rejoice for the Midlands if this study wasn’t just the latest in a long list of pseudo-science. I now live in Perth, Australia where summer is a real summer and winters are still cold enough, thank you very much!
The problem with a prediction of more warm events in England or any other region of the earth in the future, is the writers have no clue as to why the planet warmed in the last 150 years. A prediction requires some knowledge of the mechanisms and future changes to the forcing functions.
For some odd reason (the climate wars is the explanation), current climatologists are ignoring the fact that the planet has warmed and cooled cyclically in the past, with a periodicity of 1500 years, with a beat of plus or minus 500 years, correlating with solar changes.
For some odd reason the current climatologists are also ignoring the fact that sea ice in the Antarctic starting in 2012 is the greatest in recorded history for every month of the year and that there has suddenly been a recovery/increase in multi-year Arctic ice, correlating with an abrupt change to the solar cycle.
http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-6596/440/1/012001/pdf/1742-6596_440_1_012001.pdf
“According to the CET, 2014 was the warmest year on record in central England”
Oh sorry, we forgot to plot in the fact that there has been no global warming across the World for 19 years.
I wonder how much grant money they received for coming up with such outrageously ridiculous results?.
And in the real world of actually living in England for most of 50 years:
1. I ‘barely knew what snow was’ from January 1971 until December 1979, there being but one snow ‘event’ one night in late April/early May in that period. I know this as the toboggan bought just after Christmas 1970 (when there was snow which melted just afterwards) was only used once during that period.
2. From 1979 to 1987 children certainly knew about snow and many knew about frozen rivers. Record cold in December 1981 allied to widespread snow cover meant that we all knew what a white Christmas was. Winters 1984/5 and 1985/6 saw extended cold periods with rivers freezing for up to 6 weeks in Cambridge.
3. Three highly mild winters from 1987/8 to 1989/90 (which were associated with huge high pressures from Russia to Spain driving all the Atlantic weather fronts over the UK) were not permanent features, with the winter 1990/91 seeing children once again experiencing snow and the autumn of 1992 in Scotland seeing unprecedented early snow over the higher mountain tops.
4. Just over a decade of ‘children won’t know what snow is’ then occurred.
5. In the past 7 years, we have seen winters more akin to the 1979 – 1987 period return.
So, in the past 50 years, the salient features have been blocks of colder, more snowy winters being interspersed with blocs of milder, snow-free winters.
There is no evidence that snowfall is scarcer in the 21st century than it was across the 1970s/1980s.
It’s just that grant funding for scientists requires them to say that there is.
I’m in Central England and my local weather station statistics say:
“In the first 4 months of 2015, mean temperatures have been exactly as expected (0.0C), rainfall 16% below normal & sunshine 27% higher.”
The weather obviously isn’t listening to the models.
‘This is according to climate model simulations’ GIGO in action and given their predicted power , they may has well use pine cones to tell if its going to rain .
‘ Central England Temperature (CET) record–the world’s longest instrumental temperature record dating back to 1659.’ which is no way can offer a degree of accuracy worth a dam for most of its history and therefore actual is what is unacceptable in most other sciences but celebrated in climate ‘science’ data whose quality is defined has being ‘better than nothing’
That’s right knr. Anders Celsius (1701-1744) was the first to perform and publish careful experiments aiming at the definition of an international temperature scale on scientific grounds.
Both range of coverage and degree of accuracy of weather measurements are massive problems for any one claiming to be able to show historic trends in this type of data . Its the very reason why there is a need for proxies ,such has ‘magic tree rings ‘ , to be used in the first place .
And its made a whole lot worse by claims of precision that is beyond the ability of the instruments used to take the measurement in the first place.
In the rush to promote ‘settled science’ great big slices of reality have simply been brushed aside.
They have to be right sometime abut a warm summer in the UK. We still haven’t received the “Barbeque summer” we were promised by the Met!
The reconstruction of European temperatures over the past 500 years by Luterbacher and colleagues supports the view that there has been net warming over the 20th century in this geographic area, as is shown in the statistical analysis of CET data by Zeke:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/303/5663/1499/F3.expansion.html
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/central-england-temperature/
Both the Luterbacher study and an analysis of the CET record show that such warming is largely confined to winter/spring months:
http://www.climate4you.com/images/CentralEnglandTempSince1659.gif
As such, this warming can only be a good thing, if it lasts, as combined with increased atmospheric carbon dioxide it will increase crop production and reduce winter heating costs – much needed against the lunacy of the UK renewable policy. Leaving aside the matter of the uncertainties in the temperature measurements of the late 20th century, when there was a switch to digital instruments at airports ( http://notrickszone.com/2015/01/13/weather-instrumentation-debacle-analysis-shows-0-9c-of-germanys-warming-may-be-due-to-transition-to-electronic-measurement/) , it is a step too far to claim that such warming is due to the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide as other factors are clearly at play.
