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Wow, amazing ignorance there. To extrapolate the CET for the first 7 days to represent the whole of May! Bet you're glad your name wasn't in that article Piers!!

Hi Elim

The article says:

Central England temperatures so far this month average 8.6C, 1.6C below normal.

SO FAR! NOT THE ENTIRE MONTH!

Hi CO2

The article clearly states

"Britain's coldest May in more than 300 years"

Your average Joe Public will assume that's true!

In 1877 the first week of May saw a CET of 5.1C (and that's not 300 years ago.) So 8.6C is nowhere near as bad, and it's now on 9.2C (as of 9th May)(May 1877 ended up with a CET of 9.1C)

Philip Eden's figures show the CET for the first 10 days of May running at 9.7C that's just 0.8C below the average for this period.

That's the correct way to compare it. I'm surprised Piers keeps retweeting that cringingly embarrassing Metro article with it's huge error.

http://www.climate-uk.com/

First 10 days - whole month to go and next week is not pleasant looking with another cold northerly plunge of air. Saturday was a great sunny day but it didn't get past 16.3c and it's currently 3.3c - to be expected under a northerly flow. The 'warm up' of the past week (which is still below average) was expected but then you didn't get the forecast did you Elim? It really does make a difference to understanding what we see going on and Piers forecast is going very well so far.

Why would it be 'embarrassingly wrong?' to mention the first week (I take that as 7 days) and you compare a 10 day figure? Piers makes a direct reference to the article dated 8th May so to compare to Philip Eden's* figure for 1-10 May is totally disingenuous. Whilst you may dislike the journalism it does in the first line of the article

"Central England temperatures so far this month average 8.6C, 1.6C below normal." http://booty.org.uk/booty.weather/climate/

Then you write

"A -0.8C anomaly by the end of the month would rank it as the coldest May since ...er... 1996, that's 16 years ago!"

a) read what Piers has actually said in the release back in April rather than what you think it says.

b) May 1996 "An unusually COLD month with noted enhanced wind chill. By the CET value (9.1 degC), it was the second COLDEST May of the 20th century [i.e. 2nd coldest in c.100 years], and only just outside the 'top-10' of coldest Mays in the entire [CET] series. Mean temperature was below normal throughout the British Isles; by 2 to 3 degC locally in eastern-England. Notably low day maxima included 7 degC at Manston (Kent) on the 3rd, 6 degC at Dunkeswell (Devon) on the 17th and 7 degC at Bournemouth on the 18th." Do those temps sound familiar for the first week in May 2012?

Elim are you deliberately trying to mislead people or are you an idiot because you are sadly acting like one?

I also have to ask are you the same Elim that tries the same tactics at WUWT and gets the smackdown? Or did you maraud as Levi on the Metro site to use the same 10 day argument?

P.S. I'm not going to reply back as you obviously thrive on the attention and you are wasting time. Sorry but I smell a time wasting troll?

*I read his book 'Great British Weather Disasters' and was stunned by his CO2 delusions/conclusions at the end after going to such ends to show natural variability in the British Isles. Otherwise the book is a good reference tool for understanding weather here, for example that we had a drought around the last Diamond Jubilee (1897).

This was in solar cycle 13, which followed the very cold SC12 (and Krakatoa). The late Victorian period (1884-1902 which SC12-13 fell within, 1878-1902) was notably dry, cold but had some nasty wet periods too.

Comment edited by Craig M (Twitter) on Sunday May 13, 2012 at 1:02 AM EDT

Comment edited by Craig M (Twitter) on Sunday May 13, 2012 at 1:03 AM EDT

Sorry 'Craig M' that you didn't get it the first time.

CET isn't just about a whole month's temperature, there's a value for every day of the month too. This means that you can compare for example the CET by Day 9 with the average CET for that period - this is meaningful. If you take the CET for May 2nd to the 4th and compare it with May 22nd to the 24th that obviously tells you nothing of value. To see how the anomaly is running in the first week you compare it with the historic mean of the first week I'm not sure how to make this any easier for you to understand?
It's easy enough to look at the first 7 days if it makes you happier.
CET mean for the first week of May is 9.7C the CET mean for the first week of May 2012 was 8.6C (as mentioned correctly in the article.) This gives an anomaly of -1.1C not -1.6C. By May 10th the (1st - 10th)anomaly was running at -0.8C, I accept that this may have misled you in some way, for which I apologise.

This link may help you, it's updated every day including weekends and shows the current anomaly is at -0.9C.

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cet_info_mean.html

As to the other thing you mentioned, I don't read WUWT and I assume I therefore haven't posted there - but if you can give me a link it may prompt my memory.

I do have a Great Uncle Levi but I doubt it was him! There are plenty of people out there that understand how to use this data so I'm not surprised that someone said something.

Hope that's all a bit clearer for you. (By the way, people who disagree with you aren't called trolls!!)

Thanks Craig
Should we debate with attention seeking trolls?

