Met office scrap seasonal forecasts

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

report here

Good thing too, was daft to publish long term forecasts when they are probably going to be somewht inaccurate.

I particulalry love the 'criticism for failing to predict extreme weather'

Surely the point of extreme weather is that is is unpredictable!

oh well, goodbye seasonal forecasts

They scrap seasonal forecast yet continue to forecast that the earth will warm up over th elong term.

Erm.. well this last winter was the coldest for 30 years. Looks like they might have to can their global warming forecast soon as well.

Are you basing long term global temp forecasts on a single European winter BetaDad?

sea, they were rather fun to take the mickey out of, not good for their credibility though which is a shame cos they are pretty good at short term stuff..

JB

OYBK - I heard last week that the very cold winter we have just had in the Northern hemisphere has pushed the average temperature over the last 10 years below the average for the 1990s.

Is that true?

I've not heard that, interesting - will have a peer around the net and see if I can find out more info.

When I was at the met office a few weeks ago we were shown charts that did show an overall warming trend over the last century.

Looked similar to: this one

Not done enough studying of global warming to really evaluate the data myself but what I have seen does seem to come to a fairly logical conclusion, that if C02 levels keep rising then so will global temps.

looks quite an interesting read

Thinking about it and looking at those graphs, it is not just a steep line upwards and you still get dips. The 1990s are said to have been the warmest ever recorded, so it is unsurprising I suppose that 2 very cold winters (in a row) in the last decade could take the temp below the 1990s average temp.

Especially when you think about the influences that affect the temps. For instance the reason that winter has been very cold for this time is that the weather that would normally be over us has been steered much further south. It has been a very unusual weather pattern caused I think by unusual weather patterns around the arctic.

Yes I think what you say is right.

The impression I got was that it is literally the last 3 months of data that have caused the drop in the average. The graphs everyone is used to seeing do not include the most recent data.

Anyway, didn't want to hijack the thread. Just bemused that the Met Office drop their seasonal forecast but are still so adamant about a much longer term effect.

Your threads always seem to have a good deal of accuracy - I always imagine you must either know someone like Piers Corbin who I have a lot of admiration for or you build your own proprietary forecasting models?

thank you.
I look at the weather models on wetterzentrale , particularly looking at GFS and UKMO and because I still have an awful lot to learn I read discussions on weather forums to verify (or not!) my thoughts.

ABetaDad:

Although it was a cold winter here, it was actually the fifth warmest winter on record globally. Greenland had a very warm winter for instance as did big chunks of North America and Asia including Newfoundland, Alaska and parts of Siberia.

It's important to look at the global picture rather than the local.

An interesting paper just out suggests that due to reduced sun activity we might expect a few more cold winters in Europe, but it's only a local effect and will not affect the overall warming trend.

There's still a lot of work to be done in this area though, and to return to the overall theme of this thread, seasonal (and decadal) prediction is very difficult to do.

Long term prediction however is much easier, since we can talk about climatic averages, rather than specific weather.