They include the facts that at the end of the 20th century solar activity (other than TSI) was at its highest level for several thousand years, and was particularly active during the period of warming claimed to be anthropogenic in origin; aerosol levels and cloud cover were lower, such that surface insolation increased; the impact of natural climate cycles linked to orbital changes and the Saros lunar cycle; and the increase in population that directly affects UHI effect that particularly distorts winter temperatures – changes in the sites contributing to CET since 1950 have also been affect by UHI .
Some links to these factors are:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2013-11-20T08:15:00-08:00&max-results=17
http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=50837#.VFQNL2c4B59
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2014/06/new-paper-finds-significant-decrease-in.html
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/12/23/has-increased-sunshine-caused-uk-warming-in-the-late-20th-century/
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1306/1306.0451.pdf
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2015/04/29/short-rapid-warm-long-stable-cold/
Well l check their claims against some real weather.
Because since 1977 l have kept a record of the date of the first snowfall of the season for where l live in North Lincolnshire England.
The number of times in which month the first snowfall fell are as follows.
1980’s
Nov (4)
Dec (4)
Jan (2)
1990’s
Nov (4)
Dec (5)
Jan (1)
2000’s
Oct (1)
Nov (4)
Dec (2)
Jan (3)
There does not appear to be any clear warming trend to me. lf anything there has been a slight trend to towards the first snowfall turning up earlier in the season. Also in my area at least there has been no winter where snow has not fallen.
I have lived in the south (Hampshire) and south-west (Bristol) since 1968. My direct experience is that:
1) 1976 was by far the ‘hottest’ year, and 1975 was pretty hot too.
2) There was also a year in the mid-eighties when a trip to Scotland was spent sweating in shorts,
and someone died of heat exhaustion whilst walking up Ben Nevis, ’86, I think.
3) No summer since has come close for ‘heatwave’ type conditions, though they seem to be
predicted more or less every year.
4) Winters in the late sixties and early seventies were noticeably colder than recently (though
2011-12 were pretty chilly, I can tell ‘ee)..
5) Weather has always been difficult to predict here (it’s a small island in direct line of fire of
major wind and ocean currents.
6) Long term weather forecasting has not improved in that time (see recent Met Office
predictions).
7) Recent summers have been characterised by a warm April-June proving to be a ‘tease’,
as July (not last year) and August prove disappointing (and, generally, wet).
Definitely NOT the ‘hottest years Evah’.
8) There is a noticeable difference in temperature between my home in Bristol, and my
Mother’s house in semi-rural Hampshire, though they are at pretty much the same latitude.
I always have to remember jumpers when visiting!
9) Urbanisation and transport have exploded in that time, and population has risen (try driving
around Bristol these days).
10) Any time there’s an interesting celestial event it is pretty much guaranteed that it will cloud
over.
Any rational scientist would surely see UHI writ large in the CET figures, and also see that this ‘averaging’ and ‘anomaly’ approach to climate monitoring is likely flawed. They would never take such averages, and then extrapolate them to predict more extremes.
Or would they?
They should get out more.
In attacking fossil fuels, they forget, or don’t know what will be consequences.
Rain is the forgotten determinant of climate.
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2015/04/30/here-comes-the-rain-again/
I can confirm the validity of this research, it is 10°C in Kent UK right now and yesterday it was 8°C, I have calculated that by mid-June it’ll be 100°C and we’ll all be dead.
Oops, having investigated further ………… since it was 17°C last week the trend is clearly in the opposite direction, I can state with absolute certainty that by July it’ll be -60°C and we’ll all be dead.
UK experiences higher temp rises over the last 20 years than Europe as a whole. OK.
UK is maritime climate, closely linked to Atlantic. Therefore UK shows more influence from positive AMO than most of Europe. As expected.
As AMO has just peaked, we should see the UK begin to fall behind Europe over the next few years.
Simples.
If you buy 13 lottery tickets, you are 13 times more likely to win.
As opposed to buying one, it would be 12 times more.
