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Post by marchesarosa on Jan 7, 2013 5:33:53 GMT
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Post by marchesarosa on Jan 7, 2013 5:43:01 GMT
How the Met Office got last year's wet/dry forecasts 100% wrong. Even pure chance would have had them right 50% of the time! As usual, the Met was slavishly following its own "global warming" mantra. From Paul Homewood ...some of the forecasts they were making during 2012.
Each month they issue a 3-month outlook. Unfortunately the ones issued prior to September have disappeared from their archives, but I had already saved the April-June, and also the Sep-Nov forecasts. Along with the Oct-Dec ones, what were the Met forecasting as the year progressed?
For Jan – March, the Met forecast wet weather, and got dry!
On 23rd March, they predicted “The forecast for average UK rainfall slightly favours drier than average conditions for April/May/June as a whole, and also slightly favours April being the driest of the 3 months.”
RESULT – RAINFALL TOTALS WERE 176%, 94% AND 203% OF NORMAL IN APRIL, MAY AND JUNE RESPECTIVELY.
www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/p/i/A3-layout-precip-AMJ.pdf
For June – August, they admitted they had no clue, and got rain 158% above average!
On 24th August, their forecast for September “weakly favours below normal values”.
RESULT – RAINFALL WAS 117% OF NORMAL IN SEPTEMBER.
www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/i/e/A3-plots-precip-SON.pdf
On 21st September, they said “For UK-averaged rainfall the predicted probabilities favour below normal rainfall during October. For the period October-November-December as a whole the range of forecasts also favours lower than average rainfall”
RESULT – RAINFALL WAS 101% OF NORMAL IN OCTOBER.
www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/h/g/A3-plots-precip-OND.pdf
On 24th October, they forecast “Predictions for UK-mean precipitation for both November and the November-December-January period are similar to climatology”
RESULT – RAINFALL WAS 111% OF NORMAL IN NOVEMBER.
www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/q/6/A3-plots-precip-NDJ.pdf
And on 20th November, “Predictions for UK-mean precipitation for December show a slight shift towards below-normal values – consistent with negative North Atlantic Oscillation conditions”
RESULT – RAINFALL WAS 150% OF NORMAL IN DECEMBER.
www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/j/i/A3_plots-precip-DJF.pdf
So for the seven months between April and December, that forecasts are available for, the Met Office forecast drier than normal conditions in six, and normal in the seventh. They failed to get any month correct, and for the seven months in question, rainfall averaged 36% above normal levels, (which are based on 1981-2010.)
It is very kind of Julia Slingo of the Met Office to tell us now that she knew all along it was likely to be wetter. It is just a pity, though, that she forgot to tell us at the time.  As soon as an official drought was declared and hosepipe bans instituted the deluge set in. How embarrassing! |
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aubrey
WH Member
Seeker for Truth and Penitence
Posts: 665
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Post by aubrey on Jan 7, 2013 11:30:38 GMT
Henry Darger, the writer and artist of The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, kept a weather diary for ten years, which was less a diary of the weather and more a chronicle of how the local weatherman had got it wrong: How can he co on and say it's going to be like this when he got it so spectacularly wrong yesterday? How can he bear to show himself? sort of thing. Read about him Here.There is also a film about him called In the Realms of the Unreal. A really good thing to see, if you get the chance. The point is, weather forecasters have always got it wrong, and people have always criticised them for it. Since about October, the Daily Express has been promising the worst snow for years, to fall within about two weeks (exaggeration: but they did it in October, and they've done it 2 or 3 times since). |
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Post by marchesarosa on Jan 9, 2013 1:25:32 GMT
From Paul Hudson, my fav BBC weatherman The new projection, if correct, would mean there will have been little additional warming for two decades despite rising greenhouse gases.
It's bound to raise questions about the robustness and reliability of computer simulations that governments around the world are using in order to determine policies aimed at combating global warming.
The Met Office says natural cycles have caused the recent slowdown in warming, including perhaps changes in the suns activity, and ocean currents.
And mainstream climate scientists, who are in a majority, say that when the natural cooling factors change again, temperatures will be driven up further by greenhouse gases.
