+++Harris and Lewis+++

Nic Lewis has published a detailed comment on the Met Office’s report on climate sensitivity, which was itself very much a response to the Otto et al paper of which Nic was an author. The comment is here.

There is a great deal of interest, not least of which is the fact that the Met Office seems to have made a series of misrepresentations of Otto et al, as well as making several mistakes.

One of these though is astonishing.

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Here come de heap big warmy

Telegraph blogger Sean Thomas was at the Met Office meeting and was able to get the low-down on what was said. I think we should be worried.

First, I asked Stephen Belcher, the head of the Met Office Hadley Centre, whether the recent extended winter was related to global warming. Shaking his famous “ghost stick”, and fingering his trademark necklace of sharks’ teeth and mammoth bones, the loin-clothed Belcher blew smoke into a conch, and replied,

“Here come de heap big warmy. Bigtime warmy warmy. Is big big hot. Plenty big warm burny hot. Hot! Hot hot! But now not hot. Not hot now. De hot come go, come go. Now Is Coldy Coldy. Is ice. Hot den cold. Frreeeezy ice til hot again. Den de rain. It faaaalllll. Make pasty.”

That Met Office meeting

The Met Office's meeting to discuss the run of poor weather we have endured in recent years has been the subject of considerable interest on the blogs and Twitter, although to tell the truth I can't get that excited about it. I find it a bit odd that the Met Office would want to publicise the fact of holding a meeting anyway. Having done so it's a bit rum to then complain that the media have done what the media do, blowing it up out of all proportion and saying that it's a crisis meeting.

The upshot of all those brains being put together seems to be that it might be something to do with the North Atlantic Oscillation and it might be something to do with Greenland ice melt, as Louise Gray reports in a somewhat strange article here.

Climatologists raise the shutters again

About a year or so ago, the Met Office and CRU announced the release of the CRUTEM4 temperatures series. As John Graham-Cumming noted at the time, they were positively gung-ho in their enthusiasm for transparency:

Given the importance of the CRUTEM land temperature analysis for monitoring climate change (e.g. Trenberth et al. 2007), our preference is that the underlying station data, and software to produce the gridded data, be made openly available. This will enhance transparency, and also allow more rapid identification of possible errors or improvements that might be necessary (see e.g. the earlier discussion of homogeneity adjustments in the SH).

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More from the 'Wrong Files' - Josh 224

The Met Office (along with everyone else, it seems) has much to say about Doug Keenan's post (simplified by our host here) and can be found on their blog here and website here. 

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Significantly Met O££ice - Josh 223

Following Doug's extraordinary post this morning we imagine Julia Slingo, Met Office, offering an apology.

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Updated text H/t Doug

Data in the Raw - Josh 217

With several questions from MPs recently, see here, here and here,  on the statistical analysis supporting the Met Office's claims about recent warming, it is probably time for the Met Office to do some revealing of evidence. Julia Slingo holds up the relevant papers on the subject.

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Update on Apr 24, 2013 by Josh

H/t Anthony for the 'Gut instinct' quote and story here.

Met Office on the cold in March

The Met Office has issued a news release on the reasons for the cold March, together with a more detailed technical explanation for climate and weather geeks. While Lord Hunt's "cold caused by melting Arctic" line is repeated, other possible causes are explained in full as is the existence of precedents for this kind of weather. A balanced briefing from the Met Office? Whatever next?

Whilst the cold March 2013 weather is certainly unusual, it is not unprecedented or outside the expected natural variability of our climate. There is particularly heightened interest in the role of the Arctic on the UK's weather, given rapid changes in Arctic sea ice, and on the likely changes we may observe given future decline. It is worth re-emphasising, however, that while changes in the Arctic are consistent with predisposing the climate system to cold weather in northern Europe, this is only one possible driver among several potential factors which could account for the cold March weather. What we have still to understand is the degree to which our changing climate may alter the likelihood and intensity of extreme events. With the rapidly changing Arctic, this is now high on the research agenda.

Not answering the question

Graham Stringer's question to the department of Business Innovation and Skills has received a response, but not an answer. This from Hansard:

Graham Stringer: To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills whether the claim that (a) every year since 1998 has been significantly warmer than the temperatures you would expect if there was no warming and (b) for the last three decades the rate of temperature increase is significant made by the Met Office in a climate science briefing sent to the chief scientific adviser on 8 February 2010 was supported by any statistical time-series analysis. [150533]

Michael Fallon: The full statements sent by the Met Office to the chief scientific adviser on 8 February 2010 are (a) every year since 1998 has been significantly warmer than the temperatures you would expect if there was no warming (baseline of 1861-1900) and (b) for the last three decades, the rate of temperature increase is significant even when uncertainties in the observations are factored in.

