Reposted from NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
MARCH 12, 2021
By Paul Homewood
Yet another attempt to “prove” that rainfall is becoming more extreme in the UK:
https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asl.1033
This is the key graph:
United Kingdom’s wettest day of the year. (a) Timeseries of UK mean Rx01 anomalies relative to 1961–1990 from observational data. The observed anomalies in 2020 and 1986 are marked by a cross
The first thing to note is that they are looking at the UK as a whole. We know that Scotland has become considerably wetter in recent years, but what about the rest of the country?
If we analyse the England & Wales Precipitation Series, we actually get a totally different picture:
Note that 3rd October 2020 was a long way from being the record claimed for the UK. (There are concerns with the HADUK dataset, as it now includes many high altitude sites not previously available, which will inevitably bias the results to wetter. The England & Wales dataset, though based on fewer stations, has greater consistency).
Although there is a tiny trend of 0.03C pa, ie 3mm per century, this is well within standard margins of error. The R2 is only 0.024, which is regarded as a very low correlation statistically.
Clearly the trend line is heavily skewed by two outliers in 1986 and 2000, neither of which can be construed as “current climate”.
It is also apparent from the data that there was step change around 1960. Consequently when we begin the series in 1960, there is actually a declining trend. Interestingly, the UK chart also shows this decline, once the 2020 outlier is excluded.
Whatever the reason for that step change, it clearly has no bearing whatsoever on what is happening now, or might in future.
What we can safely say is that there has been nothing unusual at all in the last two decades, which is surely the time when global warming should be impacting heavier rainfall, if the theory is correct. Indeed, it is the 1960s which stand out as being most affected, with four years, 1960, 1967, 1968 and 1969 each seeing daily rainfall totals more then anything seen since 2000.
It may be that Scotland is seeing more extreme rainfall, which the KNMI data seems to suggest:
However, the fact that England & Wales are not seeing the same increases totally discredits the theory that a warmer atmosphere is driving heavier rain. Instead we need to look elsewhere for the factors behind Scotland’s weather.
So often in climate science, we come across shoddy studies like this one, where it is evident that the authors have decided on the conclusions at the outset, and then manipulate the data until it agrees.
“data from multimodel enembles….”
WTF??
“Experiments with different forcings are employed to estimate the changing probabilities of extremes due to anthropogenic climate change in a risk based attribution network.”
And that’s considered science? Looks like bullshit to me.
Smells like it too but I’ll leave the taste test verification for pal review.
It’s homogenized bullshit.
Mr. Zorzin
As a bio-mass wood-chip man,you might be interested to know that there is a movement to ban wood-chip biomass burning in the UK’s power stations, and if they do I will be first to open a bottle of a bio-bubbly.
“Two UK power stations got more than a £1bn in subsidies and were excused from paying carbon taxes totalling more than £300m.”
“Mr van Ypersele said: “To subsidise an activity that has negative consequences for the climate and the environment is totally contradictory with the goals of the Paris Agreement and the goals of the conference (COP26) due to take place in Glasgow at the end of the year.”
“We urge you not to undermine both climate goals and the world’s biodiversity by shifting from burning fossil fuels to burning trees to generate energy… To meet future net zero-emission goals your government should work to preserve and restore forests and not to burn them.”
Let Americans burn American wood-chip if they want, the UK governments were stupid long enough to squander taxpayers money, when natural gas is much cheaper even after being heavily taxed (let alone subsidy required) and much, much more cleaner.
There is a video-report too, at the web page.
https://news.sky.com/story/climate-change-former-un-vice-chair-calls-on-uk-to-review-policies-on-burning-wood-for-energy-12243870
BBC: Most wood energy schemes are a ‘disaster’ for climate change”Using wood pellets to generate low-carbon electricity is a flawed policy that is speeding up not slowing down climate warming.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39053678
The dirty little secret behind ‘clean energy’ wood pelletshttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jun/30/wood-pellets-biomass-environmental-impact
Not even a patch on the Northern Irish Cash for Ash scandal where the subsidies were so large that the government was paying people to burn wood pellets.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-38414486
Is the BBC for you- like the Koran for a devout Muslim? You believe everything they publish? The same only worse for the Guardian? A disaster for climate change? Here in the NE USA, the greeies want to destroy hundreds of thousands of acres to convert that land to wind and solar “farms”. At least the forests where the chips come from remain as forests even if you don’t like them.
