‘The human fingerprint is everywhere’: Met Office’s alarming warning on climate
By Paul Homewood
h/t Dennis Ambler
The human fingerprint on the climate is now unmistakable and will become increasingly evident over the coming decades, the UK Met Office has confirmed after 30 years of pioneering study.
Since the 1990s, global temperatures have warmed by half a degree, Arctic sea ice has shrunk by almost 2 million km2, sea-levels have risen by about 10cm and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by 60 parts per million (17%), according to figures exclusively compiled for the Guardian to mark the 30th anniversary of the Met Office’s Hadley Centre for climate science and services.
The data highlights how a young generation has grown up in a climate unprecedented in a millennium. Future projections suggest that by mid-century a 60-year-old Briton is likely to be living in a climate 1.2C warmer than when they were born.
Scientists at the Hadley Centre, which has been on the global frontline of climate monitoring, research and modelling since it opened in 1990, said early theories about fossil-fuel disruption have been proven by subsequent facts.
“The climate now is completely different from what we had 30 years ago. It is completely outside the bounds of possibility in natural variation,” said Peter Stott, a professor and expert on climate attribution science at the centre.
In the Hadley Centre’s early projections, he said, scientists forecast 0.5C of warming in the UK between 1990 and 2020 as a result of emissions from oil, gas and coal: “We got it spot on.”
Let’s take the claims one by one:
1) Since the 1990s, global temperatures have warmed by half a degree
https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/climate/
There was a step up in global temperatures which began in the early 1990s, though disguised at first by the Pinatubo eruption. Since then there has been no noticeable underlying temperature rise, with the record dominated by El Nino events. Statistically, 1998 remains the warmest year on record, tied with 2016.
The Met Office themselves admitted the existence of the pause in 2013, when it published this paper:
It included this comment:
Since then the only change has been the record double El Nino, which brought a peak in temperatures in 2016/17. Much of that heat still lingers in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Over the longer term, it is abundantly clear that it is the major ocean cycles, such as PDO and AMO, which dominate global temperature trends.
2) Arctic sea ice has shrunk by almost 2 million km2
Again the Met Office are being extremely devious. The decline took place prior to 2007, since when sea ice extent has been stable.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover_30y.uk.php
3) Sea-levels have risen by about 10cm
Sea levels have been rising at the same steady rate since 1900, as the world’s climate emerged from the Little Ice Age, a time when glaciers expanded hugely.
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=170-053
There is no evidence of anything unusual occurring in the last thirty years, merely a continuation of much longer term and gradual changes.
4) 0.5C of warming in the UK between 1990 and 2020 as a result of emissions from oil, gas and coal
Again, we can see that the jump in UK temperatures took place in the 1980s and 90s. For the last two decades, average temperatures have barely risen at all. This fact, of course, raises questions over the claim about fossil fuels. Given that CO2 emissions have been rising faster than ever since 2000, why have not UK temperatures followed suit?
The Met Office’s message is crystal clear – that the world will continue to warm, just as their models predicted. The facts, however, tell a different story.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
The gullible Horrorbin-discipline Tom Bawden in the “i” has a similar article about how the models predict disaster, so it must be right.
The continuous brainwashing of the population is frightening. We have to hope that the cynicism of the man in the street remains firm, as usual, in the face of establishment drivel.
It seems that if Trump had not taken his brave stand they would have won!
It must be right. It comes from the Hadley Centre’s supercomputer. Don’t trust any other supercomputer.
A “supercomputer”-if fed junk data in-just produces the same crap in less time than a normal computer!
Indeed 01 Cat,
Also of note is that the latest HadCRUT4 has the arctic temperature variation added. The Arctic has warmed over many years. BUT HadCRUT4 does not include the Antarctic temperatures (which have got cooler over the years). Now I wonder why they
fiddledadjusted the data like that?P.S.
HadCRUT3 didn’t do that and for some reason shows less warming.
More scare-mongering from the usual sources. By God, I would hate to live with or anywhere near these consistent doom-mongers.
Doom-mongers because it’s profitable for them. When their income will dry up (when?) then this particular drivel will dry up.
I am immediately going to dig a hole and hide. Any day now its going to be the end of the world. It must be , because according to the last graph the mean temp has already risen by 1.5C in the last 130 years, so everything must be about to die, mustn’t it?