These statements are based on analysis of HadCRUT3, the global temperature dataset compiled by the Met Office and the university of East Anglia’s climatic research unit.

Reading between the lines I think we can probably say that the advice Julia Slingo has been providing to central government is not based on time series analysis.

Oh dear.

Letter to the Times

I have a letter published in the Times. It's paywalled, so I can't see exactly what has appeared, but this is what I sent them.

Lord Hunt advises us that the recent cold snowy weather is “consistent with” our expectations of climate change, and that in the UK “the trend is likely to be towards colder winters” (article, 2 April 2013). This is a surprising claim. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in its last report that “The lowest winter temperatures are likely to increase…in Northern Europe” and that the “duration of the snow season is very likely to shorten in all of Europe, and snow depth is likely to decrease in at least most of Europe”. Sir John Houghton, Lord Hunt’s predecessor at the Met Office, has declared that “The idea that we will get less snow is absolutely in line with what we expect from global warming”. If we are to expect more cold and less cold and more snow and less snow, one is left wondering what kind of weather is “not consistent” with manmade climate change.

Update on Apr 10, 2013 by Bishop Hill

Here's what they published:

Sir, Lord Hunt of Chesterton says that the cold weather is consistent with our expectations of climate change, and that in the UK the trend is likely to be towards colder winters (Apr 2).

This is a surprising claim. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in its last report that the lowest winter temperatures are likely to increase in Northern Europe and that the duration of the snow season is very likely to shorten in all of Europe, and snow depth is likely to decrease, at least in most of Europe. Sir John Houghton, Lord Hunt’s predecessor at the Met Office, has declared that we will get less snow, “in line with what we expect from global warming”.

If we are to expect more cold and less cold and more snow and less snow, one is left wondering what kind of weather is “not consistent” with man-made climate change.

Homewood on the Met Office

Paul Homewood has a must-read article describing a Met Office briefing paper he obtained under FOI. You should definitely read the whole thing, but here's a taster.

There have been many attempts recently to blame just about every bit of bad weather on declining Arctic sea ice. Julia Slingo, herself, told a Parliamentary Committee last year:-

“There is increasing evidence in the last few months that depletion of ice, in particular in the Bering and Kara seas, can plausibly impact on our winter weather and lead to colder winters over northern Europe".

(This, of course, came a few months after previous predictions of warmer, wetter winters, and a few months before Slingo decided Arctic ice was responsible for heavier rainfall).

The private briefing document totally demolishes her argument and that of others:-

It has been suggested that the decline of Arctic Sea Ice may drive low pressure over the UK, although this remains very uncertain at present.

And

In the long term, most climate models project drier UK summers – but it is possible there could be other influences of a changing climate which could override that signal on shorter timescales.

If low levels of Arctic sea ice were found to be affecting the track of the jet stream, for example, this could be seen as linked to the warming of our climate – but this is currently an unknown.

The Met Office Hadley Centre, working with climate research centres around the world, is making strides in determining how the odds of extreme weather happening have been influenced by climate change. However, it is very difficult to do this type of analysis with such highly variable rainfall events, so it may take many years before we could confirm how the odds of this summer’s wet weather happening have been altered by greenhouse gases.

So why did Slingo give the testimony she did to Parliament?

Met Office or bookie's office?

Roger Harrabin takes a wry look at the Met Office's three-month forecast for last spring. These longer-term forecasts are not published, so Harrabin got it under FOI. The results are most amusing:

The Met Office three-monthly outlook at the end of March stated: "The forecast for average UK rainfall slightly favours drier than average conditions for April-May-June, and slightly favours April being the driest of the three months."

A soul-searching Met Office analysis later confessed: "Given that April was the wettest since detailed records began in 1910 and the April-May-June quarter was also the wettest, this advice was not helpful."

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We told you so - Josh 197

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Update on Jan 28, 2013 by Josh

Richard Tol makes a very good point so I have changed the title from 'Predicting the past' to 'We told you so'.

The weirdest year ever?

Roger Harrabin takes a look at the recent furore over the Met Office's climate predictions and finds that some within the Met Office are none to happy with the organisation's PR performance.

The damage to Met Office credibility, though, was exacerbated by a couple of blunders in its own communication.

The first was to put the decadal report on its website on Christmas Eve - the traditional date for burying stories that the authorities don't want publicised. I was initially suspicious. But the Met Office since explained that the scientist responsible was due to finish the work by end of year and was about to go on holiday. That sounds plausible.

The second error was in the caption to a graph comparing the new temperature forecast with one from the past. It was badly-worded and led bloggers to conclude that the Met Office were trying to cover up the disparity between forecasts. (They seem to have accepted later that this is not the case).

Interesting stuff. The article also includes the remarkable claim that this has been the UK's "weirdest year of weather".

Proper wrong - Josh 194

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