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.”
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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
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 !