osmposm

Lordy, have a look at this lot!

Pretty normal here in SW London. Large White, Blues (Common & Holly), Small Tortoiseshell, Peacock, Red Admiral, Comma & Speckled Wood are all around (the last two both much commoner these days than they used to be); also Orange Tip & the odd Brimstone earlier in the year. Others, too, I think, though I've not been gardening much this year, and I'm not good at identifying the less distinctive butterflies anyway!

It's funny how personal these things are, despite us all being weather buffs: while I adored Rob McElwee, I couldn't bear Dan Corbett! Rob always seemed wonderfully cool, calm and unhurried, with time to slow right down at the end, and deliver some measured last word of summary or promise with a twinkle in his eye. Dan, by contrast, seemed rushed and even positively manic at times, full of rather forced 'user-friendly' asides about "make sure you put the the brolly in the car" or "better get the shovel out of the garden shed"; and he was a prime offender (perhaps even the inventor) in using those overcomplicated and now very overworn phrases "by the dawn period", "during the overnight period", "around the teatime period", etc, instead of just "by dawn", "overnight" and "around teatime". I can't say I'll miss him much......but each to his own, and I wish him nothing but well. He was certainly more individual than most of the current crop.

Don't know about those two stations, Alex - or official figures for May so far - but here are the rounded monthly rainfall figures for the (most important) November-April months for Hampstead (North London), Wattisham (Suffolk) and Wittering (Cambs) from http://www.climate-uk.com/page3.html , together with the percentage of the mean (starting with April and working back): Hampstead - 03mm (06%). 14mm (25%). 56mm (143%). 93mm (141%). 31mm (50%). 39mm (57%). = 70% overall Wattisham - 05mm (14%). 12mm (25%). 47mm (128%). 67mm (137%). 20mm (38%). 50mm (98%). = 73% overall Wittering - 03mm (07%). 04mm (08%). 44mm (101%). 29mm (053%). 14mm (26%). 43mm (75%). = 45% overall Wittering must really be suffering A Wunderground automated site also in Hampstead gives just 4.7mm for May rainfall so far, but this is not reliable - its rainfall stats for the earlier months are well below the official station's, by as much as a third or more. Far more trustworthy, and just 17 miles from you, is the excellent Epping Weather Site http://www.eppingweather.co.uk/ - rainfall there is measured manually and checked for consistency against an automated system. Epping is in Essex, just outside NE London, and here are his stats for the same months: Epping - 2.1mm (04%). 8.8mm (20%). 41.4mm (95%). 79.1mm (128%). 27.8mm (48%). 41.5mm (69%). = 61% overall And your guess about this month's total seems spot on - so far in May he has recorded just 4.3mm, around 8% of what you'd expect. Ossie

That hyperlink is not quite right, