I remember the NAO discussion. What was unclear to me (and still is) is how much does this improve on the forecasts the Met Office and Benfield Hazzard - UCL were producing 15 to 20 years ago? I thought they claimed similar skill levels. If that's the case it suggests recent developments will add little to forecast accuracy with a lead time of 6 to 9 months but may be useful when looking 24 months ahead. 

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Yes, but what about spring, eh? That's the question.

 

Spring is the only season that currently isn’t the worst it’s ever been. We had mostly good Springs from 2007 to 2011. More mixed since then which makes it the only season of the year which is difficult to forecast. All we need is a switch to the sort of cool, cloudy horrors that typified the 1930s and we’ll have the full quartet of unprecedented misery.

After this utter disaster of an Autumn, which has been more of a catastrophic write-off than even my most pessimistic of predictions could have imagined, I really wouldn’t be at all surprised if this winter fails to record a frost until January.

There were only 13 air frosts the whole of last winter – the worst since 88/89 but with far more unpleasant conditions. I would say there is a good chance this winter will see even fewer frosts. After all this is the era in which you constantly think it’s got to rock bottom, and that things can only get better, only for it to plunge further and further into the abyss.

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Spring is the only season that currently isn’t the worst it’s ever been. We had mostly good Springs from 2007 to 2011. More mixed since then which makes it the only season of the year which is difficult to forecast. All we need is a switch to the sort of cool, cloudy horrors that typified the 1930s and we’ll have the full quartet of unprecedented misery.

After this utter disaster of an Autumn, which has been more of a catastrophic write-off than even my most pessimistic of predictions could have imagined, I really wouldn’t be at all surprised if this winter fails to record a frost until January.

There were only 13 air frosts the whole of last winter – the worst since 88/89 but with far more unpleasant conditions. I would say there is a good chance this winter will see even fewer frosts. After all this is the era in which you constantly think it’s got to rock bottom, and that things can only get better, only for it to plunge further and further into the abyss.

 

  yes at work we do a lot with contractors in Aberdeen and they often talk about the change in winter weather up there. Similarly down here as Retron laments, we are now 21 years without a mid-winter easterly.

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I wouldn’t really describe 5 or 6 years as an era...

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I wouldn’t really describe 5 or 6 years as an era...

I don't think anyone is doing that Doc, we are looking at the last 30 years as a whole and what's happened is unprecedented.

 

 

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I don't think anyone is doing that Doc, we are looking at the last 30 years as a whole and what's happened is unprecedented.

 

 

Ah yes the coldest December in 100 years and the equal coldest temperature ever recorded 8n the U.K.

5 or 6 years sounds about right regarding the dearth of wintry weather as a whole rather than bitter easterlies in the southeast which is a different discussion. Do your contractors talk about 1995, 2001 (March 2006) 2009 or 2010 do they just say the last few 5 or 6) winters have been decidedly unwintry?

If I want to come to the same conclusion as you have get back to me in 20years.

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Ah yes the coldest December in 100 years and the equal coldest temperature ever recorded 8n the U.K.

5 or 6 years sounds about right regarding the dearth of wintry weather as a whole rather than bitter easterlies in the southeast which is a different discussion. Do your contractors talk about 1995, 2001 (March 2006) 2009 or 2010 do they just say the last few 5 or 6) winters have been decidedly unwintry?

If I want to come to the same conclusion as you have get back to me in 20years.

I think Doc you are taking certain months in isolation rather than looking at the relentless trend of well above average/incredibly mild. 

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And I think you are repeating your modern winter mantra under a diffferent guise when I am perfectly well aware of what you are saying. I simply disagree based on the level of evidence. If you are correct it will not evident/verifiable for many years and besides it doesn’t, in isolation, mean much for the coming winter. I don’t recall you, me or really anyone else here or elsewhere spotting the 2009 or 2010 cold spells weeks in advance.

Bitter cold can does still happen in this country. If that is a comment based on certain months in isolation then that is hardly surprising as the nature of our temperate maritime climate means that these months only occur in isolation as a rule...but they still happen. Unless you are suggesting that the weather we got a few years ago cannot and will not happen again.

We do not live in a primarily cold and snowy wintry climate in the U.K. Little Ice Age aside we never real have.

I could make a few winter predictions with a high level of confidence but few of them would be weather-related.

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I think we all acknowledge the prevailing wind direction but by the same token we can't dismiss the figures as being 'normal' otherwise we wouldn't have the long term averages that we have.

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I reckon that there may be at least something in Shropshire's 'modern winter' theory, but no more than that. Personally I think that the largely mild UK winter weather of the last 30 years is a combination of AGW, and a natural cycle similar to what caused many mild winters in the 1920s and 30s, which was the original meaning of the phrase 'modern winter'. Of course it's impossible for anyone to know with near certainty what has caused it.

