Here is part of a great blog from Paul Homewood concerning the Met Office’s Private Briefing Document For The Environment Agency....below is his section on the location of the Jet Stream, regular readers of Piers Corbyn would know the answer to this issue....
Following the wet summer in the UK last year, the Met Office provided the Environment Agency with a briefing document, giving an overview of the weather. This was discussed at the September Board Meeting of the Environment Agency, which Met Office officials attended.
As far as I know, this document, which I obtained through FOI, has never entered the public domain. It is brutally honest in admitting how little the Met’s scientists understand about what affects our climate, and, in particular, what caused the unusual weather last year. This is in stark contrast to many of the hyped up claims, made in public statements in the recent past by, among others, the Met Office themselves.
The full document is reproduced below, but there are four particular areas I wish to focus on.
Those of us caught in downpours in our shorts or left peeling soggy sausages off the barbecue could probably have told them all along.
The Met Office finally admitted yesterday that the forecasts it gave of ‘dry’ weather last year were ‘not helpful’.
But the organisation’s chief scientist still insisted two-thirds of its long-term forecasts are ‘very helpful’ – without specifying quite what that means for the other third.
In its official guidance to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Met Office said that last April was likely to be ‘drier than usual’.
The Met Office has admitted issuing advice to government that was "not helpful" during last year's remarkable switch in weather patterns.
Between March and April 2012, the UK experienced an extraordinary shift from high pressure and drought to low pressure and downpours.
But the Met Office said the forecast for average rainfall "slightly" favoured drier than average conditions.
The three-month forecast is said to be experimental.
It is sent to contingency planners but has been withheld from the public since the Met Office was pilloried for its "barbecue summer" forecast in 2009.
This Weather Documentary for the UK Climate during 2012 made by Channel4, puts a predictable emphasis on "man made" climate change". As far as I'm concerned it shows how powerful some of the recent solar events have been, namely the Wettest Drought and the December of 2010. One day in the future (sooner then later I hope) when it is common knowledge that the Sun is responsible for extreme weather changes to our climate, we will be able to look back on these documentaries and see how silly people thought co2 was the cause of these events - NOTE This Documentary may not be available outside the UK and there is a time lock after 30 days...
In Britain we love to moan about the weather. And over the past decade we have experienced some extraordinary weather conditions, with 2012 no exception.
It has led many people to wonder if our weather really is getting worse.
The year started with storms and gale-force winds tearing across much of the UK, before our driest spring in a century left 35 million people in the UK suffering from drought.
Well, as an example, let's look at their rainfall forecasts they made during 2012. Remember, their forecasts are based on information from observations, several numerical models and expert judgement.
On 23rd March, they predicted “The forecast for average UK rainfall slightly favours drier than average conditions for April/May/June as a whole, and also slightly favours April being the driest of the 3 months.”
RESULT – RAINFALL TOTALS WERE 176%, 94% AND 203% OF NORMAL IN APRIL, MAY AND JUNE RESPECTIVELY.
Mean temperature averaged 13.9C in the UK as a whole, well down on the long term 1981-2010 average of 14.4C. Since 2006, the average summer temperature has been below average, running at 14.3C.
In terms of ranking, 2012 comes in at the 54th warmest since 1910. The Central England Temperature series shows this summer as 15.2C (higher than the whole UK, as it excludes the colder Scotland and Wales). Figure 2 illustrates just how unremarkable English summers have been lately, and not just in the last couple of years. In the 354 years since the series started, there have been 177 summers that were warmer than this year, and the average summer temperature since 1659 has actually been warmer, at 15.3C.
Recent warming in the Atlantic Ocean is the main cause of wet summers in northern Europe, according to a new study.
A cyclical pattern of rising and falling ocean temperatures is seen as a major influence on our weather.
Scientists say the current pattern will last as long as the Atlantic warming persists.
The research was carried out at the University of Reading and is published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
The study investigated a phenomenon known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation - a cycle of change in which the waters either warm or cool over a period of several decades.
This summer is set to be the second wettest in the UK since records began - and the wettest summer in 100 years - provisional Met Office figures suggest.
The wettest summer - defined as June, July and August - since national records began was in 1912.
Figures up until 29 August show that 366.8 mm of rain fell across the UK this summer, compared with 384.4 mm rainfall in 1912.
The April to June period was also the wettest recorded in the UK.
The figures are provisional as there are still two days remaining in August, but the BBC Weather Centre said the rainfall was not expected to exceed the total amount in 1912. Records began in 1910.
However there is hope on the horizon, with forecasts of a dry and warm September. The worst summer on record was 1912, when 384.4mm fell across the UK.
The figures based on the National Record, that goes back to 1910, take a “true” average for the whole of the UK
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