By P Gosselin
Europe saw a dry summer this year and global climate alarmists claimed that droughts are becoming more and more frequent. This is the new normal, they like to claim.
However, a treasure of hard data refute this completely. A recent paper by Hawkins et al published by the Royal Meteorological Society delivers astonishing results tabulated from old, meticulously hand-written observations going back over 300 years.
Hat-tip: Die kalte Sonne here.
What follows is the paper’s abstract. The key statements are emphasized:
Recovering additional historical weather observations from known archival sources will improve the understanding of how the climate is changing and enable detailed examination of unusual events within the historical record.
The UK National Meteorological Archive recently scanned more than 66,000 paper sheets containing 5.28 million hand-written monthly rainfall observations taken across the UK and Ireland between 1677 and 1960.
Only a small fraction of these observations were previously digitally available for climate scientists to analyse. More than 16,000 volunteer citizen scientists completed the transcription of these sheets of observations during early 2020 using the RainfallRescue.org website, built using the Zooniverse platform. A total of 3.34 million observations from more than 6000 locations have so far been quality controlled and made openly available. This has increased the total number of monthly rainfall observations that are available for this time period and region by a factor of six. The newly rescued observations will enable longer and much improved reconstructions of past variations in rainfall across the British and Irish Isles, including for periods of significant flooding and drought. Specifically, this data should allow the official gridded monthly rainfall reconstructions for the UK to be extended back to 1836, and even earlier for some regions.”
It is truly stunning that such a volume of precious data would go ignored for so long by research institutes that are publicly funded to the tune of tens millions of dollars annually to reconstruct historical climate.
Now that it has taken 16,000 volunteers to come in and do this work, we have since gained a much clearer picture of the UK’s past climate. Some of the results are interesting, if not surprising, especially in terms of all the doomsday drought claims having been made lately.
The driest year on record didn’t happen recently, but in the year 1855. Moreover, as the chart above shows, the trend has been wetter, and not drier. Rainfall has averaged 10% more than recently then in the mid 19thcentury.
The dry years seen since 1950 turn out to be nothing out of the ordinary.
The more recent data will need to be adjusted down. Wet rulers get longer and mis-record the rainfall. Or something.
the plastic used in rain gauges since glass ones were phased out shrinks when exposed to sunlight
not joking
Does the shrinkage affect the readings and if so, by how much?
It depends on how cold the water is.
And who is measuring and reporting
!
!
!
= 9″
(She said “Give me nine inches and make it hurt”. So I gave her three inches three times and hit her in the head with an ashtray)
Just ask George Costanza
https://www.youtube.com › watch?v=8DoARSlv-HUhttps://www.youtube.com › watch?v=8DoARSlv-HU
Shrinkage affects volume, and if assumptions are followed, the observed level will misrepresent the collection.
Uch, the plastic used in a rain gauge does not shrink because of sunlight, to any measurable degree during its lifetime, it’s thicker and better quality than plastic drinking bottles, which also dont shrink when left out in the sun, even if they break down completely over a decades span.
What does happen is some photochemical breakdown of the plastic.
Where are you getting the nonsense?
I do believe it was meant as a joke. Any error, from anything would be on the order of a millimetre for the rainfall at that spot. Centimetres for the yearly rainfall of the local area.
If the plastic shrinks then so does the aperture!!!
To be fair, the UKMO extended its rainfall records back to 1836 some months ago using the data provided by this study.
dont bother be fair, people are making jokes
Have you downloaded it? It’s in a mad format, almost designed not to actually be useful!
Columns for both month and year, with each month value being paired with a random year. So the data is actually shuffled both vertically and horizontally.
There is no reason for it that I can see. The easiest explanation is that they want to have published it, but they don’t want anyone using it.
Whilst the jokes are amusing, there are actually many problems with comparing different types of rain gauges used throughout history. Designs have changed and for various reasons results are not directly comparable and may be more prone to operator issues etc.
I recall the rain gauge in our school weather station: a Negretti and Zambra original like this one. Any water collected in the flask was tipped into a narrow graduate allowing measurement to the nearest 1/100th of an inch in theory. Of course trace quantities remained behind in the jar, and despite the design aiming to minimise evaporation loss, light drizzle was almost certainly under-recorded. Readings were taken just before morning classes started at 9 a.m. on a rota. The largest measurement I made was 3.45″, all ascribable to a very heavy summer afternoon thunderstorm.