If you fed this slop to pigs they would roll over and die.
I love it when they have a “centre for excellence” in their own title, very modest.
Another pile of crap from the masters. When will we see an end to this kind of thing? Yea, I know, when the money runs out!
Ah yes, another Climate Researcher Advanced Projection.
Brit born and bred over 50 years ago. Actually I remember warmer summers in the early to mid-2000s, particularly 2005 – sitting on the beach in Cornwall with a radio listening to the Ashes test cricket series (England vs Australia to those in non-cricket nations). I also noticed that each summer since then has generally been getting cooler.
During the winter our cold weather comes when we get high pressure and easterly winds coming over from the continent. When a warm wet front from the west hits that cold air mass we get our snow. Our weather is always a fight between low pressure systems and fronts sweeping across the country from the Atlantic and blocking highs and dry easterly winds coming of the continent. Which wins and which loses seems to be rather random and chaotic – very difficult to detect a signal in that noise.
However, there was definitely a “hump” in the temperatures around the early 2000s which coincided with the peak of the North Atlantic Oscillation in temperatures. The Atlantic was winning.during the winters and the continent during the summers.
The NAO is now gradually on a downward slope which ties in with a general winter cooling in the UK. We are now getting more random variation with more winters where the cold and snow from the continent wins against the Atantic weather systems. The random nature of weather means there will still be some years when we get warm wet winter weather off the Atlantic but that is just noise. 2014 was noise, a coincidence of a very wet (and hence warm) winter when the Atlantic won out combined with a summer when the warm dry winds off the continent won.
The upshot? This is all “weather”, not climate. Our weather is driven by bigger forces acting over whole oceans, continents and air masses – we are piggy in the middle. There is no way you could discern attribution to CO2 amongst all that noise – especially over such a short time frame and on such a tiny land mass. This paper is prime, 24 carat b***s**t. To even try is clearly politically driven and a sheer waste of grant money.
The UK is surrounded by water. It is the gulf stream that keeps the UK warmer, in winter, than its latitude would otherwise suggest.
The vast heat capactity of the oceans damps warming. Accordingly, unless the surrounding oceans warm significantly (and this would be a slow process), any warming of the UK will be muted..
Not more predictions! In the mid-90s after a few mild, wet winters we were assured that skiing in Scotland would soon be consigned to history and Scottish children would never know what snow is. The Scottish ski centres are still alive and kicking, the last few years have been excellent and this year Glencoe and Cairngorm are still open for snow-sports on 1st May 2015 with plenty of fresh snow this week. In April 2012, after a lengthy drought in the south and east of England, we were assured that drought would be the pattern of the future and that water would have to piped from Scotland and Northern England to the parched south. By mid-April it was pouring, and by May the reservoirs were full and the drought is a memory. And by early April this year, we were told that the warm start to April would make it the hottest April on record. On Monday 27th April, much of Scotland had fresh snow, there have been frosts most nights, and there was frost this morning, 1st May.
Even with banks of super-computers, the UK Met Office can only be reasonably accurate with forecasts up to 72 hours in advance – after that nothing is certain. There are just too many variables. So how can anyone reasonably claim they can predict the climate in years to come when even the next week is impossible?
If we were even to get some apologies for the failed predictions it might make the lies easier to bear. But instead, we get predictions of doom due to man-made climate change, and then man-made climate change is blamed again for the predicted doom not happening.
And by the way, BBC Radio 4 had a brief news piece at the start of the year revealing that there had been in excess of 20,000 fewer cold related deaths in the UK during the mild winter of 2013-14, but I haven’t heard anything yet about excess heat related deaths during the record-breaking hot summer of 2014.
It took 50 years for the story about the bad science and received wisdom regarding nutrition to be exposed for the (well intentioned most of the time) snake-oil it is. When did the clock start for the AGW panic? 1980? 1990? We need some science writers of this quality (no offense to our host – because we’re all viewed as compromised):
http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Get-Fat-About/dp/0307474259
http://www.amazon.com/Big-Fat-Surprise-Butter-Healthy/dp/1451624433http
The “what the heck?” realization only started happening after the old guard was dead a decade or more.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11263954
http journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
http http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eREuZEdMAVo&feature=youtu.be&t=3237
Must be the human condition. Those who find themselves with the opportunity are genetically wired to exploit the herd instinct against the herd “in their best interest.” Sigh. Cut to “We don’t need another Hero.”