I’m NOT a biomass wood-chip man- whatever the hell that means. I am a forester with a lot of experience. My experience with a wood chip market and without it- is that it’s better with it. As for subsidies, it’s trivial compared to subsidies for wind and solar. Obviously, Mr. Ypersele doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. We’ll see what the UK does about this. I bet they won’t end wood burning at Drax – nor will the rest of the EU.
Yes, even when burning wood chips produces ~40% more CO2 than burning coal. But the EU doesn’t count ANY CO2 from wood since the wood wasn’t produced/cut down in the EU. Just idiocy.
If you’re burning forestry trash, might as well. Otherwise, idiocy.
If you track carbon in the forests and not at the chimney, you’ll see more carbon stored in the forests over time.
Keep your wood-chip in America, burn it over-there. I do not care for your business or to whom you sell your wood. I do not wish to subsidise your business trough my electricity bill just gone by another $130 (£100).
Do you know that in the UK people have died this winter from hypothermia because they have no gas heating and could not pay their electricity bills, living in the old Victorian houses designed with fire places for coal heating, but there is no coal or but a very expensive fire wood to be purchased.
AS far as BBC or Guardian or Micky Man or Joe Biden or anyone else is concerned, I’m grown-up enough to know what is good or what is a crate of horse manure. Anyone who tells me that American wood-chip for generating my electricity is good for me is talking horse manure.
I did see your video, I put link on line some time ago, but since it has been taken down, or at least it is not there any longer.
“Keep your wood-chip in America, burn it over-there.” I think you should be the dictator of the EU and control all such policies, mein fuhrer!
We do not want your wood chips any more than we want the Russian gas, although their gas is much cheaper and by far cleaner; so yes I’ll say it again
“Keep your wood-chip and burn it over-there.”
Resulting to insults when you lose an argument will not elevate you as a person.
My family lost number of very close relatives to
fuhrer, your insult is not worth of a further comment.
As a fellow forester, with a decent bit of experience as well, I tend to agree with Mr. Zorzin on forest management being better with a chip market. Being able to sell the small trees, poor quality trees, and undesirable species really helps manage the forest for long-term improvement.
Sure, we shouldn’t pretend it’s a carbon solution, but that doesn’t mean the basic concept of generating electricity from woody material that really has no other use is not viable.
More mountainous Scotland might have more of the newer, higher elevation stations.
Absolute nonsense
Oxford University (Oxford is somewhere near England’s centre) has meticulously recorded rainfall data . There is no fall or rise in rainfall trend since 1853
The above graph shows monthly data. In case you might wonder if there is any significant multi-annual periodicity, spectral analysis shows near random distribution. There are only 2 components above the 5% strength, i.e. 6.8 years at 7.3% (possibly lunar?) and just under 10.6 years (near enough to 10.5 years for the sunspot cycle 1920-2020) at 6%, basically nothing there, just it rains most of the time, anyway everyone knows England is not California.
Is y in your trend measuring days?
I get an increase of 0.022mm per year, using monthly data. Using annual totals to avoid seasonal bias, I get an annual increase of 0.26mm per year, equivalent to about an inch a century. Neither figure is statistically significant.
The above graph shows monthly data.
Trend line is calculated by MS Excel.
y = 0.0006x + 53.237 and R2 = 1E-06
Sorry, my question was rather garbled. What I meant to ask was what does the x represent in the linear equation. I’d usually assume it was a measure of years, but I think here it represents days. I.E. the equation is saying rainfall in Oxford is increasing by 0.0006mm per day, not per year.
Just to avoid misunderstanding this is rainfall for a single location i.e. Oxford University’s Radcliffe Meteorological Station which is the longest running weather station in the UK.
https://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/research/climate/rms/
I’m not sure how relevant is averaging rainfall from the west to the east coast. It rains far more at the west side and it may be more pronounced factor of the AMO than the drier east coast, hence somewhere in the middle having a longest data record might be but not necessarily more meaningfully.
Drawing a straight line through time series data is uber smoothing. You cannot smooth non-linear data any more harshly than converting it to two data points.
Haven’t we been through this 1,000 times? The wavy line goes up and down, not straight. Change the endpoints and viola the line shifts. It’s a crappy way to analyze data. I don’t care if you like the “trend” or not; it’s not a trend, it’s wavy, Davy.
Can I dumb it down any further? Buncha points in time go up and down. They don’t go straight. If you make them straight, you lose 99% of the information. That’s a bad thing.
The stupid, it burns.
It is a calculated trend line it is useful to take good look before making a highly uniformed comment, not even worth reading after first sentence. You go get data and do your stuff, show difference and then come back.
here is data link and now you show what is not so ok with the trend line calculated
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/stationdata/oxforddata.txt
You are right, it cannot be a straight line. I think 3rd order poly would be better.
Hi Rainer
makes no difference 3rd order polynomial trend line is shown in red
3rd order polynomial trend line is shown in red
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/OxfordRain1.gif
there are 2000 data points there, with ~170 annual max and min, a quasi-periodic signal with not one or two but ~170 wavelengths, therefore whatever are the end points, practically it makes no difference.
In this particular case it yields about the same of course. But the question was that using a straight line induces thinking that it will continue and has the problem to have to choose the end points ‘correctly’. On the other hand, 3rd order will bend ‘naturally’. Using some sort of sine would only be useful if there is indeed a cycle and you know its time.
“3rd order will bend ‘naturally’.”
Only in the middle part, while the front and the end parts have very little or no credence.
Mike Dubrasich posted: “The wavy line goes up and down, not straight. Change the endpoints and viola the line shifts.”
That claim is totally dependent on the sample size, assuming we’re talking about a least-squares regression linear fit to data (a most-common analysis technique). It is very easy to test out your claim on a Excel spreadsheet using randomly-generated numbers and its built-in L.S. curve-fitting function.
Generate a set of, say, four random number between zero and 1.0. Do a L.S. linear curve fit to that data set. Then replace the first number generated and the last number generated (the “endpoints” per your wording) with new random numbers between zero and 1.0 . . . high probability of BIG shift in the curve fit between the two cases, sorta as you asserted.
However, do the same process but this time generate 500 random numbers between zero and 1.0, then generate the L.S. curve fit, and then again just replace the first and last numbers generated with new values, and finally redo the L.S. curve fit.
You will see that with this large sample size there is an insignificant (likely less that 1 part in 10,000) change in the slope and y-intercept of the L.S. curve fit equation.
BTW, there is a distinct difference between the data points themselves and using mathematics to draw inferences from that raw set of a data points.
Personally, I prefer trying to draw conclusions from a give data set rather than amusing myself by just looking at all the different numerical values. I believe this process is called “trend analysis”.
You folks really don’t get it. “Trend analysis” is fake science.
The rainfall time series curve has information, such as how it might correlate with the AMO, PDO, El Nino, and other oceanic and/or solar oscillations. When you straighten out the data into a linear smooth, you lose all that information. In effect, you dumb down the data until it is stupid.
The climate does not trend; it oscillates. Once you grasp this concept, much clarity and understanding will come to you. The “Trenders” are wrong. Don’t be a Trender.
Of course you are correct, linear trends particularly for long term estimates of the above kind of natural phenomena are an essential tool. I can say with high degree of confidence that the trend line calculated (in the above example of Oxford rainfall) can be extended by at least 15-20 years and would still hold good in 2035 with perhaps minute but statistically insignificant change in the gradient.
I’m surprise about the nonsense said elsewhere.
No they’re not. Long term trend lines for non-linear data are useless. All the linear regression rules, like iid, are broken by time series.
