Met Office Peddle Extreme Rainfall Lies
By Paul Homewood
The Met Office have now descended to knowingly peddling misinformation:
Extreme rainfall events could be four times as frequent by 2080 compared to 1980s.
For the first time, a high resolution model that captures the detail of convective, or extreme, rainfall events has provided 100 years of data, spanning the past, present and future continuously, to analyse the future risk of rainfall with the intensity that can cause flash flooding.
A version of the Met Office Unified Model, the same that is used for the operational UK weather forecast, has been run 12 times at a resolution of 2.2km (known as k-scale modelling) to give an ensemble of 100-year climate projections.
This is like starting 12 weather forecasts and running them for 100 years, except the researchers are not interested in the weather on a given day but rather how the occurrence of local weather extremes varies year-by-year. By starting the model runs in the past it is also possible to verify the output against observations to assess the model performance.
At this level of detail, it is possible to more accurately assess how convective downpours that can lead to flash flooding will change, for example when the intensity of the rain exceeds 20mm/hour. Thresholds of rainfall intensity like 20mm/hr are used for aspects of planning such as surface water drainage and flood risk.
The research, published in Nature Communications, found that under a high emissions scenario (RCP 8.5) rainfall events in the UK exceeding 20mm/hr could be four times as frequent by 2080 compared to the 1980s. Previous coarser model output (12km) predicted an increase of around two and a half times in the same period.
RCP 8.5 is a pathway where greenhouse gas emissions keep accelerating. This is not inevitable, but a plausible scenario if we do not curb our emissions.
An example of an intense rainfall event with 20mm/hr is London in July 2021, when 40mm of rain fell over three hours at Kew Gardens, flooding the underground and other infrastructure.
There is no actual evidence provided to prove that extreme rainfall is becoming more frequent, as their computer models say.
Indeed at stations like Oxford, where the Met Office say extreme rainfall will become three times more frequent, the opposite is the case.
https://www.ecad.eu/utils/showindices.php?3v2e59f6q4m5mu3n7rv7k0n0fl
The Met Office is specifically looking at hourly rainfall, which there is very little historical data for. Nevertheless, if this was getting greater the same trend would be seen in daily data; but the actual data shows this is not the case.
Their projections are based on the most extreme GHG scenario, RCP8.5, which they describe as “plausible”. This is false and undeniably implausible. The only reason for the Met Office to use RCP8.5 is for propaganda purposes.
To cap it all, the Met Office offer this as an example:
An example of an intense rainfall event with 20mm/hr is London in July 2021, when 40mm of rain fell over three hours at Kew Gardens, flooding the underground and other infrastructure.
But 40mm of rain in three hours is far from being unprecedented. Maidenhead, for instance, had more than twice as much rain in an hour. Indeed none of the short duration rainfall records have been set since 1989:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-climate-extremes
All in all this is a thoroughly disgraceful and baseless piece of scaremongering, even by Met Office standards.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Like all models, rubbish in, rubbish out!
Even the IPCC has admitted that the likelihood of RCP 8.5 is low though its not mentioned in the AR6 Summary for Policy Makers or the Technical Summary its in the Technical Report itself. Shocking that the Met Office is still using it.
RCP8.5 is totally unlikely. Its assumptions about population growth and emissions are never going to happen. This is the second time they’ve used RCP8.5 this week. It’s really fraudulent.
Love it how they say they have ‘future data’ (“…provided 100 years of data, spanning the past, present and **future** continuously…”)!
When they say “ran it 12 times” what do they mean? 12 different scenarios or just the usual ” we ran it x times and one was really, really bad!”?
The rest is really just fraud. Their claims on RCP8.5 are lies – it’s already way off-track because of reduced emissions and decreased population growth. The claim that because it can model very little happening now over a very short period it can model 100 years is laughable – no other discipline would accept that. In financial circles we would literally be laughing.
The main way for rainfall to change in the UK must be via the locations of North Atlantic storm tracks. A quick google search reveals:
2012 paper: A poleward shift (i.e. northwards) of mid-latitude storm tracks expected from climate models.
2017 paper: “Recent evidence suggests that storm tracks may already be shifting south, and starting to affect southern Europe more”
Reminds me of Antarctic sea ice, climate models can predict both increase and decrease.
‘Author: Press Office’
Mr Office should be fired.
‘This is like starting 12 weather forecasts and running them for 100 years’
I bet you Brits just wish they could get the forecast 3 days out right.
You have empirical evidence that their forecasts are off the rails WITHIN DAYS, yet they pretend running them out 100 years gives them ‘data.’
A professional government clown show.
The very fact that the Met Office is fully paid up to ‘Man-made-climate-change’ suggests that any forecasts are preconceived by bias. Same applies, as always with computer models, RUBBISH IN = RUBBISH OUT.
Government gets away with lying
Metoffice gets away with lying
BBC gets away with lying
Wancock gets away with lying
Mainstream media gets away with lying
Mark Steyn cancelled for telling the truth
Andrew Bridgen cancelled for telling the truth
Neil Oliver tells the truth
OFCOM claims it enforces impartiality
“the Met Office Unified Model, the same that is used for the operational UK weather forecast”
Does the Met really use RCP8.5 for its successful operational forecasts?
They also tell a porky by saying RCP8.5 is a plausible scenario
“.. high emissions scenario (RCP 8.5) ..”
Wikipedia has 90 pages in the category “British fantasy writers”.
The authors of this future weather fantasy can be added to the list.
Nature Communications should be re-branded as a publisher of fiction.
Are the UK based scientific publications interested in these perversions of science or is it a waste of time raising it with them as ‘the science is settled’ ?
The BBC are starting to admit to feeling a bit bruised and Paul has done much of the heavy lifting in that quarter.
There is an atmosphere of desperation amidst the alarmists. The 2016 Hottest Year Evah based on its El Niño spike recedes and recedes and recedes .Could it be that we will never see it matched?
Who needs data when you’ve got a £100,000,000 computer game to play with?
They’re not stupid. 🤣🤣🤣
2080’s eh. so no one aive now need worry.
MetO rubbished by Pielke Jr…
Model 8.5 is extreme and to tout it round as a likely outcome is totally disingenuous
I think the correct word is mendacious, not disingenuous!