Thunderstorms and millions snarled in traffic chaos: Welcome to a very British bank holiday weekend.
What is remarkable is the inanity of this statement. It defies credulity that anthropological influence has now been demonstrated (not asserted) to target specific regions. The statement, “God will bestow benevolent warmer winters to England due to the likable blokes in England.” has an equal amount of science in it as the above statement. They both just make an assertion. Having a model is not the same as having a proven model. Knowing how to use a computer does not exempt the authors from having a proven model of natural forcings, or a proven model of anthropological working discretely regionally.
Using unproven models to create additional models and then make forecasts is about as stupid as it gets.
BTW there are many nice blokes in England so who knows, God may grant warmer winters to the UK.
stupid but profitable
OK guys, now run the exact same analysis on New England and tell what it predicts? What? You get completely different results? In other words, this is cherry picking. Thanks for playing. Your degrees have been retracted for incompetence.
At a certain point the ones that hold the satellite data will just completely make the temperatures up if they haven’t been doing that already. We need total transparency of raw data and methodology. Why would the people that measure climate proxies for this scam have any standard of ethics at this point?
They’re on the right track. I have often wondered why the models didn’t include the influence of natural forcings and variations in weather in the past. However, after so many failed predictions, I’m not going to put much faith in this latest one.
From the paper:
“During the last 60 years there has been a rapid warming in the CET which is consistent with the anthropogenic influence on the climate.”
Nonsense, it steps up from the very late 1980’s:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/actualmonthly/17/Tmean/England.gif
And has this step, anything to do with the comment made by Solomon Green (May 1, 2015 at 12:36 pm), where he notes: “Until 1972 CET ereocrds were devised and kept by Professor Manley. Since then the Hadley Centre has produced them (even adjusting some of Manley’s original records for “greater accuracy”).”? Or perhaps its a facet of UHI, or oceanic cycles.
Strongly positive NAO from 1989 to 1994, and a strong warming of the AMO from 1995:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/nao.timeseries.gif
That is what they think. They are wrong and will be proven so before this decade ends.
I think it will warm significantly, too, but when you put 70 million people (twice Canada’s population) in a country that could be totally hidden in the Great Lakes, what you get is essentially a giant UHI. So yeah, by the time you get to 100million people, it should warm by a couple of degrees.
A giant UHI of reference would surely be India and it’s neighbors. Do we see regional hotspots there? I’ve never researched it.
Presently, they do not use as much energy (and I am not talking about CO2) , and much of the building is shanty towns not concrete jungle urbanisation.
The population of the UK has grown enormously these past 30 or so years, and there must be a very marked impact of UHI on the records post the late 1950s.
One thing is sure, there have been more rapid temperature increases (ie., rate of change) seen way back in the CET temp record as Tonyb has frequently pointed out.
I think it warm, too, from friction – from all the hand-wringing the Beeb and Guardian are inducing in the UK’s gullible, docile subjects.
This is so drivelous it borders on the absurd….
If I were to put a thermometer next to the furnace in my house, it would show up the greater anomalies within my residence despite the fact that the house had little temperature variation….
That’s what the researcher’s quote below in essence said…..
And we all want to know why the terrestrial temperature record seems at odds with reality? (not!)
Lead author of the study Dr Andrew King, from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science at the University of Melbourne, said:
“When you look at average annual temperatures over larger regions of the world, such as the whole of Europe, there is a lower variability in temperatures from year to year compared with smaller areas.
“As a result of this low variability, it is easier to spot anomalies. This is why larger regions tend to produce stronger attribution statements, so it is remarkable that we get such a clear anthropogenic influence on temperatures in a relatively small area across central England.”
Really?
Warmist Fobs….
Joe Bastardi, calling Joe bastardi- I bet I’m not the only one here who would value your input to this discussion!
Don’t we Brits just LUVVV talking about the weather..
Clearly they are a month late on this paper. It should have been published April 1st.
Pity. English children will not know what snow is.
Right?
Yet another bullshit report. (Wonder how much this one cost)
One of many I suspect to come this year, leading up to the Idiotic Paris Climate Coven, presided over by the majisterium EU (The Red House Brigade) waving a papal decree no doubt.
Still waiting patiently to see all this warming of England,s green & pleasant lands !
I thought global warming was supposed to shut down the gulf stream and lead to super cold in Britain and northern Europe.
I was a member of the Inst.o Phys. Not now, though. They disgust me. This is not science.
