Articles Tagged "UK Drought Forecast 2012"
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Tuesday, April 9th 2013, 3:27 PM EDT
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.
Sunday, April 7th 2013, 11:51 AM EDT
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’.
Saturday, March 30th 2013, 11:04 AM EDT
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.
Thursday, March 21st 2013, 11:21 AM EDT
IT MAY surprise you to know as you huddle under your umbrella or your face is lashed by persistent rain or sleet that this time last year former environment secretary Caroline Spelman had just declared parts of the country were in drought. A big one too; predicted to be the worst for 124 years.
Hosepipe bans had been announced which were to affect 22 million people over the southeast and east of England and we were told to expect dried-up riverbeds and depleted reservoirs.
Horticulturists were even suggesting we all consider cacti in our gardens while Spelman appealed to us to be careful every time we turned on the tap.
"We are asking for the help of everyone by urging them to use less water," she declared following a crisis meeting of industry bodies, regulators and conservationists.
Meanwhile a report brought out by the Environment Agency last March warned of dire environmental and agricultural repercussions were the drought to continue.
Source Link:
express.co.uk
Monday, January 7th 2013, 9:00 AM EST
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.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/p/i/A3-layo ut-precip-AMJ.pdf
On 24th August, their forecast for September “weakly favours below normal values”.
RESULT – RAINFALL WAS 117% OF NORMAL IN SEPTEMBER.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/i/e/A3-plot s-precip-SON.pdf
Saturday, January 5th 2013, 1:35 AM EST
Latest research shows that news coverage of the global warming scare fell again in 2012. Despite all the hype over ‘Superstorm Sandy’ the year 2012 continued the trend of falling mainstream news and public interest about climate. But while most news outlets cut back on global warming stories the core promoters of the man-made warming cult are unmoved in their coverage.
The latest numbers come from the media database maintained by the nonprofit journalism site The Daily Climate as reported by Climate Central blog. They prove that the New York Times led the way in 2012 posting the most stories on this non issue. The inescapable truth is that public interest in global warming has long fallen off a cliff. In no small part because, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) global temperatures have flatlined since 1997. Nonetheless, the NYT still registered the biggest increase in climate coverage among the five largest U.S. daily papers, according to media data trackers from the University of Colorado.
According to The Daily Climate a total of 7,194 reporters and commentators filed 18,546 stories, compared to 7,166 reporters who filed 18,995 stories in 2011. Climate Central says, “The numbers remain far from 2009′s peak, when roughly 11,000 reporters and commentators published 32,400 items on climate change, based on the news site’s archive.”
Thursday, January 3rd 2013, 6:32 AM EST
During April 2012 the UK Environment Agency warned of an impending drought to hit 32 million people in the UK and it would last until 2013.
Today in a report from Roger Harrabin at the BBC the Met Office have now made a startling analysis:
"The frequency of extreme rainfall in the UK may be increasing, according to analysis by the Met Office. Statistics show that days of particularly heavy rainfall have become more common since 1960
You have to then ask what data was used in April last year with the Environment Agency/Met Office, did they not also have the same trend or data set from 1960?
Until the Environment Agency/Met Office wake up to the idea that our Sun changes the climate they will never be able to grasp "Cause & Effect" in regard to weather patterns.
Our future is in the hands of fools.
Wednesday, December 12th 2012, 6:28 AM EST
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.
Sunday, June 10th 2012, 7:59 AM EDT
As the rain pours down, our reservoirs fill and hosepipe bans are ended, we must not allow this Act of God – unforeseen, as usual, by the Met Office – to distract us from the utter shambles of our national water policy.
Last month I reported how, since 2007, in response to a Communication from the European Commission, our government has switched the entire focus of its water policy away from building more reservoirs and mending leaks (which every two years waste as much water as all our existing reservoirs hold) to concentrate instead, in face of the droughts promised by believers in global warming such as the Met Office, simply on using less water.
Accordingly, no fewer than five major new reservoir schemes have been scrapped in south-east England alone, where the shortage of water is most severe – two of them last year by our Environment Secretary, Caroline Spelman. In obedience to the EU’s guidelines, her White Paper “Water for Life”, full of references to “climate change”, was all about how we must cut down our water usage and use it more “efficiently”, not least by encouraging our largely foreign-owned water companies to make this “precious resource” more expensive.
The fact is that, since the 1980s, we have spent so much – £67 billion in the period up to 2007 – on complying with the absurdly exacting requirements of three EU directives on water quality that we have spent less than a quarter of that sum on “infrastructure”, such as mending leaks.
Thursday, June 7th 2012, 11:22 AM EDT
#Report also says the country - particularly the South - will have a wet rather than a dry summer
#Environment Agency says it is for water companies to make a decision on when to lift their hosepipe bans
Recent months have seen a steady flow of pictures showing Britain’s apparent chronic water shortage, with drying reservoirs and lengthening riverbanks.
But after the persistent downpours which followed that brief spell of hot weather, these comparison images show the same areas enjoying the deluge of water and filling up to their normal levels.
And now, with little excuse for retaining the hosepipe bans and with the forecast of a soggy summer to come, the water companies have announced that Britain is no longer in drought.
Click source to read FULL report from Sean Poulter and Chris Parsons. See also
UK Drought Forecast Link
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