Trend to colder winters continues in UK
Paul Homewood
Watts Up With That?
Sat, 23 Mar 2013 21:31 CDT


Figures released by the Met Office show the UK mean temperature for the 2012/13 winter finishing at 3.31C. This is below the long term 1981-2010 average of 3.83C.

Figure 1

The winter ranked 43rd coldest since 1910, and continues the trend towards colder winters. In the last five years, only 2011/12 has been above the 1981-2010 average. The average over these five years has been 3.03C.

Interestingly, the average winter temperature for 1911-2013 stands at 3.52C, so by 20thC standards the last few years have been genuinely cold.

The mild winters between 1998 and 2008 increasingly look to be the exception rather than the rule, as Figure 2 show


Figure 2

Rainfall


After claims and counterclaims of floods and droughts, the winter has been remarkably normal in terms of rainfall.

Total rainfall amounted to 346.7mm, against the 1981-2010 baseline of 330.5mm, although there have been regional variations, with NW Scotland being notably dry.

Figure 3

Met Office Predictions

I am quick to criticise the Met when their 3-month outlooks are so far adrift, so I'll give them credit this time for forecasting below normal temperatures. Their prediction for rainfall of slightly below normal was not far off the mark either.

I was drawn, however, to this statement in the precipitation outlook:

"The risk of snowfall over the UK is related to the occurrence of cold winter weather. As probabilities favour for this year a colder season than last year's, the risk of snowfall is enhanced."

It appears nobody thought to tell them about the new theory that snow is caused by warm weather!


NW Europe

It seems it is not just the UK that has had a run of cold winters. NoTricksZone reports that Germany has had exactly the same run of 5 cold winters, and, as they point out, what applies to Germany usually applies to much of Central Europe.

What makes this situation even more remarkable is that we are still in the warm phase of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, that began in the mid 1990's (and, of course, coincided with the onset of milder winters till 2008).

As NOAA say

"The AMO has affected air temperatures and rainfall over much of the Northern Hemisphere, in particular, North America and Europe."
We might be in for a few more cold winters when the AMO turns around.

References

All data from the http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/summaries

Yep, even North America (USA at least, not sure about Canada) is in the throes of the winter that won't leave.

regardless of the doomsayers and their "global warming", i still think we are headed for a mini ice age...

started snowing here again too,nothing much,but Temperatures around 32F,four days into Spring!

yea, our Midwest is getting pummeled right now too... even here in Houston, it's like 60 here right now... it was 90 4 days ago...

I'm kinda mad they went to "climate change"
I want global warming back

I blame OwlGore for that!

The ignorance is astounding.

Climatologists predicted the warming gulf stream would be shifted away from England causing that country to have colder winters. Hate to break the news fellows but the global average temp is rising despite a few cold

I offer this up from our friends at the Christian science monitor

Over the past century, global average temperatures appear to have risen faster than at any time since the end of the last ice age 11,300 years ago, and perhaps longer. Meanwhile, the magnitude of the increase has been unmatched in at least the past 4,000 years.
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Researchers say those are the implications of a new study that uses natural stand-ins for thermometers to trace temperature trends back to the beginning of the current warm, interglacial period. Significantly, the study’s findings suggest the current warming trend cannot be explained by some forms of naturally occurring temperature variability, a lingering issue in the debate over the impact of human activity on global warming. [Editor's note: The reference to temperature variability has been revised.]

The main trigger for the current warming trend, especially since the middle of the last century, has been rising emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide as people burn fossil fuels and change land-use patterns, researchers say.

RECOMMENDED: Are you scientifically literate? Take our quiz

Although other so-called paleoclimate records reach farther back into geological time, the team focused on the Holocene epoch, in which human civilizations emerged and evolved.

"To our knowledge, based on this reconstruction, the rate of change today is unprecedented" in the Holocene, says Shaun Marcott, an atmospheric scientist at Oregon State University who led a team formally reporting the results in Friday's issue of the journal Science. Indeed, it may be unprecedented in the past 22,000 years, he adds, when previous paleoclimate research he and his colleagues have conducted is taken into account.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2013/0307/Global-temperature-rise-is-fastest-in-at-least-11-000-years-study-says