Until 1972 CET ereocrds were devised and kept by Professor Manley. Since then the Hadley Centre has produced them (even adjusting some of Manley’s original records for “greater accuracy”).
The following excerpts from Wikipedia says it all. Guess which records the Inst. of Physics uses!
“For recent years there are two versions of the series: the “official” version maintained by the Hadley Centre, and a version maintained by Philip Eden which he argues is more consistent with the series as originally compiled by Manley.”
“Eden was chief network weather presenter for BBC Radio 5 Live from 1994 to 2005. He has written for the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph newspapers, and currently has a weekly column in the latter. Eden writes weekly features and monthly look-backs for WeatherOnline. He is author of two books on the history of British weather. Philip Eden was Vice President of the Royal Meteorological Society from 2007 to 2009. Eden was awarded the Royal Meteorological Society’s Gordon Manley Weather Prize in 2000. The prize is awarded annually for any outstanding contribution to Weather through a paper or papers, or other outstanding service to Weather, in the preceding five years that has furthered the public understanding of meteorology and oceanography. He has been Director of the Chilterns Observatory Trust since 2007.”
….and the last time I checked Eden’s version was running warmer than the Hadley version.
If I’m not wrong, this is more stuff where they create models according to their beliefs then tell us to abandon modern civilisation because of their model results.
Here comes another clairvoyant pronouncement about future climate. As they say, “…human activities have a large influence on extreme warm years in England,..” Previous attempts at futurism in Great Britain have predicted that Scottish ski resorts would be closed for lack of snow and that children would not even know what snow is. All that because global warming, you see, had descended upon us and was guaranteed to do that. With this track record, why should anyone think that the latest story from the clairvoyants at IPCC will be any different from their previous fantasies? It is probably not even their best effort. They are saving that one for the Big Seance they have planned for Paris later this year.
Of course what they don’t mention is that 2010 was one of the coldest and equivalent to the 1659 temperature. And here we have another Ozzie organization of “Excellence” (LOL) with a “tough-in-cheek” prediction. Sorry can’t take this nonsense seriously.
My initial thoughts are what is the source of the discotinuity at 1990. Lookes like a step change due to something. I wonder if anyone has looked into possible reasons eg new adjacent buildings etc.
It depends on you definition of “set” and that will be determined later.
From the paper’s introduction:
“The CET has undergone thorough and extensive quality control (Parker et al 1992) and can, therefore, be studied in the context of event attribution. The annual CET value for 2014 was 10.93 °C, the highest in the 356 year series. However, it is worth noting that, at approximately 0.06 °C above the previous 2006 record, we cannot be entirely certain that 2014 was the warmest on record. Parker and Horton (2005) state that for annual mean CET values to be deemed significantly different a 0.25 °C difference is required.”
From the paper’s conclusion:
“Central England experienced its warmest year on record in 2014 in a series that extends back to 1659. By using both climate model simulations and the observed CET series, we show that anthropogenic climate change very likely played a major role in this record warm year.”
So, it appears that through enhancing the observational-sourced temperatures with model-sourced temperatures, they were able to conclude that the possible 2014 record is now certainly a record that breaks the 0.25 required difference.
uhhhh…pardon me for asking, but isn’t this like putting your thumb on the scales?
As long as local anthropogenic effects upon urban climate data is misrepresented as an effect upon actual climate, blind statistical projections based upon cherry-picked segments of long records will invariably show a likely “increase in record-setting years.”
The Jet Stream is the source of much of UK’s temperature extremes, along with the Golf Stream. Any records, be they high or low, must first be determined to be UNrelated to these natural forces so that they can be attributed to anthropogenic heating. That is unless the authors are saying that the anthropogenic-only part of atmospheric CO2 can affect these magnificently large and powerful structures.
http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=jetstream-tutorial
To be unbiased, some have indicated that indeed anthropogenic CO2 is warming the Arctic (either directly via CO2 re-radiated warmer air or via anthropogenically warmer incoming oceanic currents) which is what it driving the Jet Stream into positions unfavorable to the UK. However those connections are speculative at best.
