19 December 2013 – The global average temperature in 2014 is expected to be between 0.43 °C and 0.71 °C above the long-term (1961-1990) average of 14.0 °C, with a central estimate of 0.57 °C, according to the Met Office annual global temperature forecast.
This is aimed at the average of GISS, NCDC, and HADCRUT4. Seems a strange idea to me because the Met Office only have their own stuff in their control and knowledge, are predicting against others. Herd mentality perhaps. And GISS?
Met Office are using 1961-1990, 30 year reference. Keeps the numbers high.
Last year (needs cross check)
20 December 2012 – 2013 is expected to be between 0.43 °C and 0.71 °C warmer than the long-term (1961-1990) global average of 14.0 °C, with a best estimate of around 0.57 °C, according to the Met Office annual global temperature forecast.
Identical 2013 and 2014 forecasts.
continuing
Taking into account the range of uncertainty in the forecast and observations, it is very likely that 2013 will be one of the warmest ten years in the record which goes back to 1850, and it is likely to be warmer than 2012.
Hang on a minute… pea and thimble…
Continuation this time is
Taking into account the range of uncertainty in the forecast, it is likely that 2014 will be one of the warmest ten years in the record which goes back to 1880.
Spotted the goalpost move?
in the record which goes back to 1850
and
in the record which goes back to 1880
HADCRUT3/4 starts 1850, the two US sets start 1880.
Why the change?
The wording has also changed to the more mature “central estimate” from “best estimate of around”. There is no “around”, it is an exact single value.
Whole thing less table
19 December 2013 – The global average temperature in 2014 is expected to be between 0.43 °C and 0.71 °C above the long-term (1961-1990) average of 14.0 °C, with a central estimate of 0.57 °C, according to the Met Office annual global temperature forecast.
Taking into account the range of uncertainty in the forecast, it is likely that 2014 will be one of the warmest ten years in the record which goes back to 1880.
The forecast range and central estimate for 2014 are the same as were forecast by the Met Office for 2013.
Using observations up to the end of October 2013, this year’s global average temperature is currently estimated to be between 0.39 °C and 0.59 °C, with a central estimate of 0.49 °C*. Using this central estimate, 2013 currently ranks as the 9th warmest** year on record, but final figures for the whole year will not be available until March 2014.
The current central estimate of the global temperature for 2013 is within the range forecast by the Met Office last year. 2013 is also in the top ten warmest years and is more likely than not to be warmer than 2012, both of which were predicted in last year’s global average temperature forecast.
* Observationally based estimates of global average temperature are an average of the three main global temperature datasets, which are compiled by the Met Office and University of East Anglia (HadCRUT4), NOAA National Climatic Data Center (NOAA NCDC) and NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies (NASA GISS).
— http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2013/global-temperature-2014
and
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2012/2013-global-forecast
The old old rule of thumb, forecast technique to beat, is same tomorrow as today. Not easy to better.
Post by Tim
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
2012: ” it is very likely that 2013 will be one of the warmest ten years in the record which goes back to 1850″
2013: “it is likely that 2014 will be one of the warmest ten years in the record which goes back to 1880.”
This is because they are running out of slots for their 10 warmest years ! We can therefore expect another subtle change next year – something like “very likely to be one of the twelve warmest years…. !
Thanks for your astute analysis, Tim.
The Met Office can’t extract any warming trend from this:
…so they may be trying to switch attention to something/anything else e.g. global temperature, but even there they can’t find any upward warming trend either. Looks like the end for positive feedback theories on which all the failing climate models are based.
In hindsight I got the headline wrong, should have left off the zero.
I agree the forecast suggests trying to find a way out, falling away to a weather position.
IMO Hurst and the move to non-uniform distribution that means is the right way to go, a path the Met Office and many others have closed for themselves. Means greater long term variation including of a period-of nature. With this usage of statistics there never has been anything other than normal.
Final figures will appear in March ’14 because we need time to ensure our adjustments are consistent with out forecasts.
I’m reading “American Betrayal”, by Diana West (2013). It is concerned with not the fact of Soviet influence (through placement and support of specific pro-Communist figures in the WWII+) American government, but with the refusal to recognize American political (and military and intelligence) life had been infiltrated by agents working against American (and British) best interests. Her book is a polemic, unfortunately, a rant written in a self-indulgent way that will be easy to dismiss as shrieking from a soapbox in Hyde Park. But her point is extremely well made and very, very pertinent to our on-going fight about CAGW: it is not the facts that are in dispute but the “implication” (her term) of those facts. To accept the implication of Soviet penetration is to accept that our view of the last 70 years is false, that the control and decision-making of our wise fathers was not for our but of Stalinist betterment. This is a paradigm shift that is simply unacceptable so as each unassailable point comes up, something is done to destroy the reputation of the teller, or negate the point as a “detail” within a broader, “normal” background.
Sound familiar?
