Stephen Belcher On Extreme Weather
By Paul Homewood
h/t Alex Henney
Professor Stephen Belcher
Back in October, the All Party Parliamentary Group on Climate Change, which boasts such luminaries as Tim Yeo, Caroline Lucas and Emily Thornberry amongst its leading members, co hosted a seminar along with the Royal Society and the Parliamentary Office of Science & Technology.
The purpose of the seminar was to review the Fifth IPCC Assessment Report. The speakers invited included Brian Hoskins (Director of the Grantham Institute), Corinne Le Quere (Director of the Tyndall Centre) and John Pethica (Vice President of the Royal Society). In other words, a typical bunch of warmists whose funding relies on ramping up alarm.
Amongst the speakers too was Prof Stephen Belcher, who, as well as being Deputy Director of Climate Science and Professor of Meteorology at the University of Reading, is also head of the Met Office Hadley Centre. Quite simply, the Hadley Centre, and Belcher’s job, would not exist if climate change was deemed to be a non-problem.
In his brief speech, Belcher wanted to relate the IPCC’s verdict on extreme weather events to events in the UK. He chose two examples.
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/post/ClimateChangeEventSummary.pdf
The Summer of 2003
While 2003 was undoubtedly a very hot summer in the UK, it only tied with 1976 in terms of mean temperatures. Indeed, maximum temperatures were actually 0.71C lower than 1976’s.
According to the Central England Temperature Series, even on mean temperature, the summer of 1976 was the hottest, and astonishingly in second place was the summer of 1826!
There is nothing to back up his claim that summers like 2003 are becoming “normal”, particularly since there have been no days at all over 30C since 2006, as far as the CET is concerned.
The Summer of 2012
The heavy rainfall during the summer of 2012 is an even odder choice. The fact that it was wetter in 1912 does not exactly tell us much about “climate change”, particularly since 2012 has been the only year since 1912 to even make the top 10.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadukp/data/download.html
There have been 31 summers with more than 300mm of rain, in other words a 1-in-8 occurrence. Yet there have been only two such years since 1958, which itself followed similarly wet summers in 1954 and 1956. Much wetter summers were more common during the 19thC, which would suggest that these are associated with a cold climate and not a warm one.
The reality is that Belcher found himself struggling to find any examples of “extreme weather”, that had not happened often enough in the past. But he could hardly admit that to the MP’s. That would not be the message they wanted to hear.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
“Summer 2003 – 20,000+ deaths” But no qualification. Very, very naughty, especially as his presentation is UK specific, AND, the Met Office has the data.
From their link below: “There were also heat-related deaths in the UK (2,000)”
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/education/teens/case-studies/heatwave
Belcher mentions wheat yields “down 15% on 5-year average” in Summer 2012; shame he chose not to mention how much higher than 5-year average they were in 2003:
Click to access agindicator-b11-03jul14.pdf
“Quite simply, the Hadley Centre, and Belcher’s job, would not exist if climate change was deemed to be a non-problem.”
Not totally sure about that statement, but there is no doubt about there being vested interests:-
“Met Office Academic Partnership”
“The Met Office Academic Partnership is a cluster of research excellence that brings together the Met Office and institutions who are among the leading UK Universities in weather and climate science (University of Exeter, University of Leeds, University of Oxford and University of Reading) through a formal collaboration to advance the science and skill of weather and climate prediction. ”
“What are its aims?”
Well one is:-
“To build a cluster of research excellence that can be instrumental in determining priorities for future funding and influencing the EU Framework agenda.”
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/partnership
“To build a cluster of research excellence that can be instrumental in determining priorities for future funding and influencing the EU Framework agenda.”
That is very important information, it actually explains their stance on Climate Change.
I wonder if Paul was aware of that.
Great analysis Paul. We skeptics get this kind of misinformation thrown at us all the time. It’s good to have a debunk-source like Notalot close at hand.
Paul,
Good work – these people keep you busy!
I find it disturbing that apparently there are a good number of academically credentialed people so utterly willing to stretch facts to fit the Global Warming narrative. They must know better…
Belcher. Can a name be more appropriate?
Beat me to it.
“Normal by 2040s and cool by 2080s”
I recall Richard Feynman said something about vague statements. You can look it up.
Anyway, in the phrase above, does normal refer to hot summers rather than to climatic “normals” as meteorologists and TV presenters usually use the term?
Is “cool” a scientific term or one taken from teens on social media?
Further, what evidence is there for “cool by 2080s” using either sense of the term?
I think he just pulled this out of the aether.
He means that “hot summers such 2003” will become “normal” by 2040.
He does not define “normal” though!
Belcher- so named because his troughing is amongst the loudest of the pigs.
Not forgetting that many of those deaths were due to the french health workers inconvenient habit of going away on their holidays at the same time leaving a rather large gap in service.
A sufficiently vague hypothesis cannot be falsified.