Uk weather met office are RUBBISH

This is what they said I believe:

'Preliminary indications continue to suggest that winter temperatures are likely to be near or above average over much of Europe including the UK. Winter 2009/10 is likely to be milder than last year for the UK, but there is still a 1 in 7 chance of a cold winter'.

Not sure what the problem is with that.
 
AlexW said:
This is what they said I believe:

'Preliminary indications continue to suggest that winter temperatures are likely to be near or above average over much of Europe including the UK. Winter 2009/10 is likely to be milder than last year for the UK, but there is still a 1 in 7 chance of a cold winter'.

Not sure what the problem is with that.
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If you watched the interview , they changed it from a mild winter to that when the cold was already on the horizon.
 
I don't watch any weather stuff. It sends me round the bend. They spend most of the time telling you what the weather is already doing and what you've already had. And they're always so smug. They wouldn't be if they were forced to spend a bit of time saying this is what we said you would get and this is what really happened.
 
What does long range weather forcasting have to do with global warming? Models for climate and models for weather systems are entirely different animals, you may as well compare models for coastal erosion with models for the movement of techtonic plates.

Re weather forcasts in general, I have an inherrant distrust of anything but the most generalised weather forcasts out to about 2 weeks, and pretty much zero confidence in anything longer term. The models are simply not accurate to the levels portrayed on the weather forcast each day.
 
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Squawk said:
What does long range weather forcasting have to do with global warming? Models for climate and models for weather systems are entirely different animals, you may as well compare models for coastal erosion with models for the movement of techtonic plates.
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IF they can't tell us what's happening accurately in the next week I distrust any information thats rammed down our throats about what the climates going to be like in 10, 20, 50 year. Climate Change is just an opportunity to tax us more.
 
crmcatee said:
IF they can't tell us what's happening accurately in the next week I distrust any information thats rammed down our throats about what the climates going to be like in 10, 20, 50 year. Climate Change is just an opportunity to tax us more.
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Surely thats a non-sequiter. You're comparing completely different branches of science with entirely different methodologies and influencing factors.

Short term weather forcasting involves predicting small variations in multiple interacting weather systems to determine the effects in the next few days, weeks or maybe months to see how they will influence the weather at a given location.

Climate science involves the elimination of many of those same factors so that an overall picture can be established. Climate science involves the elimation of the very factors that weather forcasting uses.
 
I wouldn't say so. The same basic fundementals are there - all aspects of the climate, albeit in a smaller scale so I don't believe you can treat these as different branches of science - they're all about predicting what the environment is going to be like.


If, as you say the weather forecasters are predicting small variations in weather for given locations - and they're getting it so wrong so often with the same basis, what make you think that climate science (something that didn't really exist 10 or so years ago) has any chance of getting their predictions correct ?

All it takes is for the Mayon volcano in the Phillipines to go off and that'll pump more CO2 into the atmosphere than we ever could.
 
crmcatee said:
I wouldn't say so. The same basic fundementals are there - all aspects of the climate, albeit in a smaller scale so I don't believe you can treat these as different branches of science - they're all about predicting what the environment is going to be like.
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Lets look at weather patterns and how we predict them. Factors of influence are the likes of ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation), Sam (southern annular mode) and the PDO (Pacific Decadal oscillation), which combine to produce some interesting results in local climate (in the sense of weather patterns). I actually discussed and linked to a paper published in the peer reviewed literature on the effects of ENSO and SAM on the ice sheets in the antarctic on these boards, you can read the post in question here, though the thread in question is actually worth a browse in its entirity.

More specific to the UK, we can look at the jet stream and the variations in its strength and location. The jet stream is a major driver of weather systems in and around Europe, its position plays a role in determining whether or not we get high or low pressure systems. This is of particular importance at the moment, I think the resident meterologist on the boards pointed out earlier (at least, I think he did, I may have read it elsewhere) that the reason we are getting such cold weather at the moment is the pressure system sat over us thats blocking the warm winds that come up the gulf stream.

I mentioned various weather systems and of course the interactions between weather systems play a major role in deterining day to day weather.

So what do we infer here? We note that when discussing day to day, week to week or even month to month weather we are looking at the state of the system now and extrapolating from it the ways in which the various systems are likely to interact to produce weather on a local scale. A global weather forcast is a pointless thing, it has no meaning, all we do with a weather forcast is isolate regions and predict how the various phenoma are going to interact at that specific location and thus influence weather. As a very quick aside, do you know what the global average temperature was today? Much of the world today was far warmer than expected.


