Slingo Making It Up As She Goes Along
By Paul Homewood
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/release/archive/2015/summer-statistics
With just a couple of days left, the Met Office have confirmed just how cold the summer has been in the UK:
Despite a dry and sunny June and a brief heat-wave at the start of July, summer overall looks set to be cooler than average and cooler than either summer 2013 or 2014. It has also been rather wetter than average, however sunshine totals are expected to be near average.
In general the weather has been dominated by a westerly flow from the Atlantic, bringing often cool and rather wet conditions, especially in the north and west, with the south-east generally experiencing the best of any warm, dry, sunny spells.
Using provisional figures up to 26 August* and then assuming average conditions for the final few days of the month, Met Office statistics show the UK mean temperature for this summer will be around 14 °C. This is 0.4 °C below the long term average (1981-2010).
Apart from 2011 and 2012, this would make it the coldest summer since 1998.
Unsurprisingly, the Met Office did not see this coming at the end of May.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/i/k/A3_plots-temp-JJA_v2.pdf
While they admit that uncertainty was large, the vast majority of their modelled projections were well above the outcome, including one which would have broken the record of 15.78C by a large margin.
None of this will come as any great surprise, but what is interesting is what Julia Slingo has to say about it on the Met Office blog:
http://blog.metoffice.gov.uk/2015/08/28/so-what-happened-to-our-summer/
Note again:
If we look beyond our shores there have been some big changes in the global climate this year. El Niño is in full flight, disturbing weather patterns around the world. The low pressure that has dominated our weather is part of a pattern of waves in the jet stream around the world that has brought crippling heat waves to places like Poland and Japan. And, looking back over past El Niños, you could have expected that a more unsettled summer might be on the cards for the UK.
So it’s all the El Nino’s fault! Well perhaps not.
Returning to the 3-Month outlook above, this is what the Met Office had to say at the end of May:
Note:
However, El Niño is not known to have a significant influence on the climate across northern Europe at this time of year.
In other words, Slingo is just making it up as she goes along. They were even saying exactly the same thing in their 3-Month outlook at the end of July.
Slingo claims in her article that none of this could have been foreseen, even though now she also claims that the weather should have been expected with El Nino conditions.
However, one commenter rather shows up her incompetence:
It is a mystery how this incompetent woman has kept her job for so long.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
….and for such incompetence we pay her a quarter of a million pounds a year!
Perhaps they need a more powerful computer?
Slingo and the Mutt Orifice would be better off reading tea leaves and using a piece of dry seaweed to make their “forecasts”- or is it “projections”?
What an apology for a “scientist”- and she gets paid as well. The mind boggles.
Reblogged this on WeatherAction News.
Statistics for my part of east London (Wanstead) show that it has been a very average summer up to 28th August, if rather dull (84% of average sunshine). Bracketed figures represent the 1981-2010 average for this area,
Mean 17.9C (17.6C) Rainfall 151.7mm (144.9mm) Sunshine 472 hrs (564hrs)
The comparison with 1997 suggests that this El Nino is having less of an effect despite it being in the same league as that ‘ENSO’. 1997 figures were:
Mean 18.5C Rainfall 226.1mm Sunshine 497.9hrs
The media will constantly harp on about El Nino being the cause but I’m not so sure – in terms of it determining weather in any particular area. It really can go either way…
We could be facing a record mild winter. Or we could be facing a winter with a record cold month. Take your pick…
https://wansteadmeteo.wordpress.com/2015/05/13/uk-media-in-a-fog-over-el-nino-predictions/
I am astonished that Slingo thinks she can get away with such flip-flopping. What IS the point of the Met Office if it cannot stick to one scientific explanation?
It’s not only Slingo, there are many others at the Met Office who think they can get away with the same sort of thing. Peter Stott has a nice line in drive by alarmist comments in the media every time any weather event happens which he thinks he can get away with linking to AGW, only to later slink away into he darkness when he is asked to produce data to support his wild claims.
El Nino does have global weather effects!
In these here parts she is not know as Senna the Soothsayer for nothing.
Good grief, what incredible revelations she has espoused. What a genius she is. she’s underpaid surely ?
if you wanted to do actual science….. It would be interesting to find out the different parameters of each of the modelled temperatures forecasts / models and see which one was the closest and why……. And publish the results.
I wonder why the Met Office have not done so?
They did, but they always hushed it up.
Apologies to Oscar Wilde.
Here, across the pond, we’ve had so few hurricanes in recent years, they have resorted to naming large rain patterns crossing the country and winter snowstorms. Good grief. A new dimension in nit-wittery. Their most recent great hurricane hope seems to be drizzling out.
Despite which, it was still “the hottest summer since records began”, presumably.
Looking for Rudd to see through her and cut Osborne’s 40% out of MET Office budget. Might take some time. Hint – after the Autumn Budget statement.
Your wonderful Dame Slingo wrote:
“ … influence on the climate across northern Europe at this time of year.”
and
“… brought crippling heat waves to places like Poland and Japan.”
In the first statement the word ‘climate’ should be ‘weather’.
The 2nd statement has two problems. The word ‘crippling’ is emotive while having no meaning as regards weather. That’s tabloid writing. Shame!
Using the word ‘like’ as in the statement is called Lazy Writing and all too common in the expressions of USA teens and pre-teens. Surely she means Poland and Japan, not places like Poland and Japan.
And you pay this woman?
We UK taxpayers have no say in ii. We are run by a self-serving elite who give each other big salaries, big bonuses, big pensions and big gongs.
…….£30k bonus last year!
It’s not just the El Nino confusion, my head snapped back when reading this summer was dominated by Spanish Plume events, because it was mainly Atlantic weather systems, with one classic Spanish Plume event for a couple of days in early July.
I then saw a BBC tutorial on the Spanish plume:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/feeds/27704153
At the end (it’s only a minute) the BBC guy was told to say that the future climate in UK may have more Spanish Plume events. They are revising this summer’s weather before it’s over, to fit with the climate change message, brilliant!
Hey, is the MSM catching on?
“Soggy summer was impossible to predict, says Met Office”
“The Met Office admitted that long term forecasts are ‘still in their infancy’ after it emerged parts of the UK had faced the wettest summer ever despite predictions for a dry, hot season ”
“……As summer officially came to a close amid extreme downpours on Monday, the forecaster was left facing questions about why it predicted a ‘drier-than-average’ season even though a strong El Nino climate event was expected.
El Ninos occur in the Pacific every two to seven years as east to west trade winds drop, heating up ocean surface temperature and triggering global weather changes. In May the Met Office said that it ‘wouldn’t expect (El Nino) to be the dominant driver of our weather’ in the summer months.
Yet this weekend Met Office chief scientist Professor Dame Julia Slingo said that the El Nino phenomenon had disturbed weather patterns, which might have been predicted…….”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/weather/11835279/Soggy-summer-was-impossible-to-predict-says-Met-Office.html
Paul – Graham Davis comments (he has further at MetO site) are pertinent. I’ve referenced Lamb a few times looking at this summer and it’s been quite a good guide.
What chance of a look how his observations would have held up this summer? (The ‘be wary of a fine and warm April’ has been something I look for based upon my own experience – something I noticed independently then read about it in a book by Philip Eden few years back).
Reblogged this on Climate Collections.