From the “30 years are part of a cycle” department:
Experts express concern over cyclone trends in the British-Irish Isles
By studying climate data in the British-Irish Isles over a 142-year period, researchers have confirmed the important role of cyclones. Seasonal precipitation totals were strongly related to cyclone frequency, especially during summer.
The researchers found that relative to the 1961-1990 period, summers have become much wetter and more cyclonic. The move towards wetter summers in recent years is more of a re-establishment of conditions typical of the earlier half of the 20th Century rather than being unusual in the long term.
Recent years have seen three of the stormiest seasons on record, however. The summer of 2012 was the “stormiest” since at least 1871.
“Given concern over increased British-Irish Isles storminess as the climate warms, there is a need to understand the extent to which these changes may already be underway,” said Dr. Tom Matthews, lead author of the International Journal of Climatology study. “By providing a 142-year regional cyclone climatology, this study allows recent extreme seasonal storminess to be placed in context. Such a long-term perspective is needed to explore variability in the regional storm climate and to diagnose and understand emerging changes.”
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“Given concern over increased British-Irish Isles storminess as the climate warms, there is a need to understand the extent to which these changes may already be underway,” said Dr. Tom Matthews
Give us lots of money and we will look into this fantasy – a bit like Myles Allen and flooding. These people will say anything to keep their gravy train running.
1950s were wetter and stormier than anything since
“Seasonal precipitation totals were strongly related to cyclone frequency, especially during summer
How much research do you need to understand that more depressions (cyclones) means more rain.
So, they have confirmed the role of cyclones in the climate/weather of the British Isles! I was taught that in primary school.
You can’t blame people for loving the planet, can you? There is a lot of energy out there that we could capture. The main thing that excites us to anger about the warmy-warmy-thingy is the way that so many of the illiterate contextualise what needs to be done. We are in the position, as never before, to understand the whole of our world and therefore we have made it seem a very small and finite place, panic ensues chased by a dragon.
The biggest victim in this whole sorry business is the scientific method, corrupted, egged-on by governments choosing winners and losers, appeasing, garnering votes. It seems that the only thing that the deniers can actually have any chance of success at is not in contradiction but in getting in front of the ‘warmists’ and determining what should be done rather than losing all the huff and puff in trying to provide a confutation.
As know to my own loss, in times of great perturbation you want to be all action. You have to be doing ‘something’ for that life will be lost and if you do not do your best now then you will spend the rest of your conscious life in self-deprecation, anxiety, even if the outcome is knowingly beyond alteration. Poor us, poor world; damn you big yellow hotty-glowy thing in that perfect blue. You kill us with kindness.
Yep..we certainly got a few storms this month and likely a couple more to come. This is the west side of England in a direct line to the Western (Atlantic) approaches. I am surprised that Ireland has not washed away because it is constantly hammered from the Atlantic. Our western beaches are renowned for some pretty good waves and some surfing (Newquay).
It supplied plenty of rain with it that farmers need. Anyway, we have not had storms for the last 3 years? I’d say at a guess there is plenty of moisture about (the Atlantic) and combined with some Sun and mountains at the coast (Wales) loads of clouds form. It may or rain or not…sort of variable thing?
Somebody seems to have been lightening frazzled in the Brecons holding a selfie stick…dunno?
The summer of 2012 was probably the stormiest since at least the winter of 2012.
The summer of 2012 was stormy? I didn’t notice.
According to the Abstract:
. Cyclone frequency and storminess are characterized by pronounced interannual and multi-decadal variability which are strongly coupled to atmospheric blocking in the Euro-Atlantic region, but we detect no evidence of an increasing trend.
and
We observe an upward trend in cyclone intensity for the BI region, which is strongest in winter and consistent with model projections, but promote caution interpreting this given the changing data quality in the 20CR over time.
The less stormy 1960-90’s is already well known about, as this Durham Uni study pointed out a couple of years ago:
However, in looking at longer rainfall and river flow records, Prof. Lane shows that we have forgotten just how normal flooding in the UK is. He looked at seasonal rainfall and river flow patterns dating back to 1753 which suggest fluctuations between very wet and very dry periods, each lasting for a few years at a time, but also very long periods of a few decades that can be particularly wet or particularly dry. In terms of river flooding, the period since the early 1960s and until the late 1990s appears to be relatively flood free, especially when compared with some periods in the late 19th century and early 20th Century.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/02/25/we-have-forgotten-just-how-normal-flooding-in-the-uk-is/
Unfortunately much of our building on flood plains is based on the “dry” 1960’s being the norm.