Next thing you’ll tell me is you tracked the flight of a golf ball, height vs. time, drew straight line through the data, and proved there is no such thing as gravity! QED. Roll over Isaac Newton.
Please put on dunce caps and bang into each other. Oh wait, you’re already doing that.
So, Mike, the trend line is that day-does-in-fact-follow-night, based on the last 5,000 or so years of human-recorded data.
I am very sorry to hear you imagine that there may be no daylight tomorrow morning because you just cannot trust time-series trend lines.
Good luck with that. LMAO!
What horsesh*t. The day/night cycle is not a linear regression. That’s your defense of crap statistics? What a bozo!
Just a week ago WUWT posted a report: No Mention Of CO2: New Study Shows African Climate Variability Strongly Linked To Natural Cycles here
in which the scientist authors linked variability in African rainfall to natural oceanic and solar cycles including the NAO, AMO, IOD, PDO, ENSO, and sunspot cycles from 1901–2017. They applied some real stats including non-stationary correlations, time lags, and phase shifts.
What they did NOT do was impose a straight line on all that non-linear data and look at slopes. They mined the data for all the information. That’s how time series are properly analyzed.
In a number of WUWT posts Willis Eschenbach has used Complete Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (CEEMD) to extract patterns from time series data. One example is here.
CEEMD is preferable to Fourier analysis, IMHO. But both are vastly superior at time series than ugh, linear regression. Get with real science, boys. You’re not in Kansas anymore. We have a serious war going on with all this climate alarmism. Your misfiring pea shooter linear baloney is not helping.
PS – sorry to hear your a$$ fell off, but hey, I’m not surprised.
The evidence that it has been getter wetter in Scotland helps to explain why the soil in my garden (West Central Scotland) doesn’t dry up as early in the year as it used to .Most of the year now the soil stays pretty wet whereas at one time it used to get dry for several months. I am also having a much greater problem with moss than I used to.
Civilizations have ended during cold periods, as more water was bound up in glaciers. With the warm periods came the rains and crops flourished, as did civilization.
This period of de- glaciation has the added benefit of increased plant food availability. What great days lie in store for us, if we can just get the governments under control.
In any case, what am I doing talking about civilization and Scotland?
Alba gu bràth
Yeah the paper is just another climatological damp squid.
And the forecasted likelihood of increasing amounts of pseudo-scientific papers like this over the next 20 years is a likely increase of 3 fold over the the previous 20 years period.
Well, it is March 13th and already the UK is on course for wettest March on record. I have counted 9 occasions since September on which a month’s rainfall fell in 24 hours somewhere in the UK.
The Met Office annual climate reports demonstrate a clear pattern of increase in heavy, slow moving rain systems, in extreme rain events. We have had serious flooding in 19 of the last 21 years: astonishing compared to the last half of last century.
The UK climate has changed: it is wetter and stormier and global climate change caused it.
What’s the source of the data for that claim? It’s not been particularly wet in the East Midlands, until a couple of days ago we had high pressure and no wind or rain, from 1st to 4th of March, then again from 5th to 8th. Not that the 4th/5th were particularly windy. In the UK when it high pressure there’s no wind or rain It looks like we’re due high pressure again next week as well.
The easiest way to check wind is to look at the electricity generation data, Which shows that on 3rd March was virtually windless across the entire UK.
To quote Piers Morgan on Dominic Raab I find that “unbelievable'”
The UK climate
Is more diverse than your average inner city, Griff.
But then you knew that, right?
Yes, the UK’s climates are just a handful of the hundreds of climates to be found all over this planet that we were lucky enough to be spawned by.
It will keep changing as it sees fit, and so too must we adapt to changing environments if we want to keep living comfortably here.
And so we must stop this “one step forward, three steps back” with our energy developments.
Nuclear should be our ONLY focus.
You cannot compare flooding without taking into account the change of land use, destruction of environment, removal of marsh, lack of river management etc. The run off into rivers is much greater now that we have concreted and tarmacked huge areas of the UK.
