Articles Tagged "Headline Story"
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Sunday, January 20th 2013, 4:40 PM EST
The Science and Public Policy Institute has been asked to comment on the apparent inconsistency between the news that July 2012 was the warmest July since 1895 in the contiguous United States and the news that the Meteorological Office in the UK has cut its global warming forecast for the coming years. The present paper is a response to that interesting question.
Early in August 2012, the NOAA issued a statement to the effect that July 2012 had been the hottest month in the contiguous U.S. since records began in 1895. NOAA said the July 2012 temperature had been 77.6 degrees Fahrenheit, 0.2 F° warmer than the previous July record, set in 1936.
However, NOAA’s statement was based on incomplete information that has since been revised. Updated data available at the NCDC website (NCDC is the division of NOAA that maintains national climatic data for the United States) show that July 2012’s temperature was not 77.6 °F, as NOAA had previously claimed, but 76.9 °F, half a degree Fahrenheit below the record 77.4 °F set in July 1936
Even this revised value may be a considerable exaggeration. In response to criticisms of the siting of U.S. temperature monitoring stations, in 2008 NOAA introduced a new network of carefully sited stations with up-to-date, standardized, properly monitored equipment. The Climate Reference Network, as it is called, shows that the July temperature for the continental U.S. was 75.6 °F, lower by 1.3 °F than stated by the NOAA in August 2012 based on incomplete data from its older, poorly-sited stations influenced by urban heat-island effects, and lower by 2 full Fahrenheit degrees than the 77.6 °F that NOAA had published in August 2012.
views 50,888
Thursday, January 17th 2013, 10:11 AM EST
The GWPF has been right all along. In a new report Hansen, Sato and Ruedy (2013) acknowledge the existence of a standstill in global temperature lasting a decade.
This is a welcome contribution to the study of global temperature. When others reached the same conclusion they have been ridiculed; so this admission should provide some pause for reflection by those who have attacked the very idea of a recent temperature standstill, often without understanding the data, focusing on who was making the argument and their alleged non-scientific motives.
According to Hansen et al. the Nasa Giss database has 2012 as the ninth warmest year on record, although statistically indistinguishable from the last 12 years, at least. Noaa says it’s the tenth warmest year. The difference is irrelevant.
Hansen discusses the possible contributions to global temperature in the past decade from stochastic variability and climate forcings. Personally I don’t think that the variations are demonstrably stochastic.
views 46,593
Monday, January 14th 2013, 11:58 AM EST
The reporting of the Met Office’s new half-decadal prediction of global temperatures, which now forecasts no rise in warming over the next five years (in sharp contrast to previous record warm forecasts) – has highlighted two lessons in reporting climate change. One is the violation of the old maxim that people are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts – in climate change reporting it seems that facts can be flexible. The other is that it seems you can’t please anyone, anytime. Here is the BBC’s original broadcast of the recent Met Office forecast put out at 7.00 am Tuesday 8th January, BBC Radio 4.
Newsreader: The Met Office has revised downwards its projection for climate change through to 2017. The new figure suggests that although global temperatures will be forced above their long-term average because of greenhouse gases, the recent slowdown in warming will continue. More details from our environment analyst Roger Harrabin.
Roger Harrabin: Last year the Met Office projected that as greenhouse gases increase, the world’s temperature would be 0.54 degrees warmer than the long-term average by 2016. The new experimental Met Office computer model, looking a year further ahead, projects that the Earth will continue to warm, but the increase will be about 20% less than the previous calculation. If the new number proves accurate, there will have been little additional warming for two decades. The Met Office says natural cycles have caused the recent slowdown in warming, including maybe changes in the sun and ocean currents. Mainstream climate scientists say that when the natural cooling factors change again, temperatures will be driven up further by greenhouse gases.
I have said before that I did not think Roger’s script was very good, the use of figures was confusing in my view, but I think he did get the story basically right; that the Met Office has a new projection to 2017, based on a new computer model, and that will mean little additional warming for two decades (although I would have said none). He said the temperature slowdown was due to natural influences and that temperatures would eventually go up again.
Source Link:
thegwpf.org/
views 62,666
Monday, January 14th 2013, 10:23 AM EST
Using their hi-tec website, this 3-5 day Met Office forecast indicates there is nothing to worry about, otherwise it would be coloured, and as you can see it's plain or if you like "un-shaded", indicting for the time of the year they expect "normal January weather", that is in contrast to the 1-2 day forecast I have posted below, it is shaded and includes a level 3 warning due to the below average cold weather and snow etc.