A book I’m fond of is the late Robin Stirling’s ‘The Weather of Britain’ ISBN 1-900357-06-02. He was a professional meteorologist.
Chapter 6 is entitled ‘Some Days Bring Deluges’, and I’ll describe a few of the many floods he covers in detail. He describes for example a disastrous flood at Louth, Lincolnshire in 1920, and serious flooding in the city of Norwich in 1912. He mentions a tablet set into a wall which records the high water mark for severe floods of the past. The highest prior to the flood described was in 1614, but the 1912 flood went 15 inches higher. He tells us that ‘much damage was done to roads and bridges throughout the county’.
He also comments that ‘it must not be thought strange that so many new records were broken in the early years of the 20th century: records cannot be broken until there are records in existence to break’.
The documentation of UK floods in the past goes on for several pages – in 1833, 1897, 1917, 1924, 1929, 1930, 1931, 1937 for example and continuing right up to recent times. In 1931 Boston in Lincolnshire had a quarter of a year’s worth of rainfall dumped on the city in two hours. This happened again in 1937. In August 1952, Exmoor suffered a flooding disaster following a wet month. The peat and shales of Exmoor were unable to absorb the vast quantities of water, which surged down the valleys of the East and West Lyn rivers, carrying enormous boulders and washing away houses, hotels , and sweeping 130 cars out to sea. A seven-ton boulder was found in the basement of one hotel.
Stirling shows a photo of the scene in Milbrook, Guildford in September 1968, commenting that some shops in the High Street were flooded to a depth of almost eight feet, and that 1968 will long be remembered for ‘the floods’.
Stirling states that caution is needed in assessing changes in the frequency of flooding as indicators of climate change. He mentions that Exmoor’s rainfall varies between 49 and 79 inches in a year. An inch of water is the equivalent of 100 tons per acre, or 4840 square yards. I find it’s easier to think of this as the area bounded by a square of seven buses on each side, a bus being about 30 feet long!
So, severe floods are nothing new. The Environmental Agency has been blamed for a failure to keep waterways free and dredged in favour of ‘encouraging wildlife’ and so forth.
The Met Office are sitting on the Central England Temperature record, which shows clearly that at no time since 1659 has the temperature here climbed higher than 11 degrees C, and temperatures above 10 degrees aren’t unprecedented.
A lot of reputations are at stake, along with a lot of money. One day people will look back on all this with amazement.
Farmers here have been digging ditches since the stone age: they’ve been filling them in since the war.
I see that the UK has become important to the alarmists once again. Since that is true, can we talk about the Central England Temperature record?
“The longest continuous record of measured surface air temperatures in the world exists for a region representative of the English Midlands – known as the Central England Temperature record. Daily records extend back to 1772 and monthly records to 1659. Annual temperature fluctuations in this region are representative of those in most of the UK.”
This record stretches way back into the Little Ice Age and comes forward to today. What does this record say?
“Relative to the 350 year long term trend there is no real evidence for any recent anthropogenic warming … There is indeed an apparent upturn after 1970 but nothing that is really remarkably different to that in the 1700s. This is then followed by a downturn back to normal.” ~ Clive Best
http://clivebest.com/blog/?p=6385
Now, this long running temperature data set says that there is no CO2 warming at all. It is a delusion my friends. The CO2 “sensitivity” is zero or a negative number.
There will be no paper published that will take a look at the CET records in the run up to Paris is my wager.
Clive correctly points out that there is no AGW signal in the datasets of either CET or HadCRUt4 (for England). If CO2 forcing were real, we would see a rather abrupt and marked rise in both datasets. The trend in the HadCRUt4 is 0.001c per decade:
http://clivebest.com/blog/?p=4448
The trend in maximum between 1920 and 1988 is flat. The Trend between 1989 and 2012 is flat. There was a step rise between 1988 and 1989.