Turns out the measurements were all made in reference frames moving at nearly the speed of light so the Lorentz formula needs to be applied to contract them.
Quite variable, too, as well as trending wetter.
Even the Droughts are getting wetter.
I guess the Met is 66,000 sheets to the wind
And it seems that a colder climate is dryer.
Does anyone think climate activists in the UK will change their tune concerning modern drought?
Does a bear say mass? Does the Pope shit in the woods/
Beware a bare bear bearing gifts from Barings.
I can’t bear it.
Nope!
Well yeah. The next time there is a flood somewhere.
So you are ageist when it comes to droughts… are you saying our boomer droughts were somehow inferior!!!?? I am oh fen did!! Why would they change their tune, they will have some geriatric pseudo scientist make a documentary about how they know the data is incorrect because the data they have does not have a heatwave in the early 1930’s, so who is right scientist or old dead men.
Meh. Doesn’t matter . That’s the beauty of the scam. Warmer/colder; drier/wetter; all because CO2 – and probably Trump. And Brexit.
And my shoelace broke this morning….
Early in the climate change scam, it was noticed that Mars was also warming in the same way that the Earth was. Of course, the scientists explained, it’s because Australia didn’t ratify the Kyoto agreement.
sunspot correlation anyone?
Willis……
your prediction? without a theory or causal mechanism, we dont just willy nilly check for correlations. because you will always find some correlation, especially given that sunspots is a messed up subjective metric
Actually, scientists do just willy nilly check for correlations. They don’t just publish their correlations and claim to have proven something by them.
Correlations are excellent ways to look for relationships that you weren’t aware of. They are often sign posts to new knowledge.
They themselves prove nothing.
Scientists know that kind of stuff.
I have read a number of papers that were about nothing more than a correlation that the researcher found to be interesting. Sometimes they will speculate about what might be behind the correlation, but they never claim to have demonstrated anything other than that a correlation exists.
Usually such a paper will end with the statement that more research needs to be done.
The traditional ending… send more money.
so alice, got any actual citations.
or is your personel word worth something
You’re the one who made the unsupported claim. Do you think your word is worth something?
Actually that would be awesome if more researchers, amateur or pro, would share their observations instead of hiding them away, even if they could not figure out any mechanisms and let others take a look and a stab at figuring things out.
Poor Kepler had to buy Tycho’s observations.
Excel even offers a statistical function of a co-correlation matrix so that one can quickly scan all the variables in a spreadsheet for correlations. A prudent researcher would look at the matrix to see what they might be missing.
funny at lawrence livomore labs, excell was a word i never heard.
hey alice what random shit can excell do?. just run a stepwise regression against the whole database.
and other dumb things engineers suggest
“Actual, real scientists know that kind of stuff.“
There. Fixed it for you.
no they know if you check for 100 correlations you will find something
you have to.
sorry the only scientists i worked with had nobels in physics
Steven
Good to see you posting again, I think, hope you are well
Many of the massive nutritional studies only look for correlations between consumed food and drink, and health problems. No theory, no casual mechanism. They don’t even hypothesize x will correlate to y. Then media breathlessly reports that you are x% more likely to suffer anxiety if you butter the wrong side of your bread.
Of course, these studies are intended to reveal possible anomalies that could be worth further study, understanding that the substantial majority of the correlations are spurious.
Wow, a drive by from Mosher. We ARE privileged and blessed.
We ARE privileged yes
blessed only if you learn something
A. you dont just run stepwise regressions against all the variables you collct
B. you dont data mine for correlations using excell.
the sun heats the earthh. at least thats the theory ive never seen proof
or a controlled lab experiment.
weirdly it also shines on the moon, but not with the same effect
He thinks so.
Put another way: test your theory by looking for correlations instead of anti-correlations, that just about sums up climate change science.
As Mosher says “you will always find some correlation”.
““you will always find some correlation”.”
The only thing supporting the AGW meme.
actually no. raidiative physics is not about correlation
no.
take any two time series in climate. run a correlation
you will always find a value >0 and lt 1. or lt 0 and greater than -1
never 0,1 or -1. suppose you find .5
then you have to decide, is this by chance. do i expect to find a positive correlation? why? why not? whats this say about the sun and rain
will it rain tommorrow? how much.
in other terms you cannot come to data naive, innocent of any theory under question.
