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Post by louise on May 14, 2011 18:29:26 GMT 1
I've been away for a while (I work away from home) and am quite surprised to find no thread that mentions that April 2011 was the hottest English April for over 350 years (3.7 deg C above average) and that the average UK temperature was 0.5 deg C warmer than the last highest average (set in 2007). www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2011/dry-aprilnews.bbc.co.uk/weather/hi/uk_reviews/newsid_9475000/9475206.stm Is this exceptional weather? Is it really possible to break record after record and believe that this is just business as ususal? [PS - I'm happy for Joanne to move this if there is already a suitable thread in existence] |
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Post by rsmith7 on May 14, 2011 19:45:28 GMT 1
I've spent the last week or so re-fitting the boat at a nearby village. There's a few old guys who come past for a yarn every year I'm doing this.
Every one of them had aged markedly and all of them were stiff and limping. They complained of the bitter winter and the price of fuel (which has been artificially inflated to combat "emissions").
Please cast off your predjudices, your embittered crusade and rejoice in the beautiful weather we're experiencing of late.
Unless, of course, you enjoy being a zealot.
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Post by StuartG on May 14, 2011 20:07:14 GMT 1
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Post by louise on May 14, 2011 20:14:52 GMT 1
I've spent the last week or so re-fitting the boat at a nearby village. There's a few old guys who come past for a yarn every year I'm doing this. Every one of them had aged markedly and all of them were stiff and limping. They complained of the bitter winter and the price of fuel (which has been artificially inflated to combat "emissions"). Please cast off your predjudices, your embittered crusade and rejoice in the beautiful weather we're experiencing of late. Unless, of course, you enjoy being a zealot. This is a science blog and a sub-board that includes weather in its subtitle - as such I am interested in the science of why we are having quite so many extreme weather events - record breaking all over the world. Do you lack such scientific curiosity? If so, then I don't see why you participate here. If not then please add to the discussion - why do you think there are so many extreme weather events? |
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Post by rsmith7 on May 14, 2011 20:55:44 GMT 1
I don't know.
Having experienced icing for the first time in 30 years, while fishing last winter, certainly focuses the mind though.
The prolonged period of Northerly wind and blocking high pressures certainly caused the misery. What exactly caused these events isn't quite so clear.
The last breif period of beautiful weather has been caused by high pressure to the east of the UK feeding lovely, warm, life-giving air from the med.
Long may it continue.
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Post by principled on May 15, 2011 0:12:02 GMT 1
Louise
Extreme relative to what? The last hundred years? That is but a blink of an eye in geological terms. I'm sure such extremes have been common throughout Earth's life and will continue to be so. As to the "why", well we know the reason for the UK's April weather (as stated by Smithy) but as to the fundamental mechanism that produced that and the temps throughout the world, who knows? We can postulate as long as we like, but at the moment scientists are dealing with a complex jigsaw puzzle where most of the pieces are missing.
With some of the biggest super computers in the World, scientists still struggle to predict weather more than a few days ahead. If they knew the mechanism/s by which the global weather functions, that would not be the case. Which is why those who hang their hats on the peg of anthropogenic CO2 as the one and only cause, are on a hiding to nothing!
P
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Post by buckleymanor1 on May 15, 2011 0:56:41 GMT 1
Yes it is.
Not only possible but a problem with records and statistics.
For an example and analogy take the next world athletic games record after record will be broken and the games after that the same will happen.Soon you might conclude that eventually the athletes will be arriving at the finishing tape before they have started. No doubt then that the generall population will therefore have become super fit to enable this.
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Post by marchesarosa on May 15, 2011 1:00:12 GMT 1
I mentioned it on WUWT on 10th May, Louise. You don't think I would miss something like that do you? wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/10/latest-solar-cycle-update-from-the-space-weather-prediction-center/Everyone where I live in Leeds (Yorkshire) is confident that this was the pleasantest April we have ever experienced (I’m 64). In fact people were joking ”This is our Summer – enjoy it while it lasts.” Blossom, trees and and flowers were well in advance of normal. Instead of April showers we got April drought. This was definitely not a Leeds and Bradford Airport Heat Island Effect! I was sitting out in the sunshine sunbathing several days running.
All part of weather’s rich tapestry. April last year and early May were much colder. I remember we were having a General Election in early May last year and the political commentators standing in Parliament Square and Whitehall with their microphones were blue nosed, muffled up in scarves and shivering.
It was a truly exceptional April where I live and very welcome because the “barbecue summers” predicted by the UK Met Office for the last few years never materialised, sadly!
