Addressing the Daily Mail and James Delingpole’s ‘crazy climate change obsession’ article

An article by James Delingpole appears in the Daily Mail today under the headline ‘The crazy climate change obsession that’s made the Met Office a menace’.

This article contains a series of factual inaccuracies about the Met Office and its science, as outlined below.

Firstly, he claims the Met Office failed to predict snow in 2010, but our 5-day forecasts accurately forecast 12 out of 13 snowfall events – as you can see in this article. In addition the Press Complaints Commission has also already addressed this fallacy with the Daily Telegraph in February of last year. As a result the newspaper published a clarification that highlighted that “the Met Office did warn the public of last winter’s [2010/11] cold weather from early November 2010.” 

Mr Delingpole also says we failed to predict flooding in November last year. Once again, our 5-day forecasts gave accurate guidance and warnings throughout the period. In just one example of feedback the Met Office has received for highly accurate forecasting and guidance throughout 2012, Assistant Chief Constable Paul Netherton, Chair for the Local Resilience Forum for Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly (which was one of the areas most affected by flooding in November), said: “[I] would like to formally thank and recognise the hard work of the Met Office over the past week. The information you provided was invaluable and enabled the responders in Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly to prepare and respond effectively to assist our communities.”

Mr Delingpole then inaccurately states that the Met Office has conceded ‘there is no evidence that ‘global warming’ is happening’. We have not said this at any point.

In fact, we explicitly say this was not the case in an article, posted on the home page of our website and widely circulated, which was written in response to articles about updates to our decadal forecast. Professor Julia Slingo, Met Office Chief Scientist, has also provided a more in depth feature on ‘Decadal Forecasting – What is it and what does it tell us?’.

Further on in the print version of the article (although amended online), Mr Delingpole says “According to the Met, Britain is apparently experiencing more rain by volume and intensity than at any time since records began.” Although he is right in saying the Met Office has published preliminary observations which show an increase in the intensity and volume of rain, we are clear that this relates to a period from 1960 onwards – not ‘since records began’ as he claims.

He also states that the Met Office was trying to defend a narrative that the “the past ten years have been the ‘wettest decade ever’”. Again, this is not something the Met Office has ever said.

Also he quotes David Whitehouse of the Global Warming Policy Foundation saying that the Met Office ‘thinks weather forecasting is beneath it’ and that ‘climate change… brings in more money’.

A cursory glance at our annual report and accounts (pdf) would reveal weather forecasting represents the vast majority of the Met Office’s contractual work on behalf of the public.

There are also a number of other accusations which cannot be substantiated.

Mr Delingpole does quote Dr Whitehouse saying “when it comes to four or five day weather forecasting, the Met Office is the best in the world.”

This supports the view of the World Meterological Organization (WMO) which consistently ranks the Met Office in the top two operational forecasters in the world.

Our reputation for forecasting accuracy is based on our commitment to provide the world’s best weather and climate service which helps protect lives and property here in the UK and around the world.

Met Office in the Media: 14 October 2012

An article by David Rose appears today in the Mail on Sunday under the title: ‘Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released… and here is the chart to prove it’

It is the second article Mr Rose has written which contains some misleading information, after he wrote an article earlier this year on the same theme – you see our response to that one here.

To address some of the points in the article published today:

Firstly, the Met Office has not issued a report on this issue. We can only assume the article is referring to the completion of work to update the HadCRUT4 global temperature dataset compiled by ourselves and the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit.

We announced that this work was going on in March and it was finished this week. You can see the HadCRUT4 website here.

Secondly, Mr Rose says the Met Office made no comment about its decadal climate predictions. This is because he did not ask us to make a comment about them.

You can see our full response to all of the questions Mr Rose did ask us below:

Hi David,

Here’s a response to your questions. I’ve kept them as concise as possible but the issues you raise require considerable explanation.

Q.1 “First, please confirm that they do indeed reveal no warming trend since 1997.”

The linear trend from August 1997 (in the middle of an exceptionally strong El Nino) to August 2012 (coming at the tail end of a double-dip La Nina) is about 0.03°C/decade, amounting to a temperature increase of 0.05°C over that period, but equally we could calculate the linear trend from 1999, during the subsequent La Nina, and show a more substantial warming.

As we’ve stressed before, choosing a starting or end point on short-term scales can be very misleading. Climate change can only be detected from multi-decadal timescales due to the inherent variability in the climate system. If you use a longer period from HadCRUT4 the trend looks very different. For example, 1979 to 2011 shows 0.16°C/decade (or 0.15°C/decade in the NCDC dataset, 0.16°C/decade in GISS). Looking at successive decades over this period, each decade was warmer than the previous – so the 1990s were warmer than the 1980s, and the 2000s were warmer than both. Eight of the top ten warmest years have occurred in the last decade.