Like correlating mean tweets and thermometer readings?
A real scientist collects as much data as possible and looks for any correlations before making up any theories.
Observe
Graph
Think
Theorize
Test
Rinse and repeat.
Just doing a rough count by eye, the spikes seem to average around 5 years apart, and the dry years range from 5 years to 20 years apart.
You just started doing science! Don’t tell Mosher – he says finding correlations (patterns) first is not science. Apparently the New Science requires you to have some quasi-fascist world goal in mind before theorizing.
But I like the classic way, like you’re doing, best.
Ok, so climate change is causing the UK to get wetter which will result in more drownings or some such thing. See how easy it is to simply move the goal posts.
XR’s next protest sign!
DHMO is the number one greenhouse gas! Ban it now!
Warmer air holds more moisture so a warming world should have more rainfall for an island on the edge of the Atlantic.
Warming oceans increase evaporation rates, too. And as we all know, the warming is alleged to be global, and most of the globe is ocean. Therefore and it stands to reason warmth means more rain almost everywhere. Which indeed is what the IPCC scenariates. Greening of deserts etc. like back in the HCO.
Yet another reason why Warmer Is Better.
It doesn’t matter that warmer air holds more moisture if the “cold side” of the weather is also warmer. It is the delta T that makes the weather, and moisture shedding by condensation.
It the whole system is two degrees warmer the amount of water transported is the same. Just because a warmer atmosphere contains more water vapour does not mean it will drop more water – not at all!
Claiming that a warmer, wetter atmosphere will produce more rain requires the speaker to ignore one side of the equation.
If the Poles heat first and more, the delta T is reduced for storms like Hurricane Hazel. The really strong typhoons may disappear completely. Once the public is sufficiently educated the climate alarm industry will reach a tipping point, suddenly lose all funding and follow typhoons into the dustbin of history.
So does this mean that warming will cause the sea level to go down, because more water is up in the atmosphere?
Good of P Gosselin to send the report here, and shirley it is another important Reality check. However, CAGW is about feelings, such as “I feel like your data needs to be tortured, no that’s not the word, oh yea, adjusted, to fit the New Reality”. The Loonies are not going to get off the CAGW Train until it jumps off the tracks. Don’t wait for it.
Don’t call me Shirley.
Don’t call me surely.
Don’t call me surly.
Yep, totally agree Ron. The loonies have adopted CAGW as a religion, they are BELIEVERS!
Too bad so many politicians belong to the congregation.
Who’s claiming droughts are becoming more frequent in the UK?
The Met Office have this to say:
Funny you should say that. Your favourite Alarmist rag The Grauniad attributes the current drought to Climate “Breakdown”.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/13/europes-rivers-run-dry-as-scientists-warn-drought-could-be-worst-in-500-years
Of course, a few years ago The Graun was telling us the floods were also due to Climate Change.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/feb/16/climate-change-risk-uk-floods
The sun coming up in the east is caused by climate change.
If sunrise came from the West, that of course would be caused by racism.
Nothing in there about droughts becoming more frequent in the UK.
Ever considered changing your handle to The Final Guffaw?
You know little about our climate
Hi fretslider. Did you manage to catch any sun this summer? It was the tied 4th warmest summer since CET records began in 1659. Tell me you didn’t need to put the heat on at least!
It was a dry year but nothing like ‘76
That was tied for 4th most boring attempt at claiming there is a problem with the weather
Summer sunshine still only averaged just ~2.5 GW
out of 14 GW nameplate & is dropping to it’s winter
low- ~0.5 GW. WINTER sunshine, or lack there of,
is the UK’s biggest fear. Nat’l Grid will need to
crank it up to a lot more than just 11!
Don’t think sunshine is the issue with AGW.
Now the final fool hates sunny weather.. WOW !
No, I love it. It’s just that AGW is not predicted to increase sunny weather, in my humble understanding of it.
There wasn’t much in my part of Lancashire. It was nothing compared to ’76, ’95 and ’06.
Then that must mean global warming is wrong then. You cracked it, from dull old Lancashire. (Just across the sea from me actually, and we had a really warm summer. Unlucky.)