When discussing climate change we no longer care about local variation. Instead we are now looking at interaction on a global scale, the complete system. We look at the big players that I mentioned above ENSO, SAM, NAM, PDO, the gulf stream, jet stream and what not, but also such factors as sun spot activity, orbital variation, shielding from the earths magnetic field (which is decreasing at present btw) and a miriad of other factors and we try to eliminate them. We do so in order to assess human impact.

When model weather you take into account all the variables present right now and attempt to predict how they will influence weather in the next few days. When modeling climate you look at trends in the order of decades, extrapolate from those trends the influence that the various climate forcers have, and see what remains. It is clear that when we account for all natural forcers of climate of which we are currently aware we do not account for teh variability of climate, only by adding the influence of humans to the models to the models reflect reality.


crmcatee said:
If, as you say the weather forecasters are predicting small variations in weather for given locations - and they're getting it so wrong so often with the same basis, what make you think that climate science (something that didn't really exist 10 or so years ago) has any chance of getting their predictions correct ?
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First I must address the point that climate science did not really exist 10 years ago as it is ludicrous. The IPCC's first report was published in 1990, but climate science had been a major area of research for decades prior to that time. The phenomena of global warming was discussed by scientists in the 19th century, though of course it was little understood. A common fallacy often spouted in the press is that climate scientists were predicting a new ice age in the 1960's. In the most prolific year there were 9 papers published that suggested a new ice age could happen "soon", with soon referring to a period of up to 20k years, and in the same year there were 44 papers published referencing global warming. I can go and get references should you require, I confess that I got this information second hand, though it was via a scientist.

As for confidence in the models, it is again a non-sequiter that a lack of accuracy in weather models implies a lack of accuracy in climate models because the two are not directly related. That said, I have confidence in climate models because they are relatively easy to test in principle, just massively expensive computationally. We have real world data of temperatures, both direct and by proxy, which we can test the models with by inputting start conditions as seen X years ago and running the models to present to see how they correlate.

I have further confidence when I look at the work published by so called skeptics. The email "scandal" that resulted from the release of emails for the CRU is a classic example, there really was b****r all of merit in those emails but they were treated as if they were gold dust by skeptics which demonstrated better than anything else how untenable that position is.

All it takes is for the Mayon volcano in the Phillipines to go off and that'll pump more CO2 into the atmosphere than we ever could.
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Actually a big unexpected eruption is a great test of a models voracity since it cannot be predicted. So, when an eruption occurs, add in the real world data for CO2 added and see if the model predicts the climate accurately over the coming 3-4 years. This did happen in the 1990's, but I forget which eruption it was. Get a big enough eruption and we have a real problem.
 
As you might have guessed - I'm one of the non-believers.

I too have my sources for information and certainly the IPCC are not one of them.

However one of the original reviewers of the IPCC original report is a good source for information.
http://www.tech-know.eu/uploads/Spinning_the_Climate.pdf

If there's an ice-age coming - so be it. There's nothing we can do to stop it - Nature has a way of putting us in our place - nothing we can do will stop an ice-age coming even if we stopped using our cars, stopped using energy and started living in the trees - if nature decides theres an ice age coming - it's coming. End off.
 
the weather forcast for today changed from heavy snow to flurries in the space of 2 hours, im trying to decide if I can get to work tomorrow, but cant rely on the weather forecast!
 
Serious question time:

What exactly is a climate scientist?
These computer models for climate change are based on what evidence?
What? ... If true (which I seriously doubt) is the problem to the planet with man made global warming by a couple of degrees?
 
Splog said:
Serious question time:

What exactly is a climate scientist?
These computer models for climate change are based on what evidence?
What? ... If true (which I seriously doubt) is the problem to the planet with man made global warming by a couple of degrees?
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Excellent questions all three. First, a quick disclaimer. I am not and do not claim to be any kind of climate scientist. I'm an interested layman and I would refer to myself as a skeptic, but not in the sense of climate skeptic. I'm the sort that won't take anything on faith, I want to see real world data with verified interpretation with statistical significance. That kinda skeptic. Ok, to questions.

1. Climate scientist: A fairly broad term for anyone doing research on the worlds climate. My own working definition would be someone actively involved in the collection or processing of data to better understand the climate system, but you could equally define it as anyone working in a field connected to climate research, ie the scientists constructing satelites to monitor temperature.

