Met Office Climbdown

In 2009, the Met Office made this ingenious forecast

Global warming continues to pose a real threat that should not be ignored – a claim reinforced in a new study by scientists, reported in a supplement of the August issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. This is despite very small global temperature rises over the last 10 years.

the Met Office’s decadal forecast predicts renewed warming after 2010 with about half of the years to 2015 likely to be warmer globally than the current warmest year on record.

Global warming set to continue – Met Office

Today they acknowledged that they have no idea what they are doing

The latest decadal prediction suggests that global temperatures over the next five years are likely to be a little lower than predicted from the previous prediction issued in December 2011.

Updates to our decadal forecast – Met Office

About Tony Heller

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6 Responses to Met Office Climbdown

  1. They only adjusted their prediction because temperatures had dropped below the “weather spread” of their model. That meant the model was technically falsified. Now, mysteriously, their weather spread for their new prediction doesn’t shift up in temperature until around 2020. Or in other words, it appears they have tweaked their model so it will take another 7 years to falsify this one. (Provided there is no cooling trend kicking in before then.)

    • The missing heat sank to the bottom of the CO2 molecules.

    • Ray says:

      Have you seen a projection on which the projected temperatures goes up by 2020?
      The previous forecast went to 2020, but the latest one only goes to 2017 and I haven’t seen any actual projection beyond that. The MO say that temperatures continue to increase in the longer term, but I haven’t seen any actual figures.
      Here is an animated gif which someone has produced, which illustrates change in the projections well:
      http://i46.tinypic.com/123147s.gif

  2. tckev says:

    You’ll have the BBC broadcasting something (anything!) nearer to the truth on climate.
    Probably not though, as they have too much of their pension fund betting on ‘sustainable’ technology/ green power being a success.

  3. Sundance says:

    Check out Paul Hudson who, for those that didn’t know, received the Climategate emails a month before anyone else. Paul worked at UKMO as a forecaster and is now at the BBC. Here is a recent post by Paul at the BBC web site.

    “I have written several times in the last few years on the subject of Met Office global temperature predictions, and how they have been regularly too warm.

    In the 12 years to 2011, 11 out of 12 forecasts were too high – and although all projections were within the stated margin of error, none were colder than expected.

    One of their most high profile forecasts came in late 2009, coinciding with the Copenhagen climate conference.

    It stated that half the years between 2010 and 2015 would be hotter than the hottest year on record, which I wrote about on my blog.

    This already appears wide of the mark.

    The latest projection seems to address this error with a prediction to 2017 in which temperatures rise 20% less than previously estimated.

    In November 2009 I wrote about this levelling off in global temperatures, using research available at the time on the Met Office website.

    In it, the Met Office explained that the levelling off of global temperatures that we were experiencing can be expected at time periods of a decade or less, because of the computer models internal climate variability.

    But intriguingly, the research ruled out zero trends for time periods of 15 years or more.

    The new projection, if correct, would mean there will have been little additional warming for two decades despite rising greenhouse gases.

    It’s bound to raise questions about the robustness and reliability of computer simulations that governments around the world are using in order to determine policies aimed at combating global warming.

    The Met Office says natural cycles have caused the recent slowdown in warming, including perhaps changes in the suns activity, and ocean currents.

    And mainstream climate scientists, who are in a majority, say that when the natural cooling factors change again, temperatures will be driven up further by greenhouse gases.

    But climate sceptics, who have long argued that natural processes are either underestimated, or not properly understood, will not be surprised at this scaling back of expected warming.”

    The original UKMO data that Paul refer to can be found here

    http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/j/j/global_temperatures_09.pdf

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