Met Office woolly forecast for Christmas 2014

Now the dank chill of late autumn gives way to winter frosts

Dusk in winter, England, 1980s. The author.

 

Met Office 16 to 30 day forecast now stretches to Christmas Eve, not that it has changed over the past few days. A sudden weather change without a glimmer of notice for the 25th or 26th, I very much doubt it.

Met Office forecast for period day16to30 issued at 2014-11-25T16:00:00

 

Forecast for All regions (shared forecast) day16to30, from 2014-12-10 16hrs (Wed) to 2014-12-24 16hrs (Wed)

UK Outlook for Wednesday 10 Dec 2014 to Wednesday 24 Dec 2014:

• There is no strong signal in weather patterns during this period.
• However, the most likely scenario is a trend towards more unsettled and, at times, windy weather, especially in western parts of the UK, with eastern parts seeing the best of any dry weather.
• Temperatures are generally expected to be around, or a little above, average for the time of year.
• There is a chance of some overnight and morning frost and fog in places – this will be more likely across northern areas where there is also a chance of some snow on higher ground.

 

“There is no strong signal”. Aerial riggers called out…

Jarl Ahlbeck: A link between Low solar activity, Easterly QBO, negative AO and cold NH winters

Future low solar activity periods may cause cold winters in North America, Europe and Russia.
Jarl Ahlbeck – Abo Akademi University, Finland

Historically, low solar activity periods like the Dalton and Maunder Minima have been connected to cold winters in Europe. It seems very possible that the low solar activity forced areas of low pressures into a southern route or caused a negative Arctic Oscillation, AO, which in turn allowed cold air from the North Pole to flow across Europe. But can we obtain from real measurements that low solar activity really is able to do that?

UK Energy policy incompetence: Emergency Measures To Prevent Winter Blackouts announced

Remember this stuff when casting your vote next May. UKIP is the only party with a sensible energy policy. Roundup of (lack of) energy: news by Benny Peiser at GWPF:

Written by Dr. Benny Peiser, GWPF on 28 October 2014

Emergency measures to prevent blackouts this winter have been unveiled by National Grid after Britain’s spare power capacity fell to just 4 per cent. –Emily Gosden, The Daily Telegraph, 27 October 2014

The capacity crunch has been predicted for about seven years. Everyone seems to have seen this coming – except the people in charge.  –Andrew Orlowski, The Register, 10 June 2014

Met Office did not see the storm of 21st October 2014 coming

I’ve started collecting a few of the Met Office published weather forecasts in addition to the weather station data, building an archive.

The UK Met Office are masters of obfuscation, vague language, handwaving yet for all the money poured in over the years their forecasting prowess is notorious. What follows is backed up by more details left for another time.

We have just had a minor blow in London, enough to cancel flights at the premier UK airport, brought down trees, at least one death. The BBC are going on about it as is the Guardian.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29685066
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/oct/21/uk-storms-woman-dead-trees-fall-london-hurricane-gonzalo

[update: Met Office hourly data for the 21st is now in and plotted PDF here (1.4MB) –Tim]

Note for comprehension, 16 to 30 days means that is how far ahead it is from the publication date.

 

Met Office 16 to 30 day forecast

UK Outlook for Thursday 9 Oct 2014 to Thursday 23 Oct 2014:

• The broadly northwest-southeast split in the weather conditions is showing signs of persisting through mid-October.
• This pattern would leave southern, central and eastern parts tending to see the best of the weather with conditions often fine and dry.
• Occasional bouts of rain should still be expected, and mist and fog patches may be a problem during morning rush hours.
• Under the fine weather it should still feel pleasant with temperatures a little above average for the time of year.
• Further northwest, conditions are likely to be more unsettled with more frequent outbreaks of rain, these perhaps accompanied by strong winds.
• Temperatures here should be closer to average or perhaps even just below at times.

Lukewarmers and Mainstreamers soft-pedal the pause over salmon

From the Guardian:

Twelve scientists and sceptics (sic) have met privately to discuss how to suck the venom out of the climate change debate.

It was one of science’s strangest social events to date.

Some of the best known names in the climate debate – including Mail on Sunday journalist David Rose, blogger Anthony Watts, and Met Office scientist Richard Betts – shared salmon and civilities at a dinner party last month.

Hosted by the sceptical scientist Nicholas Lewis at his house in Bath in September, the group discussed their similarities, differences, and how they might calm the debate that rages across the pathologically provocative medium of Twitter.

“Both sides are really fed up with the outrageous alarmists who are not representing science properly. Both don’t like those who shout about it and call people names and take a polarised point of view,” says David Whitehouse from the sceptic thinktank The Global Warming Policy Foundation.