2. Evidence. Needs splitting into a couple of sections really. First, global temperature data which comes in two forms. Measured data, and data by proxy.

Measured data would be information from the various thermometers scattered around the globe, there are thousands of them. This data goes back a long time but of course is limited to ground level. Then we hav satelite data which spans a greater depth of the atmosphere. I've got it in my head that there are actually two sets of satelite data, but I can't think what the second set would be so I might have imagined that.

Data by proxy would be the likes of tree ring or varve analysis. You look at tree ring growth, for example, (for which we have records going back many thousands of years in places) accross the globe and use it to infer, amongst other things, temperature. There are numerous proxies available so they serve as independent checks on each other, kinda like calibration curves for C14 dating (a very related subject actually).

A quick aside, tree ring data is an interesting topic in itself because the data from tree ring analysis diverges from real world observed data from the early 1960's. From the early 1960's onwards the actual measured temperatures are higher than those that would be inferred simply from tree ring analysis, an interesting observation as it suggests that whatever was causing the change in temperature was either happening faster than at any other time or due to some factor that does not influence tree ring growth, a unique situation within the measured period.

The second form of evidence is the evidence of the activity taking place on earth that has driven climate. It's one thing to track the changes in global temperature but its of little use unless we know what caused them. Again this is all done either by proxy, or inference. To keep this brief (I know I have a tendency to go on and on, and its bed time), think of the various factors that influence climate. Then consider means of assessing the influence of these factors in the past. Ice cores are a fantastic record of atmospheric composition, for example.

So, to the models. The model must include all the various aspects that effect climate already discussed. Each factor is given a weighting according to the impact it is thought to have given current information. Then you plug in the temperature data from, say, 150 years ago. And then you run the model.
Because we have real world measured data from the last 150 years we can then determine if the model works by comparing it to the data. If the model, given the starting conditions, matches the data, then its a reasonable conclusion that the model is a decent model of reality. In practice what happens is that the model is "tweaked" in an attempt to improve its predictive power. The real test comes, as mentioned before, when some unpredictable new event occurs, like a volcanic eruption. Current models are extremely good. They are also far from perfect.

3. What impact.
Difficult to say, and thats the problem. We can't be specific. We can't even say how much warming is going to happen. Current best estimates are for between 2 and 6 degrees in the next century. Carbon stays in the atmosphere for around 100 years so we are already commited to some warming (about 1.5 degrees apparently if we stopped emitting now and the models are accurate). There are various excellent books on the market that would do this question far more justice than I am able to so I am inclined not to spculate here.

Hope that helps. I'd love to get the meterologists take on this, but I forget his name...
 
crmcatee said:
IF they can't tell us what's happening accurately in the next week I distrust any information thats rammed down our throats about what the climates going to be like in 10, 20, 50 year. Climate Change is just an opportunity to tax us more.
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Think of it like this: If you flick a coin once I'll have a 50/50 chance of guessing it correctly. If you flick the coin 1000 times I can predict that the outcome will be about 500 heads and 500 tails.

Another way of putting it is that I can predict that MUFC will finish close to the top of the PL, given past performance. I can also tell you that it is likely that they will beat Leeds given past performance. But you wouldn't be that surprised if MUFC lost to Leeds and suggest that book makers don't know what they are doing would you? We understand that it isn't an exact science and just because something is likely to happen on the balance of probabilities, doesn't mean that it actually will.
 
Listen to the presenter at the beginning :)
How can you predict winter conditions in october?!!
it dont work like that. weather forecast work only about 5 days ahead in continental europe, its even less in uk because its an island, to many seas around and not enough stable flow from the continent.
when the weatherman says few weeks before about the temperature at the specific time it means he is havin a laugh.
 
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I remember that my last work at Uni about meteo was about oceans pollution and its influence on the velocity of sea currents and especially the deep cold saline current.
Cant remember the exact numbers though, it was 9 years ago
Now it looks like everyone in the media is preaching about the air pollution but its only a fraction of the real problem, water seems to be forgotten :( but it is hugely important to the issue.
Its like Squawk said, almost every prediction is different in numbers and sometimes in scenarios, because its simply imposible to specify the exact events in exact location.
That is why there is lots of confusion and unfortunately often very bad goverment decisions.
 
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