Bishop Hill Situation normal
Feb 14, 2014 Climate: WG2 Paul Homewood has done a fascinating review of the precipitation data. Examining both the data for the South West and for the station nearest to the Levels, he has found that while it has been very wet down there the situation is far from unprecedented.
At the local station of Yeovilton, about 20 miles south, Met Office figures show that rainfall in November was 23% lower than normal. Given this, and the dry summer, river levels should have pretty low as December started....
At Yeovilton, in December, rainfall was 43mm above normal. Although, as I say, January data is not yet available, rainfall maps don’t suggest that Somerset has been wetter than the rest of the region and indicate between 150mm and 200mm, against a normal of 67mm.
This would imply that December and January’s rainfall combined was probably about 120mm and 170mm above normal.
Reader Comments (14)
Excellent post. In a similar vein, I have often wondered about the common 'a month's rainfall in a day' meme that journalists are so keen on, so I tried looking up the data on the Met Office site. I suspect that, particularly in the summer months, it must be quite common for the whole month's rainfall to occur on just a handful of days, and therefore one would expect that a wetter-than-average month would have the whole month's average rainfall occurring on one day. Unfortunately, the Met Office do not seem to encourage inspection of their data. They put the monthly means up for free access, but without the mins, maxes, standard deviations, etc that would be needed for a full understanding of rainfall patterns. The only way to get day-by-day data is to be an approved academic requesting the data for an approved project, etc etc. Cheeky.
I don't like "normal". How defined?
This report should be shown to Ed Davey, Lady Slingo and every other member of the great and good, preaching a connection between the floods and CAGW.
"in the summer months, it must be quite common for the whole month's rainfall to occur on just a handful of days"
Once upon a time I had to purchase rainfall data from MO for many E&W sites - rainfall in August often rivalled November. Thunderstorms given as the reason.
It's very important to factor in the topology of the area and the Mendip Hills to the north generate considerable relief rainfall (misty, rainy squelchy Mendips...) from the prevailing winds and Yeovilton is well away from that area - so I'd be *very* careful extrapolating from the airfield met station. In fact knowing the area very well, Paul is on shaky ground with the Yeovilton rain gauge.... See topo map Yeovilton is actually arguably in significant rain shadow
Has anybody seen any quantitative assessment of precipitation where the loop has been closed with water radar? Is the UKMO radar data archived to allow post processing?
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Try telling the Greenies that everything is normal.
11:49: Ross Hawkins Political correspondent, BBC News
The Greens have called for a purge of senior government advisers and ministers who do not share the party's views on climate change. The Green Party says any senior adviser who refused to accept "the scientific consensus on climate change" should be sacked. Leader Natalie Bennett said: "We also can't have anyone in the cabinet who is denying the realities that we're facing with climate change."
Just found a place where all the usual suspects appear together.
Hydrological Outlook UK
http://www.hydoutuk.net/
The Hydrological Outlook Partnership
The Hydrological Outlook is produced in a collaboration led by the Natural Environment Research Council’s Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) and involving the Natural Environment Research Council’s British Geological Survey (BGS), the Environment Agency (EA), the Met Office (MO), the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA), Natural Resources Wales (NRW), and the Rivers Agency Northern Ireland (RA).
Data are provided for the Hydrological Outlook by the EA, NRW, SEPA and RA.
Meteorological data and modelling expertise are provided by the MO.
Hydrological and hydrogeological modelling expertise are provided by CEH, BGS and the EA.
The one saving grace is that their previous forecasts remain visible in the archive section. Not like the "lost" forecasts of less-rain-that-usual on the MO site.
For example: http://www.hydoutuk.net/archive/december-2013/
Period: From December 2013
Issued on 11.12.2013 using data to the end of November
Summary: The outlook for December is for river flows to be in the normal to below normal range.
Groundwater levels are likely to be normal in south-east England, but above normal in the north-west of England.
The three month outlook is for this situation to persist.
The people still without electricity are certainly experiencing a taste of 'new-normal'.
That is what an irregular supply from "renewables" will feel like when there is no dependable fossil-fuel or nuclear generation. On those days, being wealthy or poor won't make the lights or the electric shower or the internet come back on any sooner.
Worth remembering, the next time you find you have inadvertently stumbled into an election polling-booth. There will likely be one or more politicians who wish to force such new-normal upon us, and expect to get votes for it. And all based on failed computer-programs that couldn't model a hole in the ground and represent an aggregation of scientific uncertainty, ignorance, and arrogance.
Feb 14, 2014 at 11:00 AM | Unregistered Commentermoonrakin
Given the distribution of Met Office weather stations, Yeovilton is not unreasonable relative to the upper parts of the Brue, Cary, Yeo and Parret catchments. Those are the parts that the Experts are saying are so badly farmed that the cessation of dredging by the EA cannot possibly be blamed for the flooding.
I see on the news media that three gert lush pumps from the Netherlands have been deployed at Dunball Sluice. Just like Corporal Jones's Ghost recommended.
@filbert cobb
arrr as we say down 'ere.
I looked at the MO rainfall charts and compared with my experience yo-yo-ing over the top of the Mendips regularly - that there should be a distinct purple patch right along the ridge.
I wonder if there's any National Archive stuff related to the water management at the Bridgewater explosives factory complex - with actual numbers in black and white? That would be ... interesting :-)
There's a couple of old Movietone films of West Country floods in 1950 and 1960.
The latter mentions "six months rain in one month".
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/02/14/west-country-floods-before-global-warming/
On the issue of daily rainfall data, I regularly persuaded the Met Office library to send me csv files of the full daily records for individual stations.
That was till a few months ago. They now inform me they have a "fair usage policy", whereby they are only allowed to send 5 years worth at a time.
As far as I know, it is only a 5 minute job to put the csv's together, whether for 5 yrs or 100. I certainly often got the things back within a couple of hours of asking.
Once last year, I overrode their policy, and got what I wanted through FOI.
All raises the question - are the Met Office trying to restrict access?
200 mm a month? My God!
The village of Holt in Missouri has 300 mm in 42 minutes in 1947. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holt,_Missouri
Mumbai had 994 mm on one day in June 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maharashtra_floods_of_2005