Griff, let’s assume you are correct and the UK (or global for that matter) climate has changed, is changing, and will change, in this case with respect to increased precipitation. Since UK climate has changed in the past, and other areas’ climates have changed even more around the world, why do you now ascribe human influence and the emission of CO2 as a cause of climate change, as opposed to natural causes (oceanic cycles, solar variability, internal oscillations, etc.)? Past and current computer climate models which foretell (not forecast) global warming are very obviously incorrect; they do not incorporate the necessary physics – see the numerous papers in the literature about the failure of parameterization of cloud microphysical effects, e.g. Computer modeling has so far failed to accurately describe the changes globally between 1985 and 2021, other than predicting general warming, which was already occurring since the trough of the Little Ice Age (LIA). I viewed early model simulations from NOAA/GFDL in 1988, and, while they generally have been correct about Arctic warming on the broad scale, they have failed in most other areas. So, generally speaking, garbage in, garbage out. One simply cannot hope to generate correct output with flawed input.
As we have seen steady (non-accelerative) sea-level rise (SLR) for a few hundred years, why is it now due to human cause? And please don’t say that SLR is accelerating lately, as there is convincing evidence for a steady global rise. Please search for the numerous papers presented on this site, e.g.
In summary, why is there a need to ascribe human cause to warming and/or SLR, when natural causes have been operating (before CO2 possibly could) and explain what we see? Lastly, it’s futile to invoke doubled CO2 increase as a driver for a runaway climate, as atmospheric CO2 has been much higher in the past and has not caused a runaway climate such that we have an exigent climate crisis now.
In my opinion, you, and others who espouse an imminent emergency, must produce evidence to answer these questions; to date, you have not. What you have given are opinions and assertions which fly in the face of natural evidence and are unsupportable by facts.
No idea where you get that idea from. HadUKP charts are showing pretty average rainfall up to the 11th.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadukp/charts/hadukp_daily_plots.html
Griff,
Extreme weather events are only interesting for the CAGW believers (I mean no disrespect.) if it is a fact that humans cause the recent CO2 rise and the recent CO2 rise cause the temperature rise).
Aside… The paleo record shows unequivocally there is an unbelievable increase in extreme climate events, when the earth abruptly cools.
The climate is more stable when the earth warms and less stable when it cools and these is true because the cooling mechanism cause extreme changes to the geomagnetic field that cause permanent regional changes in the geomagnetic field which overtime disappear at the geomagnetic field adjusts to try to get to axial symmetry.
Oddly enough, the paleo record shows, the planet also abruptly warms for 20 to 30 years, dansgaard-oeschger events (these warming events occur in the mid of glacial periods and continue in the interglacial period) same periodicity 1450 years.
It can be proved (no math required, dozen different independent logical proofs, concept proof and concept disproof), that the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 did not cause the recent temperature rise and human CO2 emissions caused no more than 10% of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2.
If the above comment is scientifically correct/an observation, not a theory…..
…. our climate/solar scientists are conceptual lost, clueless as to how the earth’s climate and our sun, can change, and hence cannot even imagine what will happen next.
Cycles must have physical causes. It is the sun.
So CO2 and global warming are not a problem.
And sun and wind gathering is a scam. Sun and wind fail at the point when the magic battery is required. Will not work for basic engineering and conceptual reasons.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/21/germanys-green-transition-has-hit-a-brick-wall/
Magic Battery Hydrogen.
I see there are crazy plans to produce hydrogen (Australia, Japan, Germany, US) and then to store the hydrogen in salt caverns and then to burn the hydrogen mixed with natural gas in a specially designed turbine to work….
The energy economics of the ‘hydrogen’ green scam magic battery is a follows.
1) The wind farms produce 30% of their nameplate rating.
2) The surplus wind electricity that cannot be used electric energy will be converted into hydrogen (ball park) 30% efficiency
3) The hydrogen will be pump into and out of salt caverns and then burned in a single pass turbine that is 37% efficient.
30% x 30% x 37% means only 3.3% of the nameplate energy from the wind farm can be stored and then converted back into electricity.
