Met Office Claims About Extreme Rainfall Not Supported By Their Own Scientific Paper
By Paul Homewood
http://blog.metoffice.gov.uk/2015/12/11/climate-change-and-weather-caught-in-a-media-storm/
One of the claims made by the Met Office is that:
Last month, we published a paper showing that for the same weather pattern, an extended period of extreme UK winter rainfall is now seven times more likely than in a world without human emissions of greenhouse gases.”
But what do the facts tell us about extreme winter rainfall?
Taking the long running England & Wales Precipitation Series, there has definitely been a trend to wetter winters, yet most of this increase appears to have taken place before 1900.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadukp/data/monthly/HadEWP_monthly_qc.txt
We can see the same pattern if we look at the extremely wet winters.
None of the top 20 winters appear until 1834, and even then remain relatively rare until 1912.
Obviously we get the anomalous winter of 2013/14, but this is the only winter to make the list since 2000, except for 2001. In contrast 1912, 1915 and 1916 all appear, and shortly afterwards we get 1923, 1925 and 1930.
There is no evidence at all that extremely wet winters have become more common or wetter.
Whatever the Met Office have fed into their models, it bears no resemblance whatsoever to reality.
FOOTNOTE
I thought I should take a look at the paper, which the Met Office links to, and this turns out to be our old friend, “Explaining Extreme Events of 2014 from a Climate Perspective”.
The section they refer to is Chapter 10, “EXTREME RAINFALL IN THE UNITED KINGDOM DURING WINTER 2013/14: THE ROLE OF ATMOSPHERIC CIRCULATION AND CLIMATE CHANGE”.
And what is the Chapter’s finding?
Extreme winter rainfall in the United Kingdom becomes eight times more likely when the atmospheric circulation resembles winter 2013/14, whereas anthropogenic influence is only discernible in extremes with a shorter duration.
In other words, the study found no evidence that the wet winter had anything to do with “climate change”, and everything to do with atmospheric circulation, essentially the jet stream.
And even the paper’s comment about anthropogenic influence is only discernible in extremes with a shorter duration is highly misleading, as the actual detailed text states:
Figures 10.2b,d,f illustrate the effect of human influence on extreme rainfall for synoptic conditions similar to 2013/14. The ALL [All Forcings incl AGW] and NAT [Natural] (high correlation) ensembles are not distinguishable for both DJF and R10x based on Kolmogorov–Smirnov tests (p values greater than 0.2). However, a minor (not statistically significant) shift to wetter conditions due to anthropogenic forcings is identified for R10x, translating to an increase in the chances of getting an extreme event by a factor of about seven.
[R10x is the the wettest period during the year over 10 consecutive winter days]
So the anthropogenic influence they claim to have found for shorter duration events, is not even statistically significant, and does not even appear in the high correlation tests.
It really is disgraceful for the Met Office to attempt to defend themselves by misrepresenting scientific papers.
PS
I’ve just left an snorting comment on their blog!! Please add your own.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
No sign of your comment on the Met Office blog as of 9:54 pm GMT
They have the weekend off!
Your digging into this will help us to understand what is going on and what is not going on.
Thanks.
I love the statement:
“…whereas anthropogenic influence is only discernible in extremes with a shorter duration.”
So lets get this straight, with short time periods we get more anthropogenic influence, that is, as the time period gets shorter, Man affects climate more, whereas, in longer periods, Man has less to no affect on climate. I thought the whole point about statistical analysis is to look for trends in the longer period. As I stated in an earlier post, the Met Office thinks that by looking at 4 days in December, 2015, it can make a conclusion for the entire year of 2015.
So here is the conclusion of Met Office Think, since a short period can account for a trend over the whole of the “long period”, so to speak (I am trying to keep the conversation out of technical jargon), then by reason, why can’t ANY short period be the determinable influence of the “longer period”. Thus if the Met Office can take 4 days in December to be the raison d’etre for the entire year, and since there are 81 blocks of 4 days in the year – or more specifically there are 361 differing 4 day occurrences in the year – then how is the Met Office picking just ONE out the at least 81 to 361 different other possible likely, dare I say it, dare I say it, “simulated” possible conclusions for the entire year!
What a load of rubbish. The Met Office is full of nitwits. Morons the lot of them.
What a bunch of nitwits these people in the Met Office are.
I would like to add to my above statement:
I refereed papers for years. As a referee when ever I came across outrageous statements like the above stupid statement that shorter periods can basically determine or explain longer periods, without any statistical support, I would KILL the paper. It wouldn’t be allowed to be published.
Now the real problem is this, the referees that allowed this paper to pass, who are they? They should be tossed out of the journal or society that allowed this to happen. That is, the ideal solution. But today, many referees are also to blame for the nonsense that is being allowed to be published in Science. The whole scientific refereeing practice has become tainted with quid-pro-quo relationships and imbeciles.
Science has been invaded with corrupted and moronic people. This is the central problem we have, it isn’t AGW, its Social Entropy.
Like the Social Entropy idea. The only way to reduce social entropy is hard work and bullshit bashing, otherwise chaos is inevitable.
I used to review too, the papers were sent to a number of independent referees who all commented on the merits of the paper. Now, peer review has become a joke to justify scientific cliques and support the established (consensus) view.
Now that COP 21 is over has the battle been lost? With so much support from governments and big business worldwide pushing the scam all they have to do is smile smugly and ignore the facts staring them in the face.
Social Entropy is a nice concept, needs to be defined mathematically!
It is perhaps worth commenting that while the Met office demonstrates low-competence bias in its reporting, the BBC is full on one-sided reporting.
The BBC website is now almost all dedicated to their views on “Climate Change” including the claim that the pause is not fact and all the other “proven science” junk. Their one-sided reporting is a disgrace and it is a pity that it cannot be challenged about the level of hype that it shows.
We need something like the US congressmen who are challenging NOAA!
Paul.
Just a note to say thank you for doing the investigative work that well-paid, so-called investigative journalists seem incapable of..
BillB
I second that, investigative journalism is a path to a P45 if you smash down the wrong doors.
Part of the climate of fear we are living under I’m afraid; so cut’n’paste continues everywhere.
There isn’t any attempt to re-work the ‘given text’ either to make it look original !
Alas, Churnalism rules.
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