What made it higher? Tmax or Tmin?
Maybe a combination of the two?
Well who would have thought…During a drought temperatures are more than likely warmer.
Indeed, but as we all know, there is more to ‘drought’ than just lack of rainfall and warm weather. Water management, water demand, system failures, etc.
Heat and lack of rainfall don’t help, but they are not necessarily the cause.
Reading comprehension clearly isn’t your strong suit.
The headline reads, “Climate Change doubled likelihood of devastating UK floods of 2000”.
Still struggling to see what this has to do with the claim that droughts are increasing.
Try actually reading the article before making a fool of yourself. If necessary, get a grown-up to help you.
From the first Grauniad article:
“We haven’t analysed fully this year’s event because it is still ongoing,” said Andrea Toreti of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. “There were no other events in the past 500 [years] similar to the drought of 2018. But this year, I think, is worse.”
He said there was “a very high risk of dry conditions” continuing over the next three months, adding that without effective mitigation drought intensity and frequency would “increase dramatically over Europe, both in the north and in the south”.
Oh come on – everyone knows everything will get worse due to global warming.
“everything will get worse due to global warming”
Certainly has with my Hemorrhoids !!
15 down-votes (to date) yet not single refutation. Welcome to WUWT.
Arguments from invincible ignorance lose entertainment value quickly. We downvote and move on.
Perfect. The perpetual motto of the uninformed.
We’ve learned to recognize those whose only goal is diversion and sophistry. I’m sure you are impressing yourself.
All your assertions have been proven false.
The Met Office is rightly very cautious in its statements, but plenty of other folk simply assume that the drought of 2022 is due to climate change, like the fellow in this article:
https://theconversation.com/drought-why-some-uk-trees-are-losing-their-leaves-in-august-188576
The fact that we’ve had worse droughts in the past (1976 & 1921 are the most recent) is little discussed.
Meanwhile there are academics who do say that droughts will get worse, like Prof Arnell in this article:
https://www.expressandstar.com/news/uk-news/2022/08/11/are-we-in-a-drought-and-is-it-caused-by-climate-change/
You obviously don’t live in the UK. This year, I have read numerous articles by British journalists claiming that this year’s drought is caused by climate change and that we can expect many more such droughts in the future.
Thanks Bill. Perhaps you could link to an example showing the the specific claim made in this article, i.e. that (unspecified) “climate alarmists” are claiming that “droughts are becoming more and more frequent” in the UK. (He mentions ‘Europe’, but only references rainfall data from the UK, so the implication is that this is where he is referring to.)
I guess it’s certainly possible that some UK journo has fired off an ill-informed opinion piece. My point is that there doesn’t seem to be any scientific basis for the claim that droughts in the UK are becoming more frequent; nor can I find any scientific forecast that they are expected to become so.
Your reply makes it clear that don’t live in Britain. The alarmist propaganda in the British media about any weather event is everywhere. Most of the articles also have a British scientist supporting the claims made, no matter how ridiculous. It is quite depressing what a scientist will say when his job is being funded by climate alarmist organisations.
Here are just a couple of the media reports in Britain saying that droughts will become more frequent due to climate change. There are many many more.
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/extreme-droughts-to-be-more-common-1983913.html
https://www.water.ox.ac.uk/more-severe-and-widespread-uk-droughts-expected-with-climate-change/
I live in Derby, East Midlands of England. This year was dry, but not dry enough to cause trees to go into early autumn, nor did all the grass go completely brown. Many of the aerial photos of brown fields were of harvested grain fields in the south which are brown every year after the combines have been through. We actually had rain on several days in July and August.
We also missed out on the three record breaking hot days. If we got 36 hours I’d be surprised. We needed the cooling fan on very few days no more than four or five. Any heat was in the south, Griff territory, unlike 1976.
I live in Northern Ireland: so it’s a definition thing, leading us in a whole other direction!
Your links are over 10 years old and refer to forecasts stretching “over the next 100 years”.
The studies are not supported by the UK Met Office publications or data, nor do they state the specific claim that “droughts are becoming more and more frequent” in the UK.