Flagrantly wrong attribution. In the midst of the lock-down experiment to limit anthropogenic emissions, the Keeling curve shows absolutely no change in gradient. Consequently, one can reasonably conclude that the INCREASE in atmospheric carbon dioxide is mainly natural in origin and most likely in Pareto terms to be the oceans. I wonder what the latest is on the value of sensitivity at the Hadley Centr? It certainly needs some gymnastics. Mind you this is very possible given that jumping to wrong conclusions is what the Centre does for exercise.
“The human fingerprint on the climate is now unmistakable”
Yes sir. Of course. Here for example, is the human fingerprint on the dangerous decline in Arctic sea ice.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/11/07/precipitous-decline-in-arctic-sea-ice-volume/
Current levels of Arctic sea ice are in the top 5-10% of the last 10,000 years
How are humans responsible for that ?
Yes sir. Just read that recently. And also that it was icefree 4000 years ago. Thank you for this comment.
“The climate now is completely different from what we had 30 years ago.”
I’m sixty one years old mate, I was 31 thirty years ago. I think that if the climate was “completely different” back then I might just have noticed. Anyway, to be honest, if the UK actually starts having an actual summer on a regular basis instead of once every twenty years, I would be happy with that. I mean, you do know that warmer climates are more benign and that harsh winters can be really nasty right?
I can give you 17 years, Stonyground, and I haven’t noticed much “completely different” either. I remember that the rugby club I used to be a member of very, very rarely lost a fixture to frost before Christmas. In the mid-90s there seemed to be a run of early winters but most of us just put it down to weather.
And that doesn’t fit the narrative so it must have been an illusion!
And even assuming the Met Office is right and all Paul’s graphs are fakes where exactly is the evidence that this is anything to do with us?Has anybody ever provided even a decent argument to back up the suggestion (I won’t even call it a hypothesis!) that atmospheric CO2 has any part to play in changes in temperature greater than provided by the interaction of sun, clouds, and oceans?
And 1.2°C in 40 years time. My grand-daughter will be delighted; it’ll save her a fortune in fuel bills — unless the doomsayers get their way!
“there has been no noticeable underlying temperature rise, with the record dominated by El Nino events. Statistically, 1998 remains the warmest year on record, tied with 2016.”
Not really…1995 was warmer…
“The average temperature was 58.72 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the British data, seven-hundredths of a degree higher than the previous record, established in 1990. The British figures, based on land and sea measurements around the world, are one of two sets of long-term data by which surface temperature trends are being tracked. The other, maintained by the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, shows the average 1995 temperature at 59.7 degrees, slightly ahead of 1990 as the warmest year since record-keeping began in 1866. But the difference is within the margin of sampling error, and the two years essentially finished neck and neck.”
2016: NOAA… https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201613
“Global Temperatures “With the contribution of eight consecutive high monthly temperature records set from January to August, and the remainder of the months ranking among their five warmest, 2016 became the warmest year in NOAA’s 137-year series. Remarkably, this is the third consecutive year a new global annual temperature record has been set. The average global temperature across land and ocean surface areas for 2016 was 0.94°C (1.69°F) above the 20th century average of 13.9°C (57.0°F), surpassing the previous record warmth of 2015 by 0.04°C (0.07°F)”
57.0 plus 1.69 = 58.69… lower than 1995. A climate emergency??
A climate emergency is when you panic over hundreds or tenths of a degree Fahrenheit increase in temperature using instrumentation that isn’t accurate to that decimal place. A climate crisis is when you panic over a global rise in mean temperature using instrumentation whose coverage isn’t global. Cue men in white coats please. These guys really do need to take a chill pill before Mother Nature hands them one for real.
“The climate now is completely different from what we had 30 years ago. It is completely outside the bounds of possibility in natural variation,” said Peter Stott.
What a load of unmitigated CARP!
Like the writers of article, this man has no shame since he must know that what is being written is simply untrue.
The natural variability includes the ENSO. It has had no correlation with the man-made increase in CO2. And, of course, neither do the jet streams, nor major volcanic eruptions. What has Peter Stott been looking at?
“What has Peter Stott been looking at?”
Deliberately “adjusted” non-data that gives warming where there is none.
Isn’t Stott the guy that “invented” homogenisation
You know that statistical garbage operation that allows them to spread tainted urban temperatures to the whole globe?
Peter Stott was also a Contributing Author for the IPCC. Ideology and career development all supported. Who needs science?