But climate sceptics, who have long argued that natural processes are either underestimated, or not properly understood, will not be surprised at this scaling back of expected warming. Follow me on twitter @hudsonweather www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2013/01/met-office-scale-back-global-w.shtml |
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Post by marchesarosa on Jan 9, 2013 1:26:42 GMT
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Post by marchesarosa on Jan 9, 2013 1:28:10 GMT
Climate model forecast is revisedBy David Shukman Science editor, BBC News "An apparent standstill in global temperatures is used by critics of efforts to tackle climate change as evidence that the threat has been exaggerated." You betcha, David! We rate observations above the Met Office's "supercomputer models" any day. Have you ever considered the possibility that the science is not as settled as you convinced yourself it was? The hiatus of nearly two decades in "warming" while CO2 emissions have been barrelling along ever upwards needs some explanation from the CO2 cultists. www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20947224Here's the latest satellite data for those of you who like your information in pictures rather than words. 
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Post by marchesarosa on Jan 9, 2013 1:30:01 GMT
Must be very galling for all you warmists finding that even the Met Office is now "denying" the supposed last 15 years of the "Global Warming" you have all been agonising about .
Tee hee.
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Post by marchesarosa on Jan 9, 2013 1:34:23 GMT
Sure, there was a summer drought in the USA, but as we all know the USA is only 2% of the globe's surface and regional WEATHER does not add up to GLOBAL climate. It's always good to bear this in mind.
I just watched a CBS report on Sky news which labelled last year's drought, fires, tornadoes and Sandy in the USA as "CLIMATE CHANGE". Sorry, that's a FAIL. It was just WEATHER. Unfortunate that they al came in the same year, but just the variability of the WEATHER nevertheless.
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Post by marchesarosa on Jan 10, 2013 23:08:49 GMT
Graham Stringer MP: Labour MP Graham Stringer said the Met Office’s short-term forecasts had improved, but their climate change analysis was ‘poor’.
He said: ‘By putting out the information on Christmas Eve they were just burying bad news – that they have got their climate change forecast wrong.
‘For a science-based organisation, they should be more up front, both about their successes and failures.’ and Myles Allen Professor Myles Allen of the University of Oxford said: ‘A lot of people were claiming, in the run-up to the Copenhagen 2009 conference, that warming was accelerating and it is all worse than we thought.
‘What has happened since then has demonstrated that it is foolish to extrapolate short-term climate trends. (Such as the one from 1976-1998?)
‘While every new year brings in welcome new data to help us rule out the more extreme scenarios for the future, it would be equally silly to interpret what has happened since the early 2000s as evidence that the warming has stopped.’ Translation: It would be silly to interpret the fact that the temperature is not rising as evidence that it is not getting warmer. www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2259012/Global-warming-Met-Office-releases-revised-global-temperature-predictions-showing-planet-NOT-rapidly-heating-up.htmlTime will tell. No need to jump the gun just yet. |
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Post by marchesarosa on Jan 12, 2013 0:52:46 GMT
The UK’s Met Office has downgraded its forecast for warming at the Earth’s surface over the next five years. Headlines this week announced that global warming is “at a standstill”. Climate sceptics crowed. But the Met Office said the outlook for later in the century remains unchanged. New Scientist looks at the facts.
Has global warming stopped, or hasn’t it?
Atmospheric warming has certainly slowed greatly in the past decade. The Met Office says this appears to be due to natural cycles that are counteracting the warming effect of greenhouse gases. After incorporating new analysis of natural cycles into its latest model of atmospheric and ocean circulation, it has concluded that we are in for a few more years of little change.
Having calculated annual global temperatures for the next five years, its best guess is that they will be, on average, 0.43 °C higher than the average for 1970 to 2000. That’s down from its previous prediction of a 0.54 °C rise. If the new prediction proves right, then 2017 will barely be warmer than most years in the past decade.
The forecast comes with a big error bar, however. The average warming for the next five years could be as much as 0.59 °C, or as little as 0.28 °C.
What has changed in their thinking?
There is a growing awareness among climate scientists of the importance of natural variability in predicting climate change, especially in the short term, where it can completely obscure the global warming signal. This realisation has been bubbling up for a while. Four years ago, New Scientist reported evidence – including research by the Met Office’s Doug Smith – that natural cycles were pushing the atmosphere into a cold phase. Back then, we said the research “suggests that surface air temperatures will remain steady for the next six years or so, as cooler sea surface temperatures keep the lower atmosphere cool despite ever higher greenhouse gas levels”.
So what are these natural cycles?
Mostly they involve the movement of heat between the atmosphere and the oceans. The oceans are the sleeping giant of climate change. They act as a huge heat sink: 90 per cent of the heat generated by accumulating greenhouse gases is absorbed by the oceans. How fast this happens is variable, depending on ocean currents and other fluctuations.
Scientists have known for a long time that in El Niño years, when warm water spreads out across the equatorial Pacific, heat leaves the ocean for the atmosphere. But there are also longer-term cycles. The biggest cycles are known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. Recently, both have been causing the oceans to absorb more heat, shutting off atmospheric warming.
There are other possible confounding influences. The 11-year solar cycle has a small effect. So do volcanic eruptions and smog that shades the earth. Longer term, changes in Earth’s orbit are thought to trigger ice ages. But all the evidence is that in recent times and over the coming decades, ocean-atmosphere interactions are the only influence comparable in scale to greenhouse gases.
Are these cycles just something scientists have invented to explain away the lack of recent warming?
No. The Met Office admits that we still know far too little about how these natural cycles work, and how big they are. And climate scientists are open to the charge that they ignored the potential impact of natural variability when it was accelerating global warming. According to Brian Hoskins of Imperial College London, it now looks like natural cycles played a big role in the unexpectedly fast warming of the 1990s. Read the rest of Fred’s piece here: www.newscientist.com/article/dn23060-has-global-warming-ground-to-a-halt.html |
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Post by marchesarosa on Jan 12, 2013 0:57:49 GMT
Tallbloke comments: ...if natural variability has the power to cancel the alleged anthropogenic effect, then it is a simple logical deduction that it must also be capable of doubling it. Therefore it is likely that at least half the rise in temperature from 1975-2005 was natural variation. Therefore climate sensitivity is much lower than the IPCC says. Therefore much less heat can be mysteriously defying the second law of thermodynamics and making its way down through 700m of cooling upper ocean to lurk in the abyss and come back to sauna us to death later. It surprises me that someone of Fred’s obvious intelligence doesn’t get this. tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/01/11/fred-pearce-has-global-warming-ground-to-a-halt/#comment-40489 |
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Post by marchesarosa on Jan 12, 2013 1:08:15 GMT
Stephen Wilde says: January 11, 2013 at 12:19 pm “Before it is safe to attribute a global warming or a global cooling effect to any other factor (CO2 in particular) it is necessary to disentangle the simultaneous overlapping positive and negative effects of solar variation, PDO/ENSO and the other oceanic cycles. Sometimes they work in unison, sometimes they work against each other and until a formula has been developed to work in a majority of situations all our guesses about climate change must come to nought.” From here: climaterealists.com/index.php?id=1302&linkbox=true&position=9May 21st 2008 |
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Post by marchesarosa on Jan 14, 2013 10:01:30 GMT
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Post by marchesarosa on Jan 14, 2013 10:12:17 GMT
The point is, weather forecasters have always got it wrong, and people have always criticised them for it. Since about October, the Daily Express has been promising the worst snow for years, to fall within about two weeks (exaggeration: but they did it in October, and they've done it 2 or 3 times since). So why are YOU so enamoured of prophecies of doom, aubrey? One would have thought a highly sophisticated chap like you would be immune to scare-mongering. Like wot I am, in fact. |
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Post by marchesarosa on Jan 14, 2013 13:18:21 GMT
From Tim Ball, the man currently being sued by thin-skinned Michael Mann for stating that he should be in the State Pen rather than in Penn State. That Mann is short on humour, too! Tim Ball illustrates this general failure. As he states, the issue is not the lack of computational power. “The real problems are inadequate data, lack of understanding of most major mechanisms, incorrect assumptions, and a determination to prove, instead of falsify, the AGW hypothesis.” Perfect summary of IPCC climatology. |
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