Here are some more recent links to media articles which claim that droughts will become more frequent. I agree that the studies are not supported by data. None of the alarmist articles published in the media are supported by data; that is the point.
https://theglobalherald.com/news/droughts-to-become-more-frequent/
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/19365213.scotland-climate-droughts-become-three-times-frequent-2049/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/07/drought-to-become-more-frequent-severe-and-longer-due-to-climate-change-government-reports
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10086061/UK-adapt-die-flooding-droughts-frequent-Environment-Agency-warns.html
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/energy/10562148/Britain-warned-of-more-droughts-caused-by-climate-change-and-growing-population.html
This is a replacement link for the Daily Mail article which doesn’t work for some reason.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10086061/UK-adapt-die-flooding-droughts-frequent-Environment-Agency-warns.html
“…nor can I find any scientific forecast that they are expected to become so.”
General climate change trends projected over UK land for the 21st century in UKCP18 are broadly consistent with earlier projections (UKCP09) showing an increased chance of warmer, wetter winters and hotter, drier summers along with an increase in the frequency and intensity of extremes.
Where is the prediction for increased drought here?
What do you think more frequent and intense hot dry summers is going to produce?
Take your time….. it begins with d.
“Current climate change projections for the UK suggest that by the 2050s, under the medium emissions scenario, summer temperatures may increase and summer rainfall may decrease.
Short-duration droughts (12-18 months) are likely to become more frequent, so that droughts like 1976 could be more common despite the increased resilience of public water supply and more winter storage.”
Environment spokeswoman talking to the BBC.
How unusual, it appears you are wrong.
”Climate change will intensify UK droughts so we must take action now” https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate”The Environment Agency estimates that water demand may outstrip supply across southern England in as short a timescale as 20 years if the country does not adapt to its new climate by building reservoirs and desalination plants.”
https://theconversation.com/au/environment
Better make multiple certified copies and spread to multiple secure locations before the greenies purge, change, or delete the data (as has happened in the US).
Please don’t send the raw data to Phil Jones or UEA.
Moreover, as the chart above shows, the trend has been wetter, and not drier.
________________________________
And so does NOAA’s Climate At A Glance show a wetter trend for the USA-48
Which brings us back to the question of exactly who it is we’re supposed to be railing against?
The UK met Office isn’t claiming that droughts in the UK are becoming more frequent, nor are they forecasting that they will do so. They used the study cited in the report to update their rainfall records, extending them back to 1836, as the study recommends.
Who are we supposed to be mad at here?
That all you hear in the states, Climate Change cause droughts in California.
Also causes floods in Pakistan.
And floods in Kalifornia.
AND droughts in Pakistan!
Sheesh!
Auto
Who are we supposed to be mad at here?
___________
You’re right, from above and right of the bat , it says:
“Europe saw a dry summer this year and global climate alarmists claimed that droughts are becoming more and more frequent. This is the new normal, they like to claim.”
P Gosselin didn’t provide any supporting links for that, you have to do your own Google search on “UK increasing drought” and you will find lots of hits from the misleadia, you know, the BBC, National Geographic and so on.
The IPCC’s AR4 Chapter 10 page 750 says:
Precipitation Extremes and Droughts
There is a tendency for drying of the mid-continental areas during summer, indicating a greater risk of droughts in those regions.
It’s pretty much taken for granted that the so called main stream media extrapolates that statement out to claim that climate change means more drought everywhere.
The first part is correct, the second part isn’t.
On the MET Office’s “Effects of climate change” webpage (direct link) they have a “Changes to the UK climate and weather events” table that includes the line :
Nice one Mark BLR!. The Final Nail starts with a fulsome denial, which degenerates into a hair splitting fest and terminates with a citation for the absolute refutation of their position. A final nail, if you like.
In my view, their initial interjection and the subsequent way it is eviscerated provides a great service to the casual grazing reader. The Final Nail didn’t start out to support the prevalent view of WUWT readers but the net effect of their casual attempts to weaken the argument through nitpicks ends up strengthening it tremendously through facts. Thanks for your comment.
I’m beginning to think the final nail refers to the last fingernail desperately trying to cling to the CAGW scam as it crashes.
Oh yeah, I’m clinging on by the fingernails as this huge scam-storm smashes over me!
Do you guys ever read news that isn’t channeled via Fox?
Do you actually look outside, even?
If you think you are informed by watching/reading the news, then no wonder you buy into the scam.
Yes.