Anyhow: Elim, That was Metro not us and about first week not 10 days and they seem to have mixed up 'relatives to normal' and 'if this temp carried on' (and we did attempt to clarify that confusion in our 140 character tweets!) - available via:
http://twitter.com/Piers_Corbyn

Its journalize about the fact of the cold. Also we (WeatherAction) are not saying so cold. We said coldest or near coldest East/Central Britain for 100 years. We have to put it like that because 1996 was coldest (CET although we would prefer east measures) in last 100 years (and 2nd coldest in 112 years because 1902 was colder) so to be in say coldest 5 in 100 years we used the phrase 'coldest or near coldest for 100 years' which is headlineable.

Your comment about 16years is an attempt to deceive. You need to compare like with like.

IN FACT
'Coldest or near coldest for 100 years' is the same as
'coldest or near coldest for 16 years',
because 1996 was the coldest for 100 years.

Better to say Probably in 5 coldest in last 100 years which is the 90% level in our forecast.

If December 2012 is almost as cold as Dec 2010 (which we correctly forecasts as probably coldest for 100 years) (this is NOT a forecast) it could turn out as 2nd coldest for 100 years or coldest for two years which of course doesn't 'sound so cold' but it would qualify as 'near coldest for 100 years'. Do not misconstrue our forecast and STICK TO OUR PHRASE.

We did NOT say 'coldest for 100years',
We said 'coldest or near coldest for 100 years and 90% sure it would be in the 5 coldest for 100 years'.

For what we said in summary on 17th April see:
http://www.weatheraction.com/displayarticle.asp?a=450&c=5

Do you subscribe to any of our forecasts?
Do you afford such hostile and twisted quizzing to the MetO to whom you do subscribe via your BBC licence fee?

Copied from the other thread (http://bit.ly/KZEOiE)

No, my comment about 16 years was because it is very different to 300 years!

Anyway, yes I understood your forecast:

80% confidence "Coldest in 100 years" i.e 9.1C or below.

90% confidence "In 5 coldest in 100 years" i.e 9.8C or below

You're still in with a chance of being right, time will tell!

I also contribute to the MetO as a taxpayer! Yes, I do question some aspects of the service but I do find the analysis of their work much more objective then the methods you use I'm afraid. See my comment about 'confirming' a forecast with one or two events. (http://bit.ly/J2V8Un )

Thank you for moderating your language from previous posts, however it's still not good manners to call someone a 'troll' just because you don't like/agree with what they say.

I said troll not because you disagree, but how you came across. Troll tactics are to divert attention and try and throw a spanner in the works (rather than more blatant ad hominem attacks). This is the thing you seem okay but then when you attack Piers' work it comes across as if you are crowing about it. I've seen that at other sites time and time again - the main reason is to throw doubt in readers minds (even if the points have no validity whatsoever - it just has to sound good) and to put people off by the back and forward nature of people feeding the trolls and the trolls keeping it going. That's why I'm glad it's regulated here, even if I don't agree with everything said or not.

Apologies if I have taken you wrong but that is how you are coming across. Your CET bit of your reply being a case in point

I am perfectly aware of what CET, I hope the way you came across in that statement about it was unintentional as it appears very condescending. I use Hadley dataset myself and have been focusing on precipitation in light of the 'wettest drought' but have been tracking local stations. Using monthly CET is not always a good way to view weather - April CET for example was helped by the warm end, which skews the story. My point was you appeared to be trying to take Piers to task for referring to a 7 day period (in an article) and then threw up a 10 day CET?

I see Piers has commented regarding the cold scores and also that whilst CET will be used he never meant the whole of England and Wales (my point (a) above) - he's been explicit on this from day one no matter what the media have subsequently said.

I will download an updated CET (last update I did was 1st May). I also know locally we are under the average having warmed up the past week from 8.1-10.7c. Time will tell on this score, but the synoptics for next week are below average (ensembles don't reach double figures max for my area) with a high risk of frost. Time will tell on this.

RE: WUWT - someone with the same name (not unusual but many sites are seemingly incestuous with the visitors), it was more the way the person came across. The Metro comment by Levi (now that is a fairly common name) again was the way it was written and came across. I have a low opinion of journalists as I take the time to read source materials and to be honest most journalists are now stenographers and 'tow the party line' be that CO2 or whatever.

Hi, thanks for your comments Craig. No, I'm not a troll.
I didn't take Piers to task over the 7 day thing, it was the Metro article that I was annoyed with for being so misleading, I didn't think Piers was doing any favours by retweeting it. By the time I came across it we were 10 days into May, so I used the most recent figures to illustrate my point. I did take on board what you said and subsequently used 7 day figures in my post which still illustrated exactly the point I was making.

I know Piers forecast only mentioned the cold for central and eastern UK, the CET falls entirely into this region and as you know doesn't include Wales!

No worries Elim - easy to get wires crossed on the web!

CET will be skewed by Western England (0°C for 1-10 May*) and Piers forecast stated the West would be warmer. As of yesterday CET at 9.6 (1-13). I see thought that Philip Eden has some regional data (East Anglia, S East) so something to validate against at the end of the month as well as the overall CET scores on the doors.
*http://www.climate-uk.comIt is the only area of the entire British Isles not below average so far (again only first 10 days)