Exactly why do you think that eliminating the Jet Stream and the Gulf Stream will tell you anything about anthropogenic heating? For that matter, where did you get the misinformation that anthropogenic CO2 is is warming the Arctic? Fact is, the present Arctic warmingt did not get started until the beginning of the twentieth century. There was nothing there before but two thousand years of slow cooling. The start was sudden and there was no simultaneous increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide. This just completely eliminates carbon dioxide as the cause of Arctic warming. The only possible cause is a rearrangement of North Atlantic current system at the turn of the century that started to carry warm Gulf Stream water into the Arctic Ocean. As to your Jet Stream/Gulf Stream combo, they jointly cannot change the fact that there is no warming now and there has been none for the last 18 years. At the same time atmospheric carbon dioxide has been increasing. According to the Arrhenius greenhouse theory in use by IPCC this should warm the atmosphere but it does not. That makes it a clear false prediction for Arrhenius. A false prediction by a scientific theory invalidates it and requires that it be consigned to the waste basket of history. The correct greenhouse theory to use is the Miskolczi greenhouse theory. It came out in 2007 and was promptly blacklisted by the global warming establishment. Why so, you might ask, Very simple: it predicts what we see – addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere does not warm the atmosphere. That is the theory that governs our climate. If you really want to understand it get busy learning the math involved.
“Centre of Excellence” in Climate Studies indeed. The title is as convincing as a country calling itself a “Peoples Democratic Republic”. It might persuade gullible lefties and greenies but it is an affront to any genuine scientist .
It is ironic that this paper came out on May 1st, International Labour Day or international green communism day, when it was the coldest (using maxima) May 1st in the CET for 19 years. (I have a good proxy for CET based on published temperatures at Pershore, Rothamsted, Rostherne, which is how I can assert this.) Shares can go down as well as up.
Still, April was mostly quite pleasant. It was shaping up to be the 4th warmest April since 1878, but faded sadly away to be only 13th warmest.
Rich.
Whenever considering CET, one should always consider the views and assessment made by Tony Brown, I think that he has posted an article here on WUWT, but if not, it can be found set out at Climate etc.. See:
http://judithcurry.com/2011/12/01/the-long-slow-thaw/
“This is according to climate model simulations…”
I am *so* over bl**dy models
You have to love climate statistics, as in the observation-based part of this paper. Leave aside the reluctance to use time series methods for time series.
Their data plot (figure 3(a)) actually seems to tell them not to use the method they are using. Nearly half the data they use to estimate their Pareto density comes from the low CO2 period. But this must be from the period 1910-1940 when the CO2 hypothesis is well known not to fit. It would seem they are estimating their “model” (of sorts) from data to which their model does not apply.
Some mistake?
“False predictions about climate,
False predictions galore;
False predictions about the weather
That we have in store.
Yet we keep on believing
The predictions we’re given,
By some irrational fear
We seem to be driven…..”
Read more: http://wp.me/p3KQlH-DG
Any first year engineering undergraduate would throw that out at even a first glance. Fourier analysis has shown nearly half a century ago fifteen and twenty three year cycles so peak to peak is the product of these durations. Any conclusions based on less than two cycles are by definition tentative and totally inconclusive. Are there no limits to the ignorance of those in the climate studies field?
We were told no snow by 2013 but this winter I took four hours to cross Sheffield and even then by driving down a road that was sheet ice and ungritted through lack of resources because the council had done their planning based on these “scientists”. All other roads were gridlocked for longer than this.
Despite the headline “high temperatures” at midday in the center of London that excite the Met office and the BBC, for most of the UK the first 4 months of this year have been unseasonably cold and remain so. N.B. mid-day temperatures in London are consistently 2 to 5 deg C above those recorded in the surrounding counties.
Ulriclyon’s graphic hints at an important inference that can be arrived at by carefully examining temperature data for Europe, from Madrid to Vardo to Warsaw to Lugano to Nancy and places in between, thus including Central England.This general region experienced a step change in the autumn of 1987. Since then temperatures have been effectively constant. That’s when “The Pause” started in these parts. You don’t believe this? Try fitting a linear model to European temperature data beginning in September 1987. Cherry picking, but for a good reason. A linear model that spans 1987 will always produce a “significant” coefficient simply because a step change occurred at that date. For the 25 or so years prior to Sept 1987 there is seldom a significant slope. This this hinted at in Ulriclyon’s nice graphic, but it is a general phenomenon too.
Nobody is capable of predicting future atmospheric temperature or future climatic conditions, on any time scale, into the future. We know this because today meteorologists cannot even tell us what the temperature will be next week let alone next year, and nobody would dare trust a weather forecast beyond a few days.
How strange then, that these scientists are able to publish a paper that England is going to get warmer because of anthropogenic warming. What crystal ball did they use?