My life experience has taught me, however, the basic validity of Mark Twain’s observation that
Never simply believe something you read on the Internet, especially if it agrees with your instincts (/ prejudices), without checking the details for yourself (as far as that is possible).
I’m on the other side of “The Pond”.
The TV channels available to me from my “box” don’t include any starting with “Fox …”.
And thanks for your comment, Jay. A good summation of the situation.
I see you have elected to describe a forecast increase in “dry spells” in the UK as an increase in “droughts” (your word). Two different things.
IPCC, AR6, WG-I report, in FAQ 8.3, “What causes droughts, and will climate change make them worse?”, on page 1157 :
Excellent!
Just give up and accept defeat, ToeFungalNail.
Yea, but all that historical data hasn’t been “homogenized” yet. Give them a chance…they’ll “fix” it.
Last year we had a wet summer, this year we had a dry summer
That’s natural variation
Two consecutive years of evidence in a single location settles it then. What fools we all are!
It is interesting looking at the Köppen-Geiger climate classification of different countries. There are 30 climate zones and sub-zones according to this classification. The UK has two while a country like Mexico has a dozen. I would expect significant change to be reflected by one zone becoming a different one but I have not seen any discussion of this kind of climate change.
All discussion is around some average number and not of the individual zones. That is why I argue that we should not use the amorphous term climate but be specific about each zone. Would a 2C average temperature increase mean that each zone increases by the same amount? Would a 2C increase in certain climate zones be a bad thing or good? Why are we not discussing climates, how each impacts on humans and how we can adapt to any changes and to the various weather conditions? Perhaps to do so would undermine the climate alarmism?
We have great charts to examine the climate zones like that below:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/Mexico_K%C3%B6ppen.svg
100% correct Michael.
Yes, good point. The climate clearly hasn’t changed in any meaningful sense. In definition of each climate zone it may be worth outlining the natural range of mean temperature which can be expected. I could do the same by looking at the limits of your mapped zones. No climate zones have changed meaningfully due to temperature, but I’d be surprised if additional greening from co2 hasnt moved a few boundaries.
I have, for some time, advocated that changes in temperature and precipitation be summarized by climate zones. It would probably be instructive, as I expect the changes to be different for the different zone and quite possibly counter to the changes in other zones. I don’t understand the focus on a single number (global mean) unless it serves some political end. It is generally acknowledged that the weather/climate system is so complex as to be computationally intractable. Yet, climatologists want to reduce all temperature changes with a skewed distribution to a single number. What’s even worse is that the mode would probably be a better representative than the mean.
Excellent post. Use of the Köppen-Geiger zones as markers of real climate change would put an end instantly to the constant disputes we see here on WUWT about temperatures, averaging, infilling, homogenization etc.
Previous climatic excursions are clearly and unequivocally shown by changes in vegetation such as tree-lines.
There seems to be some kind of step change happening between 1850 and 1860. Right about the time the Little Ice Age was ending.
While there does seem to be a slight uptick in rainfall since the late 1990’s, it’s caused mostly by having fewer dry years, rather than an increase in the level of wet years
Oh dear, only 4 authors – this will never see any more light of day
Headline:”Climate Emergency Not Supported by Data, Say Four Leading Italian Scientists
https://dailysceptic.org/2022/09/14/climate-emergency-not-supported-by-data-say-four-leading-italian-scientists/
The value of a climate paper is generally related to the inverse of the number of authors. Most have more than 20 and are worth less than one fifth of this paper’s value. It is a good rule of thumb.
If rainfall is increasing, that could indicate a strong negative feedback in action.
Before water can rain down, it first has to evaporate. It takes a lot of energy to evaporate that much water. So if you are still looking for that missing heat, perhaps much of it went into evaporation.
Secondly, before that water, that evaporation put into the sky can come down as rain, it must start condensing. Condensing water forms more clouds. More rain also means more and thicker clouds. Another negative feedback.
And most importantly, clouds reflect heat from the sun back out to space. This is hugely significant. In reality, it is clouds (not CO2) that controls out climate.
“If rainfall is increasing, that could…”
Get griff salivating another 6%
So it follows that the more energy that gets put into the climate system, the more water vapour can be produced.
That’s kind of the point.
I’m sure you want it to be the point.
But the reality is that as usual you are either fooling yourself or trying to fool others.
