UK Met Office getting ready to eat crow

Just a wee while ago, the UK Met Office told the Copenhagen summit, in headlines repeated around the world, that 2010 was likely to be one of the warmest years ever, and that the Northern Hemisphere winter would be mild.

Then Al Gore came to Copenhagen, bringing with him the Gore effect, restoring the ice caps to warming globes outside the summit:

By morning, there was so much warming love being shared that the Copenhagen globes looked like this:

Well, the good news is that as President Obama took the Gore effect with him back to the US…

The weather has now turned so foul that forecasters are now predicting the heaviest snowfalls in the Northern Hemisphere in a quarter century.

So much for the Met Office "mild winter". What does it say for the accuracy of a warm 2010?

James Delingpole reckons the Met would have a hard time beating a forecast based on cock entrails:

With friends like that, is it any wonder that the Met Office gets it so wrong so very often? Its computer models, like those of the IPCC, are so thoroughly committed to the idea of Man-Made Global Warming that they continue to predict it regardless of all evidence to the contrary from real-world thermometers. If it weren't so depressing – the Met Office, after all, plays a key role in informing public policy and therefore, in how your money is to be wasted by the government of the day (be it run by Green Gordon or Green Dave the disaster will be just as great) – it would almost be funny.

In fact it is funny, as this glorious Independent article dug up by Richard North reminds us. It was written in March 2000 and has various "experts" explaining how very soon in Northern Europe, the sight of winter snow will almost be as unfamiliar as marauding packs of wolves.

Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain's culture, as warmer winters – which scientists are attributing to global climate change – produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries.

According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event"."Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said.

Professor Jarich Oosten, an anthropologist at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, says that even if we no longer see snow, it will remain culturally important.

"We don't really have wolves in Europe any more, but they are still an important part of our culture and everyone knows what they look like," he said.

David Parker, at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Berkshire, says ultimately, British children could have only virtual experience of snow. Via the internet, they might wonder at polar scenes – or eventually "feel" virtual cold.

Comments

[John Boy]

While I don't disagree the saying "One swallow does not a summer make" comes to mind. Its one winter, the trend will be the thing to watch for. If it gets colder the GW people will claim the credit for that as well and fudge some more numbers. They will ignore the millions that will die of cold related effects.

[Whitebread]

Loved all of this. The US had two huge winter storms in as many weeks. The first, unseasonally early, deposited 4.2 m of drifts in some parts and seriously affected air and vehicle travel in the continental US. It was followed a week later by another of similar intensity. Hard on the heels of this came a huge Europe wide wintry blast. 42 froze to death in Poland and there were horrendous disprupts to air and rail travel with large snowfalls and bitter cold. Hard winters over the next few years have been predicted in some quarters as solar activity declines. Ian Pilmer's book tracks some of these declines and the corresponding advance of ice and cold around the world at those times.
Of course it is all just CO2 and on top of that its just humanity's CO2 to blame. If it's warming it's global warming but if it's cooling it's global warming as well. You realise you can't win Ian.

[AcidComments]

Of interest:

UK Met Office does a U-Turn.

Britain facing one of the coldest winters in 100 years, experts predict

Britain is bracing itself for one of the coldest winters for a century with temperatures hitting minus 16 degrees Celsius, forecasters have warned.

A spokesman for the Met Office said: “It is certainly a while since we had cold weather like this and there isn’t any sign of any milder weather on the way.”

The cold weather comes despite the Met Office’s long range forecast, published, in October, of a mild winter. That followed it’s earlier inaccurate prediction of a “barbecue summer”, which then saw heavy rainfall and the wettest July for almost 100 years.

Paul Michaelwaite, forecaster for NetWeather.tv, said: “It is looking like this winter could be in the top 20 cold winters in the last 100 years.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
topics/weather/6921281/
Britain-facing-one-of-the-coldest-winters-in-100-years-experts-predict.html

[AcidComments]

Of interest:

It has a gigantic supercomputer, 1,500 staff and a £170m-a-year budget. So why does the Met Office get it so wrong?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
news/article-1240082/It-gigantic-supercomputer-1-500-staff-170m-year-budget-So-does-Met-Office-wrong.html

[CM]

>>>So much for the Met Office "mild winter". What does it say for the accuracy of a warm 2010?<<<

Different year, same old cherry-picking.
The answer is nothing.

"However, it is not cold everywhere in the world. North-east America, Canada, North Africa, the Mediterranean, and south-west Asia have all seen temperatures above normal – in many places by more than 5 °C, and in parts of northern Canada, by more than 10 °C."

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2010/pr20100106b.html