Those of you who have seen the forecast for this period, issued from WeatherAction.com by Piers Corbyn at the end of December (that's right, "end of December") would have noticed that Piers is expecting this period to be one of his highest solar ratings of the year, an R5+, and it takes place from Wednesday 16th and ends on the 18th*. Then allowing for one or two days for the Earth's climate to "process" this event (that's "cause and effect" to you and me) there should be a noticeable climatic change (NOT a "man made" one, but a "Solar Climate Change") in the UK and indeed around the world taking place by no later then Sunday 20th January.
I will include these Met Office daily charts until the last day (Sunday), they should start to change colour, maybe even "Red" as we progress through the week
Updated below with additional MUST READ comments by Piers Corbyn
views 61,438
Sunday, January 13th 2013, 3:33 AM EST
Last year The Mail on Sunday reported a stunning fact: that global warming had ‘paused’ for 16 years. The Met Office’s own monthly figures showed there had been no statistically significant increase in the world’s temperature since 1997.
We were vilified. One Green website in the US said our report was ‘utter bilge’ that had to be ‘exposed and attacked’.
The Met Office issued a press release claiming it was misleading, before quietly admitting a few days later that it was true that the world had not got significantly warmer since 1997 after all. A Guardian columnist wondered how we could be ‘punished’.
But then last week, the rest of the media caught up with our report. On Tuesday, news finally broke of a revised Met Office ‘decadal forecast’, which not only acknowledges the pause, but predicts it will continue at least until 2017. It says world temperatures are likely to stay around 0.43 degrees above the long-term average – as by then they will have done for 20 years.
views 57,182
Saturday, January 12th 2013, 5:22 PM EST
Inevitably last week it didn’t take long for the bush fires set off by Australia’s “hottest summer ever” to be blamed on runaway global warming. Rather less attention was given to the heavy snow in Jerusalem (worst for 20 years) or the abnormal cold bringing death and destruction to China (worst for 30 years), northern India (coldest for 77 years) and Alaska, with average temperatures down in the past decade by more than a degree. But another story, which did attract coverage across the world, was the latest in a seemingly endless series of embarrassments for the UK Met Office.
Some of this story may be familiar – how on Christmas Eve the Met Office sneaked on to its website a revised version of the graph it had posted a year earlier showing its prediction of global temperatures for the next five years. Not until January 5 did sharp-eyed climate bloggers notice how different this was from the graph it replaced. When the two graphs were posted together on Tallbloke’s Talkshop, this was soon picked up by the Global Warming Policy Foundation which whizzed it around the media.
views 39,913
Thursday, January 10th 2013, 3:31 AM EST
Was there ever a government quango quite so useless as the Met Office?
From its infamous ‘barbecue summer’ washout of 2009 to the snowbound winter it failed to predict in 2010 and the recent forecast-defying floods, our £200 million-a-year official weather forecaster has become a national joke.
But of all its recent embarrassments, none come close to matching the Met Office’s latest one.
Without fanfare — apparently in the desperate hope no one would notice — it has finally conceded what other scientists have known for ages: there is no evidence that ‘global warming’ is happening.
views 18,117
Tuesday, January 8th 2013, 5:40 PM EST
Global warming is not causing temperatures to rise as quickly as previously feared, the Met Office has claimed.
Today the weather agency released its revised forecast which was quickly seized upon by climate change skeptics who used the data to claim global warming has stopped.
In turn, the scientific community accused them of ignoring the weight of evidence showing that global warming is a reality, and accused the Met Office of 'falling short' of the standards expected of it.
The UK's national weather service recently changed its projections for climate change through to 2017, known as 'decadal forecasting', to show a marked difference to the rate at which the world's temperature will climb.
Updated below with more media links
views 62,306
Tuesday, January 8th 2013, 4:37 PM EST
A new global temperature forecast published by the Met Office, through to 2017, has scaled back projections of the amount of warming they expect compared with previous estimates.
The new projection can be seen below with more details on the Met Office website.
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.
views 28,732
Monday, January 7th 2013, 9:25 AM EST
Scientists are to launch an experiment which could allow them to predict earthquakes before they happen and potentially save hundreds of thousands of lives.
They believe a rise in static electricity below the ground could be a reliable indicator that a quake is imminent.
Tom Bleier, a satellite engineer with QuakeFinder, has spent millions of dollars putting specialist measuring equipment- magnetometers - along fault lines in California, Peru, Taiwan, and Greece
The instruments are sensitive enough to detect magnetic pulses from electrical discharges up to 10 miles (16 kilometers) away, which could give people enough time to get to safety before a quake strikes.
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