The point is that more rain by definition means more evaporation. It doesn’t necessarily mean more water in the air, except on a transitory basis.
This paper by Murphy, Wilby et al (Feb 2020) ‘The Forgotten Drought of 1765-1768 Reconstructing and re evaluating historical droughts in the British and Irish Isles’ begins with a literature survey.
Major droughts in England and Wales occured in 1798-1808, 1854-60, 1887-88, 1890-1909,1921-23, 1933-34, 1959, 1976, 1990-92, 1995-97.
Other clusters of dry seasons or years occurred in 1740-44, 1780-81, 1785-86, 1788-89 with shorter droughts in 1705, 1736, 1765 and 1785.
One paper that evaluated droughts in the east of the UK found the most severe were 1854-60 and 1893-1907 when both winters and summers were dry.
https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.6521
Wow, a literature survey. Or they could be like the IPCC and only look at the papers with which they agree, or like the EPA and only look at three lines of evidence.
I love retired engineers. They are so ‘confident’.
You are a fine one to talk!
OK!
Unlike you, they have reason to be confident.
two of which they authored.
Not really. It’s like the classic joke of someone looking for his lost car keys not where he dropped them, but under the streetlight because “the light is so much better here”.
Climate researchers prefer the data that’s easily available, even if it doesn’t adequately cover the period in question. The fact that it took 16,000 volunteers to transcribe the written records tells you why no grant-funded publication-driven climate scientist would be interested, particularly when a climate model could fill in absent data in a few hours and the result would sail though peer review.
It is more probable that Climate “Researchers” are absolutely uninterested in ANY data unless it can be tortured into agreeing with their predetermined narrative.
You can’t really expect our Beloved Leaders to pay taxpayers’ money in grants for data that runs counter to their Climate Emergency plans.
Even RuinablesUK and Vlad the Bad look for some value for money!
Just scanning the monthly? records into electronic files for 66,000 sheets is a time consuming business. Assuming 3 minutes per sheet to retrieve, scan, check for readability, and refile. Thats over a year for a single person.
But, it is faster and easier to use data that are unfit for purpose.
A former colleague of mine (a geologist) related the story of when he had to teach a ‘Bonehead’ math class to fulfill his required teaching load. He was writing on the chalk board when one of the students said, “Mr. Cotton, you made a mistake there.” Without missing a beat, Bill turned and said, “I may not be very accurate, but I’m fast!”
Even faster and easier to make up data.
Looking at the graph, it would appear to prove that global warming will cause an increase in rain, therefore floods. We will all drown, faster than we thought.
Sweet Jesus Adelaide’s annual average rainfall of 526.7mm isn’t even on the graph and they’re panicking they’re not dissolving as usual? Adelaide in 2021 (bom.gov.au)
Adelaide has rain data from 1839 –
Station: Adelaide (West Terrace / Ngayirdapira) Number: 23000 Opened: 1839
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=139&p_display_type=dataFile&p_stn_num=023000
But West Terrace was disused for ~40 years from 1978 – 2018 –
Kent Town Station: Adelaide (Kent Town) Number: 23090 was the main Adelaide station once West terrace closed from 1978 –
Then several years back Kent Town closed and West Terrace reopened.
BoM page to checkout maps of rainfall percentages for any period that takes your fancy.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/maps/rainfall/?variable=rainfall&map=percent&period=12month®ion=nat&year=2021&month=12&day=31
Yep not one of those BoM bozos stopped to think what they were doing in 1978 in trashing one of the longest serving Stevenson Screens in the Southern Hemisphere. All for the convenience of manually checking the readings at their new offices in Kent Town east of the CBD when our prevailing weather comes from the west. Shows you how much a ‘climate crisis’ meant at the time.
Agree the change to and from Kent Town is fascinating –
I have blogged a few times on Adelaide issues over the years
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?s=Kent+Town
“Hide the increase”.
Of course, then the warmunists will simply revert to the other side of their “heads I win, tails you lose” coin by claiming “no, human caused warming causes more floods”. They’re already doing that now, of course, speaking out of both sides of their lying mouths.
Whatever the weather does, it’s the fault of human caused warming, and it’s bad, bad, bad.
It’s like the old joke about marriage and relationships that goes,
“If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, then … well, it’s still the man’s fault.”
Wait, these data have not been homogenized.