It was off-topic but I just had to respond to previous comments about the lovely April weather. |
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Post by marchesarosa on May 15, 2011 1:18:58 GMT 1
I have to come back again to my previous point about your being younger than me and with slightly less experience of normal weather variability. I bet you are one of those who a few years ago "swallowed" the Met Office's claims that winter snow was a thing of the past. What an embarrassment!
But of course, now we're supposed to believe its yet another a signal of global warming! How circumstances DO alter cases with you alarmists!
Teehee.
You must remember, Louise, that the British Isles are subject to very variable weather conditions being offshore Islands which get a mixture of continental (if you know what that means - "O" level geograohy helps) and maritime climate.
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Post by marchesarosa on May 15, 2011 1:25:35 GMT 1
We're not, Louise. It's just that they are being presented as such by the media . "Extreme" is a word which has been degraded. It's all a function of the scare-mongering which is such a big earner for newspapers and for climate researchers, too!
The BBC in particular makes a meal of every weather "extreme" that comes our way because of its ideological commitment to anthropogenic global warming. Take it with a big pinch salt. Extremes are normal in weather.
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Post by louise on May 15, 2011 9:23:26 GMT 1
For an example and analogy take the next world athletic games record after record will be broken and the games after that the same will happen.Soon you might conclude that eventually the athletes will be arriving at the finishing tape before they have started. No doubt then that the generall population will therefore have become super fit to enable this. We know what it is that allows athletes to break records at successive events - it's a combination of better nutrition, better training and the ability to measure e.g. time down to smaller and smaller increments. The English April that we've just had was 3.7 deg C warmer than the average over the last 350 years and the UK as a whole was 0.5 deg C warmer than the last record breaking April - that's not a result of being able to measure more accurately and is not an artifact of statistics. The point I was making earlier is that there are so many records being smashed, not just broken by a tiny fraction that is a result of more accurate measurment, and 'business as usual' would not give this result. |
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Post by rsmith7 on May 15, 2011 9:58:14 GMT 1
For an example and analogy take the next world athletic games record after record will be broken and the games after that the same will happen.Soon you might conclude that eventually the athletes will be arriving at the finishing tape before they have started. No doubt then that the generall population will therefore have become super fit to enable this. We know what it is that allows athletes to break records at successive events - it's a combination of better nutrition, better training and the ability to measure e.g. time down to smaller and smaller increments. The English April that we've just had was 3.7 deg C warmer than the average over the last 350 years and the UK as a whole was 0.5 deg C warmer than the last record breaking April - that's not a result of being able to measure more accurately and is not an artifact of statistics. The point I was making earlier is that there are so many records being smashed, not just broken by a tiny fraction that is a result of more accurate measurment, and 'business as usual' would not give this result. Well you'd better retreat underground louise...and take all the other sad, friendless, worrysome prats with you. I'm going to crack open a beer, fire up the barbie and enjoy the lovely WEATHER. |
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Post by buckleymanor1 on May 15, 2011 11:30:55 GMT 1
For an example and analogy take the next world athletic games record after record will be broken and the games after that the same will happen.Soon you might conclude that eventually the athletes will be arriving at the finishing tape before they have started. No doubt then that the generall population will therefore have become super fit to enable this. We know what it is that allows athletes to break records at successive events - it's a combination of better nutrition, better training and the ability to measure e.g. time down to smaller and smaller increments. The English April that we've just had was 3.7 deg C warmer than the average over the last 350 years and the UK as a whole was 0.5 deg C warmer than the last record breaking April - that's not a result of being able to measure more accurately and is not an artifact of statistics. The point I was making earlier is that there are so many records being smashed, not just broken by a tiny fraction that is a result of more accurate measurment, and 'business as usual' would not give this result. I doubt that recordings of temperature were as thorough and as accurate 350 years ago as they are today. |
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Post by louise on May 15, 2011 12:53:25 GMT 1
I doubt that recordings of temperature were as thorough and as accurate 350 years ago as they are today. Nobody is comparing one point of data 350 years ago with one point now. The average over the last 350 degrees is 3.5 deg different from this April. Any inaccuracies over that time period are as likely to be in a positive as a negative direction and so negligible in the overall picture. |
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Post by buckleymanor1 on May 15, 2011 14:40:45 GMT 1
That was rather rushed.
Don't you mean the average over the last 350 years is a 3.5 deg difference.
You still have to get your data from 350 years ago or is it made up to some specific value that suits give or take.
That's the point you can't rely on inaccurate or made up data.
If it's not reliable and I very much doubt it is, it's not much use extrapolating any data from 350 years ago as this could be useless and unreliable.
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