Met Office Arctic sea ice extent, issue a forecast 2 months nearer the date?

The UK Met Office forecast for things they choose, such as Arctic sea ice extent but seem completely silent on Antarctica or even handedly dealing with both of pairs of extremes.

Ah well, wait a month or two… forecasting is better after the event IYSWIM

Annotated extract from Met Office Arctic sea ice forecast page
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/seasonal-to-decadal/long-range/arctic-sea-ice

It is possible the file dates do not reflect change in the documents.

NSIDC announcement for 2014 page here (where NSIDC also acknowledge the Antarctica extreme)

A woman in the eye of the political storm over climate change

Georgia Institute of Technology professor Judith Curry [image credit: Wikipedia]

Someone the current US President might do well to listen to before voicing opinions on climate matters is profiled here.

E & E News reports: Judith Curry thinks climate scientists view her as their “biggest threat.”

“I do not pay obeisance to the consensus and I think for myself, and they don’t like that,” said Curry, a professor at the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Matt Ridley: Whatever happened to global warming?

Via GWPF:

Matt Ridley: Whatever Happened To Global Warming?
Date: 05/09/14 Matt Ridley, The Wall Street Journal

On Sept. 23 the United Nations will host a party for world leaders in New York to pledge urgent action against climate change. Yet leaders from China, India and Germany have already announced that they won’t attend the summit and others are likely to follow, leaving President Obama looking a bit lonely. Could it be that they no longer regard it as an urgent threat that some time later in this century the air may get a bit warmer?

In effect, this is all that’s left of the global-warming emergency the U.N. declared in its first report on the subject in 1990. The U.N. no longer claims that there will be dangerous or rapid climate change in the next two decades. Last September, between the second and final draft of its fifth assessment report, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change quietly downgraded the warming it expected in the 30 years following 1995, to about 0.5 degrees Celsius from 0.7 (or, in Fahrenheit, to about 0.9 degrees, from 1.3).

Even that is likely to be too high. The climate-research establishment has finally admitted openly what skeptic scientists have been saying for nearly a decade: Global warming has stopped since shortly before this century began.

US Major Hurricane Strikes Peaked In The 1950s – Now At An All-Time Record Low

oldbrew:

.

Looks like another example of the Al Gore effect…

Originally posted on Real Science:

In the 1950’s the US averaged about one major hurricane strike per year. Now we average zero per year.

HURDAT Re-analysis Chronological List of All Hurricanes

View original

BBC News – Global warming slowdown ‘could last another decade’

Ocean currents
[image credit: BBC]

Bad news for fans of global warming theory dreaming of ‘strong’ El Ninos or indeed anything that might point global temperature stats in an upward direction.

Even the BBC is having to come to terms with climate reality, to some limited extent at least.

Bardarbunga volcano alert in Iceland

A previous Icelandic volcano
[image credit: BBC]

BBC reports:

“Intense seismic activity” began at the volcano on 16 August, and there was a strong earthquake in the region early on Monday, the met office said.

“This is the strongest earthquake measured in the region since 1996.

“Presently there are no signs of eruption, but it cannot be excluded that the current activity will result in an explosive subglacial eruption, leading to an outburst flood and ash emission,” the met office said, adding that the situation was being monitored.

BBC News – Iceland raises Bardarbunga volcano alert to orange.

The risk level to the aviation industry has been raised to orange, the second-highest level, the met office said.

Update 23rd August : Volcano alert level raised to red

*** Update 24th August: Alert level reduced to orange. ***

Update 29 August** Warning A fissure eruption has started north of Dynjujökull.** (Richard Holle)

=============================================================================
LATEST NEWS: http://icelandreview.com/news/bardarbunga

Periodicities in mean sea-level fluctuations and climate change proxies

Jennifer Marohasy has a new post “Revisionist Approach Destroys Information About Natural Cycles Embedded in Climate Data” where there is underlying interest for Talkshop readers. Mention of Ken Ring is perhaps not so good given a reputation for excessive claims, caveat emptor.

Her take is from an Australian perspective mentioning a Senator and the lead author is Australian.

Periodicities in mean sea-level fluctuations and climate change proxies: Lessons from the modelling for coastal management
R.G.V. Baker, , S.A. McGowan
BCSS, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia
Available online 12 July 2014

Elsevier so it is paywalled http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2014.05.027

GCM forecasting of weather, track of Bertha

On 5th August 2014 I archived the US Navy graphic of the track of hurricane Bertha into just a storm. Today is the 10th August 2014 where a storm is about to arrive in the UK with forecast fairly strong winds and rain. [update] Forget to mention, the timing is correct, dot over England was for 18hrs 10th.