I think you are completely missing the point which is that increased co2 will cause it to be drier except when it’s wetter and all outcomes are correctly predicted by the models.
Griff can tell us.
I had some spare time about 10 years ago i spent some time loading temperature records into a Zooniverse project.
I’ve often wondered what happened to these records
What happened to the records from 1677 to 1838 when the chart starts?
Link to paper at https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/gdj3.157
Excellent report P. Gosselin, crucial information in language we can all understand. Reports like this is the only way we can convince the everyday person how much and how often the green devils are lying to them. Once they figure this out they are going to be mad.
“It is truly stunning that such a volume of precious data would go ignored for so long by research institutes that are publicly funded to the tune of tens millions of dollars annually to reconstruct historical climate.”
Bah. Who needs data when you have models?
The point is, they knew the data were there, knew they were struggling with resources, asked for help, took the help that was provided and updated their official data set.
Isn’t that how science should work? What’s the problem?
That it took so long to ask for help and they were reaching conclusions based on a database known to have deficiencies. That is not how science is supposed to work. Mistakes happen, and one can be forgiven for being human. However, knowing that there were problems with the data, and publicly announcing their tenuous analyses with the confidence of that shown by a “retired engineer,” is not forgivable.
Like they were doing nothing else?
Also, what is it about this additional data that changes anything?
They have been completely open about it.
Again, what are we supposed to be getting mad about?
Working with data that you know to be incomplete is the opposite of science.
nope. data is always incomplete. that is lesson 1.
engineers ARE the only people ( and bean counters) who
dont know how to work with the data as given.
with uncertainty
with fermi problems
Why is it that so much of the really good and important climate science work is done by volunteers and amateurs?
Because those who make their living at climate science are more interested in protecting their pay checks than they are in actually doing real science.
look ive linked to these volunteer efforts on wuwt, but you guys never help.
its hard work, transcribing written records.
colder is drier
drier is dustier
dustier is darker
probably a much larger danger to global food production than falling temperatures themselves
So that is why we in the UK can get away with NOT building any new water reservoirs to match our now bursting population!
I wonder if the increasing rain is tracking the population rise?
Just wait till some charlatan starts homogenising the dataset.
Please link to the data in the main post. This?
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/datasets/Rainfall/ranked/UK.txt
Should be tested last 12 months minus last 12 months a year back and also 11/22 years cycles and the shorter AMO cycles which seems to be half a solar cycle at 5.5 years. For the fomer, nothing alarming, normal difference in precipitation over a full year change from plus to minus ~250 mm over the cycle for 500 mm in total, widened to plus 440 mm to minus 320 mm for a total change of 760 mm.
So yes, in the language of acidification, we are having a severe draughtification.. A year or two from now, we should be back into drownification (sounds a lot more alarming than floodification, eh?)
Difference in precipitation over the 11-year cycle, up from minus 773 mm in 1978 via plus 1402 mm in 1999, generally in the minus 300 to plus 800 mm area, the latest reading to be in falling territory with 275 mm on the plus side (last 11 year minus previous 11 year).
Oddgeir
Awesome work citizen scientists!
I hope there is much more historical data like this available for other countries and for temperatures and other data.
It is truly stunning that such a volume of precious data would go ignored for so long by research institutes that are publicly funded to the tune of tens millions of dollars annually to reconstruct historical climate.”
data rescue is a favorite topic.
why?
when we build a global record what we are doing is building a prediction
we have records at x,y,z t. some location some time
because this feild is incomplete we have to do spatial and temporal interpolations
not averaging!!!!!!!! but interpolation
when you have a complete space and time series, then you can average.
so we interpolate at time z, position x1,y2,z3. the temperature would have been
15.67C if we were there to measure it precisely.
THATS what a spatial average is. a prediction of what would have been recorded
at all the locations where we have no data.
so when we rescue data we automatically check it against our old predictions
weve done this with a lot of “lost records” recovered by hawkins
“there are millions of records at noaa, that havent been compiled”
That sounds fairly interesting. What kind of records? How do you know?
Richard Feynman (and Einstein too for that matter) memorably said in one of his lectures that if a theory/hypothesis didn’t agree with experiment or observation then IT IS WRONG. Not nearly right or some such. So, why after this are we not seeing the teaching of Climate Science changing?