The thing is that the Earth's weather operates in an extremely complex fashion, and I think that AGW may cause negative NAO conditions as much as it could cause positive NAO setups. The NAO negativity of 2009-10 was too extreme to dismiss it as just being a 'blip'. I think that even the most accomplished climate scientists are uncertain what the future holds.

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And I think you are repeating your modern winter mantra under a diffferent guise when I am perfectly well aware of what you are saying. I simply disagree based on the level of evidence. If you are correct it will not evident/verifiable for many years and besides it doesn’t, in isolation, mean much for the coming winter. I don’t recall you, me or really anyone else here or elsewhere spotting the 2009 or 2010 cold spells weeks in advance.

Bitter cold can does still happen in this country. If that is a comment based on certain months in isolation then that is hardly surprising as the nature of our temperate maritime climate means that these months only occur in isolation as a rule...but they still happen. Unless you are suggesting that the weather we got a few years ago cannot and will not happen again.

We do not live in a primarily cold and snowy wintry climate in the U.K. Little Ice Age aside we never real have.

I could make a few winter predictions with a high level of confidence but few of them would be weather-related.

Unless my recollection is way off base, Ian pretty much implied a decade ago that spells of sustained and severe cold, which is precisely what we had in December 2009 and January 2010, and then December 2010, could not happen in this country in the 21st century because of "modern era" factors. Those two events alone, for me anyway, were enough to showed Ian's logic from 10 years ago as being hopelessly flawed.

Ian would have more credibility IMO if he simply held his hands up and admitted he was at least partly wrong with his claims from a decade ago, instead of attempting to move the goalposts while continuing to peddle his theory.

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I remember the NAO discussion. What was unclear to me (and still is) is how much does this improve on the forecasts the Met Office and Benfield Hazzard - UCL were producing 15 to 20 years ago? I thought they claimed similar skill levels. If that's the case it suggests recent developments will add little to forecast accuracy with a lead time of 6 to 9 months but may be useful when looking 24 months ahead. 

Apples and oranges. 

The original discussion centred around the misreporting of the r-value of 0.62 for this particular model as meaning thaf the Met Office were claiming that this model would get the direction of the NAO right 62% of the time. And as you argued back then, even a simple examination of the May tripole gives the right answer 2 times out of 3, so what's the big deal?

But as I tried to explain, that's not what an r-value is. It's no more than an arcane expression of how much of the real-life deviation in what you're modelling is actually successfully modelled. In this case the answer is 1 minus 0.62 squared expressed as a percentage, i.e. about 38%. It's nothing to do with how often it gets an outright positive or negative result the right way round. Nothing at all. It just expresses how much of the final atmospheric status which goes to make up the final NAO result each winter the model is getting right.

The simple way of avoiding this confusion would simply have been not to publicize the paper (and particularly as it was paywalled, so you had to be a pretty dedicated layman to access it). I can only imagine that they were eager to show that they were actually doing something with their expensive supercomputer, and had to press-release some sort of breakthrough.

 

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Siberian snow increased and look at Scandinavia!?

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I think we all acknowledge the prevailing wind direction but by the same token we can't dismiss the figures as being 'normal' otherwise we wouldn't have the long term averages that we have.

It's all just as unpredictable as ever it was.

No snow here was as deep as January 1982 for many years- then came February 2009- deeper. Then January 2010. As deep. Then December 2010. Almost as deep. Then January 2013- not as deep, but still better than anything in between. Four events in relatively close succession. Don't tell me that was factored in to the 'no more snow' theorem as predicted exceptions.

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Siberian snow increased and look at Scandinavia!?

Do I feel an OPI coming on?

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Do I feel an OPI coming on?

OPI?

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OPI?

October Pattern Index

It was a one season thing a few year back think it was designed by someone in Italy

Accuweather Europe forecast Winter 2017-18.

Default option springs to mind.

https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/europe-winter-forecast-uk-to-germany-on-alert-for-wind-storms-rain-to-ease-drought-wildfires-in-spain-and-portugal/70003011

Accuweather Europe forecast Winter 2017-18.

Default option springs to mind.

https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/europe-winter-forecast-uk-to-germany-on-alert-for-wind-storms-rain-to-ease-drought-wildfires-in-spain-and-portugal/70003011

Yes looks in keeping with what indicators are suggesting - strongly zonal with +ve AO/NAO , if we enter a winter these days with such strong indicators - and there is time for change - then usually rainfall/high temp records are broken somewhere in the British Isles.

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Accuweather Europe forecast Winter 2017-18.

Default option springs to mind.

https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/europe-winter-forecast-uk-to-germany-on-alert-for-wind-storms-rain-to-ease-drought-wildfires-in-spain-and-portugal/70003011

Have they ever got a LRF right.😂😂😂