Before dealing with homogenised climate records perhaps we should deal with ubiquitous homogenised milk which may be an affront to peoples digestive systems and might be more injurious to their long term health than a barely discernible temperature rise.
It’s just circular reasoning. If you assume there’s no manmade Climate Change then obviously all the variation is natural. The null hypothesis is it’s natural. Proving it’s not requires proof that we largely understand what drives climate and that we have experienced substantially all of natural variation before say 1950. The first is simply false, the second unprovable. Instead we get the logical fallacy if “it can’t be anything else” which fails the first test – we don’t know enough to know that.
If you are looking for ‘the human fingerprint’ – and refuse to look for natural causes because you believe it impossible for there to be a natural cause, then what you will find will be a fingerprint.
Yet, if the ‘human fingerprint’ is man-made CO2 emissions, ‘the science’ has yet to prove beyond doubt that that is the cause. And when one considers the trillions that are going to thrown at a ‘solution’ (as if!) it needs proving beyond doubt (models need not apply!).
The Met Office will never let the truth get in the way of continuing funding from the UK taxpayers.
Too true!
‘The human fingerprint on the climate is now unmistakable and will become increasingly evident over the coming decades, the UK Met Office has confirmed after 30 years of pioneering study.’
‘Pioneering study’ can’t last 30 years.
‘The climate now is completely different from what we had 30 years ago.’
UK has been Cfb (Koeppen) for over a century. How can Prof Stott not know that?
‘It is completely outside the bounds of possibility in natural variation,” said Peter Stott, a professor and expert on climate attribution science at the centre.’
The basis of climate “science” is an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy.
One hopes they’ll eventually get a college freshman to explain this to them.
I have corrected the reporting error in the original comment from prof Stott
“The Met Office now is completely different from what we had 30 years ago”
And the witterings of Peter Stott are outside the bounds of natural variation.
Economic with the truth……they are careful not to tell any lies, but leave out a lot of evidence that nothing is really happening. I have never understood why academic, very intelligent people think they can get away with distorting the facts……surely they do not get paid more for plugging the climate HEATING fairytale.
Lying by omission then?
They do get paid more. Dramatic headline science helps with grant applications. Winning research grants (that the University pockets 25% of) increase salary and improve promotion prospects.
I’m 73 and clearly remember the cold winters in the 50s and 60s. Jezz it was cold but the summers were nice. But gradually winters have got milder no doubt and all the better for that. Remember 1976 when we had day after day of sunshine and the grass in the parks turned brown and stayed brown for weeks? Maybe be not for most of you. The warming reported has not made life precarious so it has been both welcome and manageable. Even if temperatures went up another degree or so I doubt that we wouldn’t be able to cope and that applies to the planet also.
In my time I’ve been warned of another ice age, oil running out, famine, over population of the world, superbugs and even malaria in Britain, and now its human extinction. All were taken seriously and treated as facts. Forgive me for not taking the latest prediction seriously. Don’t they teach history in school any more?
They do. The past is being carefully adjusted.
Ditto.
Yes it is the winters that have got warmer, and many will say all the better for that.
1962/3 winter caused massive inconvenience and hardship to people and wildlife.
I removed skating on the River Cam at Cambridge in the mid 60s.
In 1975 and 1976 we had very dry summers and people were saying that in the future we would have to grow tropical crops, but even in the tropics you need water for the crops.
Then in September 1976 the heavens opened and we had a winter so wet that farmers had real problems harvesting potatoes and sugar beet, and sowing winter corn.
Over the past 74 years the weather has been hot and cold, wet and dry, windy and calm, and it seems to be the young who think that every change in the weather is unprecedented.
The only thing that seems to have remained the same is a section of society feel a need to hitch their wagon to some cause, be it ‘nuclear power – no thanks’ or extinction rebellion.
They generally seem to be reasonably comfortably well off and in need of something to do.
Does the devil make work for idle hands to do?
“Winters have got warmer”. Effectively true, but in reality we haven’t had the desperately cold winters of times past, which ups the averages.
Warmest winter in CET is still 1869, 1963 was 3rd coldest, 1947 was 13th coldest.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/ssn_HadCET_mean_sort.txt
I vividly remember the long, hot summer of 1976; which, at the time, people were marvelling at, as the most wonderful thing-given a stand-pipe or two!; how times have, depressingly, changed!