As an antidote, may I suggest WUWT readers look at chapter 9 ‘Climatic trends, Anomalies and Extremes’ in John Kington’s book ‘Climate and Weather’ published by Collins New Naturalist (2010). In it he describes the British cyclonic weather records from the 1270s,1310s, 1360s,1400s, 1420-30s, 1490s, 1520s, 1570s, 1620s, 1640s, 1690s,1770s, 1816, 1870s, 1903, 1910s. Kington’s data is rather more extensive than the 140 year study reported in that recent paper.
“By studying climate data in the British-Irish Isles over a 142-year period”
Do I detect yet more cherry picking? Why 142 years? Round it up to 150 years, or down to 100 years!
Also in my 60 years in the UK, I have not noticed any difference in the weather from my earliest recollections until now. We have good summers and poor summers, cold winters and mild winters. My birthday is 1st May I have seen snow on that date and on my 10th I got sunstroke, UK weather is dependent on the relatively warm mass of sea around us, the Gulf and Jet Streams.
Agreed entirely, Mr. Harding. I was born the UK 66 years ago, and the British climate is unchanged as you describe. What bothers me is the garbage being touted which infers that our climate is changing for the worse – which is absolute nonsense.
If researchers are going to assert the existence of “stormier” or “stormiest” weather conditions, the first thing they need is a definition of “stormy” that is both scientifically rigorous and quantifiable. I won’t be holding my breath.
Roderick July 7, 2015 at 3:57 am
Simples. Count the number of raindrops, multiply by the wind speed, throw in the obligatory fudge factor based on the level of Atmospheric CO2 times the number of bumbershoots sold in Liverpool between 10:00 am and 4:00 pm, and then set a lower threshold. Anything above that threshold is “stormy.”
Of course the number of raindrops and bumbershoots sold will be modeled on a computer and not counted, so we’d be at ‘climate science as usual.’ That’s the down side.
On the up side, the Raindrop Models(TM) can project all sorts of scary storminess for the year 2050 or 2100 and the grants can continue to roll in. What’s not to like? ;o)
I wonder about the quality of the meterological records 142 years ago particularly the spatial separation of the data-collection points’
However, I suspect that these guys are preparing the ground for the ‘discovery’ of the 60-year cycle, for when the temps start going down again. The UKMET office is more concerned with the political weather, and the likelihood of grantfalls than with rainfalls
Meanwhile, “scientists say” climate change is leading to drier summers in the UK!
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2705.html
And back in the real world?
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/07/07/more-wet-dry-summers-to-come-for-the-uk/
AMO trend is visible in the growth of summer ice in the Arctic.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/icecover/icecover_current_new.png
I wonder how they find time to opine with their heads up their butts? lol
It’s amazing what the climate can do when it’s hopped up on “carbon”.
Are the British Isles getting “stormier”?
Has there been a significant change in the climate over the past 60 years?
Why not respond to climate alarmism with satire?
Listen to Flanders and Swan about the English weather: “The Song of the Weather” (1956?)
And while we are about it, listen to “The First and Second Law” by this intrepid duo.
Humour not hubris may be the best weapon against the alarmists.
Could somebody explain to this man from Ireland where the ‘British Isles’ are exactly?
Lol! That would depend on the nationality and ancestry of whoever attempts to answer your question!
According to Anthropologist, Brian Fagan, the change from the MWP to the LIA was accompanied by a steady increase in storms, as well as by a very erractic climate regime, that oscillated between hot, dry periods and severe winters and spring/summer flooding.
They would have us believe that there are more storms nowadays? but a cyclone is simply a low-pressure system. one would expect some precipitation from it. I don’t expect they were counting them 142 years ago so we don’t know if there are more now or not. A cyclone is NOT a storm!
Piers Corbyn predicted the three recent wet summers based on solar-lunar cycles. Ask him for the articeles – remember reading them but don’t have them. He referred to similar patterns in the late 19th century – again, can’t remember the years but he documented them.
For the record the SE of England is currently bone dry having had very little rain since mid-April…………
I’ve just been browsing through old cartoon books of Carl Giles. They give a really good record of the weather and typical British reactions to it!