Over the last 140 years global surface temperatures have risen by about 0.8ºC. However, within this record there have been several periods lasting a decade or more during which temperatures have risen very slowly or cooled. The current period of reduced warming is not unprecedented and 15 year long periods are not unusual.

Q.2 “Second, tell me what this says about the models used by the IPCC and others which have predicted a rise of 0.2 degrees celsius per decade for the 21st century. I accept that there will always be periods when a rising gradient may be interrupted. But this flat period has now gone on for about the same time as the 1980 – 1996 warming.”

The models exhibit large variations in the rate of warming from year to year and over a decade, owing to climate variations such as ENSO, the Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation and Pacific Decadal Oscillation. So in that sense, such a period is not unexpected. It is not uncommon in the simulations for these periods to last up to 15 years, but longer periods are unlikely.

Q.3 “Finally, do these data suggest that factors other than CO2 – such as multi-decadal oceanic cycles – may exert a greater influence on climate than previously realised?”

We have limited observations on multi-decadal oceanic cycles but we have known for some time that they may act to slow down or accelerate the observed warming trend. In addition, we also know that changes in the surface temperature occur not just due to internal variability, but are also influenced by “external forcings”, such as changes in solar activity, volcanic eruptions or aerosol emissions. Combined, several of these factors could account for some or all of the reduced warming trend seen over the last decade – but this is an area of ongoing research.

———–

The below graph which shows years ranked in order of global temperature was not included in the response to Mr Rose, but is useful in this context as it illustrates the point made above that eight of the warmest years on record have occurred in the past decade.

Graph showing years ranked in order of global temperature.

Citizen science looks at future warming uncertainty

A project running almost 10,000 climate simulations on volunteers’ home computers has found that a global warming of 3 degrees Celsius by 2050 is ‘equally plausible’ as a rise of 1.4 degrees.

The study addresses some of the uncertainties that previous forecasts, using simpler models or only a few dozen simulations, may have over-looked.

Importantly, the forecast range is derived from using a complex Met Office model that accurately reproduces observed temperature changes over the last 50 years.

The results suggest that the world is very likely to cross the ’2 degrees barrier’ at some point this century if emissions continue unabated.

It also suggests that those planning for the impacts of climate change need to consider the possibility of warming of up to 3 degrees (above the 1961-1990 average) by 2050, even on a mid-range emission scenario. This is a faster rate of warming than most other models predict.

The research was made possible because volunteers donated time to run the simulations on their home computers through climateprediction.net as part of the BBC Climate Change Experiment. A report of the research is published in Nature Geoscience.

“It’s only by running such a large number of simulations – with model versions deliberately chosen to display a range of behaviour – that you can get a handle on the uncertainty present in a complex system such as our climate,” said Dr Dan Rowlands of Oxford University’s Department of Physics, lead author of the paper. “Our work was only possible because thousands of people donated their home computer time to run these simulations.”

Dr Ben Booth, Senior Climate Scientist at the Met Office Hadley Centre, an author of the paper, said: “There have been substantial efforts within the international community to quantify and understand the consequence of climate uncertainties for future projections. Perhaps the most ambitious effort to date, this work illustrates how the citizen science movement is making an important contribution to this field.”

The model used in the project was supplied by the Met Office and the work was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the European Union FP6 WATCH and ENSEMBLES projects, the Oxford Martin School, the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, and Microsoft Research.

You can see this research covered here:

ABC Australia

USA Today

BBC

Climate Week gets underway with Met Office as science advisor

Tyrone Dunbar, is a Met Office scientist currently seconded to Defra and DECC in support of our role in providing policy relevant science to Government. In this guest blog he talks about Climate Week.

This week is Climate Week, and there are thousands of climate week related events happening all over the UK. I’ve just had a quick look at the website and there are 2802 registered events shown on their interactive map, so there’s absolutely loads of stuff going on (I’ll be honest, I was surprised how many events have been organised!).

The week officially kicked off on Sunday with a launch event at Lancaster House in London. There was a wide range of inspiring projects on display, from innovative projects such as drought-resistant maize which helps farmers in Africa adapt to climate change, to campaigns such as the Sustainable Restaurant Association’s Too Good to Waste “doggy box” promotion. There was also the fantastic news that Defra and HR Wallingford won the award for Best Initiative by a Government or Statutory Body for their work on the Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA). The Met Office were also involved in the CCRA, providing scientific guidance on the latest climate projections (UKCP09) that underpin the study, leading on the risk assessment for the Energy Sector and provided further research on urban heat islands and rainfall runoff.