Now: relate this to the Met Office. Consistently the forecasts fail. I forget who, but within the last couple of years, the reason was claimed by some dame or Dame, that the computers weren’t big enough or fast enough. So they get bigger and faster computers. Still the same. Now the bosses ask for forecasts, but the forecasts are corrupted by the IPCC CAGW narrative, so they can’t give hind-casts let alone forecasts now any better than before. So the technical people say, we put this in and we get that out; the only way to change the result is to change the model. The facts are facts, but the implication is ….
Not acceptable. Cognitive dissonance: your mind tries to hold two conflicting beliefs at the same time. You can do it for a while, using the wiggle-space of the conditionals like “might” or “may” or “it is possible”, but after a time the conditionals force themselves into the reverse: “might not”, “may not” “is possible but not probable”. And then you are stuck. The technical people CANNOT put out the desired forecast (well, as long as Britain doesn’t go full-KGB on you). So the upper management simply recycle what was done recently: it worked once, didn’t it, and if it could have been right recently, it could be right again, right?
West describes a war for the intellectual honesty of a civilization vis-a-vis Communism/Russianism (as well as vis-a-vis Islam). But it applies to the Global Warming situation. We do not believe that Al Gore is a liar or that David Suzuki is a megalomaniac actor or Michael Mann knows his results are scientifically weak because to believe any of these is to believe that, as Inhofe said, we are the victims of the greatest scam in history. The Big Lie works because the shift in thinking about so much of what we have come to believe about important aspects of our lives is too shattering.
Now let me dispel a thought that I am speaking about a grand conspiracy here. This is where I think West is off-base. Not that there hasn’t been a conspiracy in that some areas conspired to make a possibility into a probability (“95% certainty”) for their own benefit. Definitely. Tweak a situation for your advantage – a human more than a businessman’s tendency. In fact there are lots of places where self-interest rules. Paul Ehrlich is a good example: make outlandish threats about the future unless we listen to him, but when they don’t come true, say they haven’t come true “yet”. Why? For Ehrlich to admit that he was fundamentally wrong would be for Ehrlich to admit his understanding of his own brilliance, importance and how the universe work is seriously flawed. That cannot happen. Al Gore can move his money out of Green technology without admitting his promotion was wrong, by simply saying the market isn’t right AT THIS TIME; he’ll get back in later. It is in the MSM that the real problem lies, because the MSM only marginally benefits from saying the world is getting warmer. As we saw in the ’70s, the MSM benefited by saying the world was getting COLDER. A crisis is a crisis as far as reporters’ lives are concerned; the truth is background to the headlines. But the MSM has invested hugely into CAGW. To back-off now is to admit that the skeptics and hated Republican-Capitalists were correct, that the liberal view, while morally nice, was and is untruthful. Now that is a paradigm shift of disastrous import.
So the Met Office is in a pickle. Like the IPCC whose mandate it is to discuss the ramifications of human-initiated global climate change, any fixing of the system to make observation match expectation requires changing the unchangeable. So what can you do? You plod forward but add some weasel words. Give a range of outcomes that is meaningless except that you are always right. Stop giving detailed seasonal forecasts – when did the Met Office stop this practice? Roll with what you and others did last year – it works for private industry very well, even as individual companies head for the bankruptcy bin. You can’t be blamed for not being smarter than true rocket scientists in the crowd, after all.
West’s American Betrayal misses the mark not about the Soviet influence on the capitalist system, but that the situation was a unique situation. The existential threat that comes from a paradigm shift involving the beliefs we have of the “goodness” or “rightness” of others or the truth of what we have been told or the appropriateness of our behaviour despite our best intentions – the threat is huge and will be defeated if at all possible. We will go down in defeat before we will admit we have been duped: whether it is a battle that should not have been fought or loading up on junk bonds that we KNEW had no real, only a perceived value, our desire to hold firm to identity important beliefs will carry us over the cliffs. But how unique are we in this trouble? Did the last days of the Roman Empire, just before the Vandals arrived, not have Senators saying “All is well, or will soon be well, for you can trust us to tell you the truth, indeed to KNOW the truth”? What about the last tribes of Easter Island, cutting down the last trees and dooming their people to starvation: what important paradigm could they not challenge, i.e. no trees means no boats, no boats means no fishing, trading or means of escape? Or just that their leaders were capable of leading?
To use West’s position, we of the Western World have been infiltrated by the agents of the eco-green liberal environmental socialist pro-nature anti-human establishment. Each day we pay those stupid subsidies for solar, wind and bio-fuel, we cough up to organized groups that have convinced us that they are working FOR us, that even to question them is to be against all our values of humanity and the love of life. When we listen to the Met Office tell us things that don’t make sense we listen to a voice telling us to look the other way because we sure as hell will be unhappy if we don’t. And we do want to be happy.
[…] Doug Proctor on Met Office 2014 global warming… […]
When you go back to the snake oil seller and complain the potion isn’t working, they will say ‘give it time.’ When you ask how much time, they will shrug and say it depends.
What it depends on is when they either quit snake oil selling or pop their clogs. Obviously they don’t tell you that.