So, 30 wind turbines must be installed to get the nameplate energy of one wind turbine. That kills the scheme.
Obviously, hydrogen storage does not work because too much green energy is wasted.
Germany has installed sufficient sun and wind gathering to meet German’s total energy needs if the German engineers had or could buy magic batteries, that store energy for months and are free.
Do you have webfoods in the meantime ? 😀
‘Several indicators in the latest UK State of the Climate report show that the UK’s climate is becoming wetter. For example the highest rainfall totals over a five day period are 4% higher during the most recent decade (2008-2017) compared to 1961-1990. Furthermore, the amount of rain from extremely wet days has increased by 17% when comparing the same time periods. In addition, there is a slight increase in the longest sequence of consecutive wet days for the UK.
The change in rainfall depends on your location – for example, changes are largest for Scotland and not significant for most southern and eastern areas of England.’
UK extreme events – Heavy rainfall and floods – Met Office
It most certainly is not the case in my back garden, Griff.
Why do you suppose that is? Can you explain it? And why quote a discredited source even the BBC won’t use anymore?
Hi Griffo, nice to hear from you.
“UK’s climate is becoming wetter”, it is so because is written by wet climatologists and other amphibians.
Oxford University data shows differently (see my graph further above), despite Oxford uni being full of ‘wets’.
Once again a complete failure to dispute any if the facts shown in the article.
Griff is still wet between the ears !!
Yes griff , its called NATURAL VARIABILITY !!
What? Go out there and get my hands dirty?
I have this computer model that makes all that sort of thing totally obsolete. I just type in the numbers that I’m interested in and hey presto, I get the result I’m looking for.
What could be simpler?
Evaporation is strongly related to the surface insolation in the tropics. Since the ocean surface temperature is regulated to 30C, one way to warm is to get more area at the maximum temperature. Now the reason the temperature is limited is that surface insolation reduces to control the temperature by formation of convective cloud. It follows that increasing average ocean surface temperature does not necessarily lead to more evaporation and more precipitation. A paper on this observation here:
http://ocp.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/pub/seager/seager_mch_2003.pdf
Their little trick is….drum roll…..”since records began!!”
Everybody knows the weather was just one big monotonous repetitive nothing burger before records began!! (1766)… #cough# don’t mention great floods of 1736 and 1763 in England, they don’t count.
FAO GRIFF*
You claim that March 2021 is heading to be the wettest on record not likely in England.
March 2021 to date
England Total (mm)12, % Long Term Average 18%
Source
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/968763/Rainfall_and_river_flow_summary_3_to_9_March_2021.pdf
Unfortunately SEPA is currently offline due to a cyber attack, so official data for Scotland is unavailable, by my brother in Tayside/Fife reckons it’s not been that wet in the last couple of weeks.
https://www.sepa.org.uk/
But I’ve had a look at live webcams on places I’m familiar with in the Tay catchment area (4000+ square km) Crieff, Dunkeld, Pitlochry and Grandtully and none look like there’s been a lot of rain above winter normal. I then had a look round several live webcams in the far north and borders but none looked like there’d been excessive rain for the mont of March 2021.
So just where is the source of your claim
There has been a significant change in rainfall recording in the UK which in an honest world would be made clear. A standard rain gauge had been in use since Victorian times and was read daily at 9am by a human being. There were also monthly stations that were read on 1st of every month by a human being. What this meant is that they were placed so as to be accessible.
Now we are in the digital world and rain gauges are automatic. Now they no longer need to be accessible so we have the factor labelled by one commenter as ‘The Honiton Pass Factor’ where there is an automatic gauge up a mountain that is a recent introduction and is jumped on with glee by the liars at the Met Office to give misleading rainfall figures.
Yes they have put these automatic gauges in all sorts of places up mountains etc that were never measured before and lo the rainfall magically increased!
To editor Charles Rotter or author Paul Homewood:
I believe there is an error in the second chart in the above article. Shouldn’t the red line linear curve-fit be titled “Trend 0.03 mm per annum” and not “Trend 0.03C mm per annum”?