The Met Office is the official science advisor for Climate Week and we have a number of things going on as well. There was a Met Office stand at the launch event, and we have a poster display in the atrium at the Department for International Development (DfID) running throughout the week highlighting various climate change issues as well as Met Office research, such as forecasting of the onset of the rainy season in East Africa. This has been really well received and DfID will be sending this exhibition to posts around the world. We are also running a Climate Challenge competition in some local Tesco stores in Devon (Tesco are the main Climate Week sponsors), as you can see in the picture below.

You can find out more about the role of the Met Office as one of the worlds leading centres for climate science research in the climate change section of our website.

 

Related articles

• Met Office recognised as world-leading by Science and Technology Select Committee (Met Office News Blog)
• Kevin Steele: Leadership on Climate Change: There’s a Vacancy for a Celebrity Standard Bearer (huffingtonpost.co.uk)

Met Office in the Media: 29 January 2012

Today the Mail on Sunday published a story written by David Rose entitled “Forget global warming – it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about”.

This article includes numerous errors in the reporting of published peer reviewed science undertaken by the Met Office Hadley Centre and for Mr. Rose to suggest that the latest global temperatures available show no warming in the last 15 years is entirely misleading.

Despite the Met Office having spoken to David Rose ahead of the publication of the story, he has chosen to not fully include the answers we gave him to questions around decadal projections produced by the Met Office or his belief that we have seen no warming since 1997.

For clarity I have included our full response to David Rose below:A spokesman for the Met Office said: “The ten year projection remains groundbreaking science. The complete period for the original projection is not over yet and these projections are regularly updated to take account of the most recent data.

“The projections are probabilistic in nature, and no individual forecast should be taken in isolation. Instead, several decades of data will be needed to assess the robustness of the projections.

“However, what is absolutely clear is that we have continued to see a trend of warming, with the decade of 2000-2009 being clearly the warmest in the instrumental record going back to 1850. Depending on which temperature records you use, 2010 was the warmest year on record  for NOAA NCDC and NASA GISS, and the second warmest on record in HadCRUT3.”

Global average temperatures from 1850 to 2011 from the three individual global temperature datasets (Met Office/UEA HadCRUT3, NASA GISS and NOAA NCDC

Furthermore despite criticism of a paper published by the Met Office he chose not to ask us to respond to his misconceptions. The study in question, supported by many others, provides an insight into the sensitivity of our climate to changes in the output of the sun.

It confirmed that although solar output is likely to reduce over the next 90 years this will not substantially delay expected increases in global temperatures caused by greenhouse gases. The study found that the expected decrease in solar activity would only most likely cause a reduction in global temperatures of 0.08 °C. This compares to an expected warming of about 2.5 °C over the same period due to greenhouse gases (according to the IPCC’s B2 scenario for greenhouse gas emissions that does not involve efforts to mitigate emissions).  In addition the study also showed that if solar output reduced below that seen in the Maunder Minimum – a period between 1645 and 1715 when solar activity was at its lowest observed level – the global temperature reduction would be 0.13C.

Met Office in the Media: 11 October 2011

There has been continued interest in the research from the Met Office with  Imperial College London and the University of Oxford, that shows that low UV output from the sun can contribute to an increased risk of  cold winters over parts of the northern hemisphere, such as recently seen in the UK. Michael Hanlon of the Daily Mail posted an fascinating blog article on Mini ice-age or global warming: why can’t they make their minds up?. Elsewhere Jonathan Leake from the Sunday Times has clarified his article on this science in which he said:

Thanks to those who have commented on this article. However, there appears to be a common misunderstanding. This article is not about anthropogenic climate change. The phenomena mentioned in this article are natural and separate from climate change. They operate in parallel to climate change, in parallel to each other but, of course, each on very different time scales.
La Nina, for example, is really about weather. It’s part of a relatively short term natural cycle operating over periods of a few years. 
It’s just one of many factors which together mean that weather is constantly showing a high level of variability. In other words, getting a cold winter or two does not tell us anything about climate change. It just tells us that weather changes a lot – which we already know.
Similarly, the research in Nature Geoscience about the changes in solar radiation, is also nothing to do with climate change. It’s an entirely separate effect happening in parallel. Scientists think its part of a 3-400 year cycle of changes in UV radiation. There’s a good article here and the original is here.
It’s interesting to wonder if it will mitigate or amplify the effects of greenhouse gas emissions but I suspect no-one really knows yet.
The key point is that short term changes in the weather and long term changes in the climate are both driven by a complex mix of variables. Working out the most likely future trends is hard and takes long-term dedicated science. Reducing it all to an argument to undermine climate change misses the real point which is that we should be trying to use the best science to assess just how much of a problem all these effects really present to an increasingly crowded and interconnected world.
The science suggesting that the Earth faces significant warming remains very strong. If you disagree then you need good science to back your case. These other phenomena (La Nina, UV radiation etc) are simply not relevant.
Jonathan Leake

 

Related articles

• Met Office in the Media: Solar variability helps explain past cold winters (metofficenews.wordpress.com)
• Solar lows caused extreme European winters (newscientist.com)

Why our obsession with the weather could help save the planet

The Met Office has been working on behalf of Open Air Laboratories (OPAL) at the Natural History Museum to encourage learning about weather and climate change. The

As part of OPAL the Met Office is coordinating a climate survey, an exciting national experiment that allows you to explore your local climate by conducting a number of experiments such as blowing bubbles to monitor local wind patterns, observe  aeroplane trails, or contrails and finally record how hot or cold they feel as part of efforts to see how people might cope with temperature changes.

The Met Office is also been asked by OPAL to answer your questions about climate change. Most people have questions about climate change,  and the Met Office, as experts in weather and climate science will take your questions and provide you with the answers you need to make sense of climate science.

• Met Office urges public to blow bubbles and count vapour trails to monitor climate (telegraph.co.uk)
• Met Office climate survey: why our obsession with the weather could help save the planet (telegraph.co.uk)
• Plane spotters and bubble blowers wanted for climate survey (guardian.co.uk)
• Met Office becomes lead scientific adviser to Climate Week (metofficenews.wordpress.com)
• Met Office climate survey: how to get involved (telegraph.co.uk)

Ask the experts about climate change

We are inviting the public to submit their questions about climate change as part of our contribution to the Open Air Laboratories (OPAL) project.

Anyone who is confused or curious about climate change can send their questions via the OPAL website . Scientists from the Met Office will publish answers to as many of them as possible online, with particular emphasis on popular or trending topics.

OPAL brings science and communities together with the aim of inspiring a new generation of nature lovers and increasing environmental awareness, both locally and globally.

For many people, climate change is surrounded by myths and misunderstandings. The OPAL Climate Centre , developed by the Met Office, aims to untangle some of them.

Mark McCarthy, Climate Scientist at the Met Office said, “Weather and climate are two of the most talked about topics today. We want to help everyone understand the important issues we face, as well as answering any questions they may have.

“No question is too daft or simplistic. We want people to tell us what confuses them about climate change and we will try to widen their understanding of this difficult topic.”

Learn about our climate
In addition to its ‘ask the climate experts’ service, the OPAL Climate Survey, developed by the Met Office in collaboration with OPAL partners, will be launched in March 2011. The survey, designed to help everyone learn about our climate and how we impact on it, will also provide scientists with data which will help them predict weather and climate patterns.

The Met Office is committed to helping people of all ages make the most of the great outdoors, and OPAL funding has enabled us to support the Scout Meteorology badge for a year. Learning about the weather and being able to recognise which clouds could produce rain or where best to shelter from the wind will help Scouts be better prepared for their outdoor activities.

Met Office becomes lead scientific adviser to Climate Week

The Met Office is to be the lead science advisor for Climate Week, which runs from 21st to 27th March 2011. 

The role of the Met Office as lead science advisor is to explain some of the key science issues around climate change. Professor Julia Slingo, Met Office Chief Scientist, said: “Whenever we talk about climate change it’s important we do so with a proper understanding of the science. That’s why I’m very pleased for the Met Office to be associated with Climate Week. We hope our science will help people understand what our climate is and how it works.”

Kevin Steele, founder of Climate Week, said: “The Met Office is a household name known and trusted by millions of people across Britain, as well as being one of the country’s leading scientific organisations. It is tremendous to have it contributing its scientific expertise to the Climate Week campaign”.

The climate section of the Met Office website provides information and resources to help people understand more about our climate, climate science and climate change.

 

Don’t believe all the climate headlines

Steve Connor of the Independent has written a fascinating article today.  ‘Don’t believe the hype over climate headlines’ is about a story that ran in the paper ten years ago with which ‘climate contrarians have been making much of’.

Steve makes some fine points about the difficulty for scientists and science journalists to find a balance between writing interesting stories that catch the eye of the reader (the fundamental job of a good journalist) and the difficulties and conveying all the tiny caveats and nuances that go with science stories, especially those about climate science.

The case Steve refers to is about the likely chances of snowfall in the future under climate change. The headline used 10 years ago was “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past”, but I can assure you that no self respecting climate scientist would ever make such a bold statement, not today or ten years ago.

The reason for this is quite simple – that kind of statement is just not true when taken out of context of the whole article that deals with all those caveats and nuances that can be so hard to understand.

The bottom line is that snow was and still is never going to vanish from our weather, although how often we see snow may well change. Snow and cold are part of the natural variability of our changing day-to-day weather.