1976: Minister for Drought, Denis Howell, was appointed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_British_Isles_heat_wave#Government_response
It all cycles round. How quickly the cold snowy winters of 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 seem to have been forgotten. Shovelled alot of snow those winters and the UK panicked over running out of road grit. And of course 2012, the coldest summer on record with crop failures widespread across UK and Europe.
Remember 1975 – the coldest June day on record on the 5th to the hottest June day on record on the 18th – then 15 months without any rain, in England at least.
How things change??
1976 was lovely. I remember the water shortages and the low levels in the reservoir where I went fishing. Later in the year I went tattie picking on my cousin’s farm. Most of the 10 days I was there it was too wet, so we spent time sorting sheep for market rather than lifting the spuds.
This year has been lovely too. Breakfast in our garden in Edinburgh. A rare delight, and definitely not a portent of doom, or a sign of our evil ways.
[“Future projections suggest that by mid-century a 60-year-old Briton is likely to be living in a climate 1.2C warmer than when they were born.”]
…
Bring it on!
…
And, just out of interest, in what sort of climate will a 40-year-old or an 80-year-old be living?😂
They use a decimal point to show they have a sense of humour.
‘The human fingerprint is everywhere…’ That we can agree on.
It’s on the data, the models, the ‘studies’, the ‘papers’, the ‘evidence’, the corruption of peer review, the throat of sceptics everywhere and, of course, it’s on the money.
I love CheshireRed’s comment.
‘The human fingerprint is everywhere…’ including on every door handle of the gravy train.
CET decadal average temperatures:
1980-1989 9.53 degC
1990-1999 10.09 degC
2000-2009 10.37 degC
2010-2019 10.16 degC
So the last decade has actually seen UK average temps in the CET drop slightly on average.
And compared to the CET period 1687-1739, the rate of warming now was faster and went on for much longer. Unprecedented human fingerprint? Bollocks. Get some historical perspective.
Correction:
And compared to the CET period 1687-1739, the rate of warming back then was faster and went on for much longer.
Having given it a little thought and having read a few comments below mine, I would say that the climate has changed a little during my lifetime. Completely different is a ludicrous assertion but milder winters are definitely a thing. But then so what? It is obvious to anyone who has paid attention to such matters that there are cycles of different lengths operating in the weather system. There seems to be a major warm period every thousand years or so and the current one is right on cue. There was a smaller warm period in the 1930s and 1940s. It then got colder for a while in the 1960s and 1970s and now we are enjoying a warm period again. Hands up if you think that those at the Met office don’t know about this stuff.
I have my hand up, if it helps?
What is completely obvious is the lack of any knowledge, by current Met Office lackeys, of historical weather events of, even, the recent past.
The weather we have been experiencing over the past few decades is not unprecedented in recorded human history, is actually rather benign and, arguably, mostly beneficial for humanity. The ‘human fingerprint’ argument is just hyperbole.
When the Rhine, Danube, Loire, Seine and Thames completely dried up at various times in the Middle Ages, something which has not occurred in the modern era to my knowledge, I dare say that there were a fair few priests at the time jumping around blaming it on good, old fashioned sinning. Different era, same mantra and just as daft. I suggest the Hadley Centre make Hubert Lamb’s works required reading for all new entrants. Then they might understand that the word ‘unprecedented’ does not accurately describe any weather event that we’ve experienced since ‘climate change’ hasn’t!
Mack “the Knife” is dead right about about the need for reading Hubert Lamb a requirement for new Hadley Centre entrants. Of course this would lead to heated arguments with in situ staff and failure for those entrants to progress beyond the probationary period.
I agree wholeheartedly about Hubert Lamb’s books.
I am at present reading his Climate, History and the Modern World.
It is a real eye-opener, and one of those books one wishes that one had read years ago when it first came out.
Should be the compulsory first book to read before anyone intending to start work as as a ‘Climate Scientist’!
Fingerprints are normally associated with a crime scene, in this case a crime against science and humanity.
With respect to our various memories of past weather…
“PRESENT DAY CLIMATES IN THEIR TIME RELATION”
Frank Morris Hall, Department of Geology University of Minnesota. Dated Minneapolis, Minn., April 10, 1906.
“It is often asserted by people who have lived in a locality for many years that the climate of their region has undergone marked changes during their residence, the most common statements being that cold weather came earlier in the fall, that greater snowfall was experienced, that the thermometer registered more continuously low temperatures in years past, than at present, and that the rainfall is increasing or decreasing in amount. In the light of the modern science.of statistics these statements are open to serious question. The human organism is at best an inaccurate register of temperature, and memory is more liable to be impressed with some single manifestation of weather than with the average of weather conditions which go to make up climate. A vivid impression of a day on which the thermometer registered 40 degrees below zero is quite likely to remain in the mind for a long time, but the week of moderately cold weather which followed the cold snap and which, when averaged with the lowest temperature noted, made only average winter weather, is quite likely to be unnoticed, or, if noted at all, soon forgotten.”
It’s going to be very difficult for them when the planet cools.
“The data highlights how a young generation has grown up in a climate unprecedented in a millennium …”.
Complete garbage as expected from Guardian hacks:
And still, it’s not nearly as warm as during previous warm periods such as the Medieval Climate Optimum or the Roman one or the ones before. We are in a cycle of eve colder warm periods and this one seems to be on its last legs. It’s getting colder. Enjoy whatever warmth you can still get. But back to the data. Starting measurements at the coldest point of the LIA is quite dishonest. Where is the explanation for the last 2000 years? Or more …
Please enjoy the Met Office’s blather and remember that if you are a UK tax payer you are paying for this foolery.
Maybe it’s about time to sell-off the Met Office and contract back just the few things that are needed. With a track record like they have (barbecue summer anyone? no more snow, etc.), the UK government could turn a pretty penny before the buyer finds out just how duff they really are.
We all agree, more or less, but how to get past this veritable jungle of deception to reach Boris? If we don’t then it’s ‘Good bye from Him and Good bye from me’
They have been telling us for decades how the Arctic is warming so much faster than the rest of the planet. Color the NH red? Yet, when anyone attempts to validate that with temperatures from the Northern hemisphere to compare with those from the Southern hemisphere, the data are nowhere to be found. The NH plus the SH when divided by two is the global average…currently 14.8°C. Try and find the much warmer NH or the cooler SH. Back in 1999 Phil Jones et al. had the NH at 14.6°C and the SH at 13.4°C with the globe at 14.0°C. Something doesn’t fit the narrative, numerically?
Heres a thought petroalbion ,one and all ,why don’t we focus on the CO2 science, its fairly simple to question how TOTAL CO2 could make any significant difference to the climate when it represents 1/25th of one percent of the atmosphere and is not even the primary greenhouse gas (that being H2O).
The green leftee looonies are taking a religious aproach to this issue so are not interested in science just the destruction of Western Society as we know it.
Proof of this are in the earlier comments of this post with chaamjamel referring us to a study of artic sea ice from 1975!!! Not heard of the mini ice age then Chaamjamel?
I am old enough to remember that in the 1970s the concern was that we were heading into another iceage similar to the 1700s.
So lets focus on debunking the link between climate change and rising CO2 even Boris could understand he is quite bright after all.
Brembo… I think you mean ADDED CO2. Obviously, some CO2 is needed to keep the Earth habitable. In the 1970s the concern was how to add CO2, not capture and store it. Amazing how history is ignored.
Thank goodness we don’t have summers like 1976 any more.
After thirty years of research and publiclation about climate change, my conclusions are:
Climate Change and CO2
It remains incomprehensible to me that fundamental data can be so ignored in order to advance a totalitarian vision for society. There are three truths that prove the human CO2 hypothesis false.
1. There are no data that substantiate that modern carbon dioxide levels have any significant effect on global temperature.
2. The earth is undergoing a multi-millennial cooling and any respite from that is good for humanity.
3. There are reams of data that prove that any current climate changes are well within long term norms, or, in other words, nothing unusual going on here!
These data are publically available in printed form.*
The widespread acceptance that CO2 is the major climate changer is so far removed from reality that only the naive and uneducated can be forgiven for believing it.
* Required reading: Lamb, H. H., 1995, Climate, History, and the Modern World: 2nd Ed., Routledge, NY, 433 p.
Lee Gerhard
On Fri, May 29, 2020 at 8:22 AM NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT wrote:
> Paul Homewood posted: “By Paul Homewood h/t Dennis Ambler The human > fingerprint on the climate is now unmistakable and will become increasingly > evident over the coming decades, the UK Met Office has confirmed after 30 > years of pioneering study. Since the 1990s, ” >