Jet streams and headlines

Heatwave time [image credit: BBC]

Piers Corbyn has made a weather forecast. Nothing new there, that’s his line of work. But this one has caught the attention of at least one organ of the UK national press [warning: loud headline ahead]…
Daily Express report

Reading the forecast, it clearly states the behaviour of the jet stream is the key factor. So what are the chances of showing any significant link between the behaviour of jet streams and small variations in atmospheric trace gases? They appear to be remote at present.

Arctic sea ice: glass half-full or half-empty?

Time for a forecast
[credit: Wikipedia]

The Alaska Dispatch News reported:

Predictions of Arctic summer ice melt come with lots of uncertainty

http://www.adn.com/article/20140801/predictions-arctic-summer-ice-melt-come-lots-uncertainty

(H/T GWPF Reports)

A few highlights:

Coverup exposed: Ed Davey’s DECC buried report warning of blackouts due to wind energy

Visit Cartoons by Josh and buy something

From RT.com

The UK risks sweeping electricity blackouts unless it increases the state’s capacity to balance infrequent supply from renewable energy sources, a prominent engineer who carried out government-funded research has warned.

While British authorities are under legal obligation to source almost a third of their electricity from renewable sources such as solar and wind by 2020, they require immediately deployable gas-fuelled power stations to cater for inevitable lulls in sun and wind energy output.

Hugh Sharman, a British engineering consultant, was commissioned to work on a government-sanctioned report examining how UK authorities could sustain the nation’s energy demands in an era of mandatory renewable energy use.

Tendered to the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) last year, the research went unpublished.

ENDGame: the latest Met Office climate model update

The Met Office has unveiled their latest update:

Even Newer Dynamics for General atmospheric modelling of the environment (ENDGame)

ENDGame is an evolution of the current dynamical core, the New Dynamics, and is based on a semi-implicit semi-lagrangain discretisation of the governing equations.

Nicola Scafetta: Global temperatures and sunspot numbers. Are they related? Yes, but non linearly

Prolific solar-planetary scientist and long-time talkshop friend Nicola Scafetta has a new paper published in Physica A entitled ‘Global temperatures and sunspot numbers. Are they related? Yes, but non linearly. A reply to Gil-Alana et al. (2014)’ which comments on Gil-Alana et al 2014; a paper purporting to dismiss any correlation between solar activity and terrestrial surface temperature. Nicola gently points out the limitations of their methods and patiently explains how the astronomical-solar signal can be found in the data. Here is Figure 3 to whet your appetite:

 

Fig. 3. (A) Annually solved HadCRUT3 global surface temperature record [34] from 1850 to 2013. (B) Power spectrum density functions calculated using the MEM method (using M = N/2 = 82) and the MTM periodogram f (p) [35,36]: the calculations were made with the SSA–MTM Toolkit. Several spectral peaks (e.g.: at about 9.1, 10.4, 20 and 60 yr) are statistically significant above the 95% confidence level, and their solar, lunar and astronomical origin is explained in the literature (e.g.: Scafetta [10,32,33,25]).

Nicola also provides plots of several of the various solar and temperature related indices and techniques for representing them over a wide range of timescales which clearly demonstrate the plain fact of the close coherence between the activity of our host star which supplies all our energy, and the fluctuations of the lovely moderate temperatures we live in on the surface of our planet.

National grid: Electricity price could double in 20 years

From the Guardian

Pipes and pylons operator says failure to invest more in local gas production would leave country 90% dependent on imports

The price of electricity could double over the next two decades, according to forecasts published on Thursday by the National Grid, the company responsible for keeping Britain’s lights on.

The current price of wholesale electricity is below £50 per megawatt hour but could soar to over £100 by 2035 under a “high case” example used in the Grid’s UK Future Energy Scenarios report.

Wikipedia’s humourless climate mafia are trying to get the Gore Effect page deleted again

A few years ago, I started a wikipedia page on the Gore Effect; the uncanny phenomenon which unleashes snow, hail, torrential rain, icy winds and sleet on the venues where Al Gore is speaking about global warming. The instances are too numerous to list. My page got deleted within a few months by the usual suspects. But it was reborn when another wiki user put up a much more detailed and better referenced version, and I thought it unassailable. But no, the usual suspects are at it again:

Maybe big Al has been armtwisting Jimmy Wales with the promise of a big donation on condition it goes. Who knows.

Contributor ‘Aussie’ notes this morning that the Gore Effect continues undiminished: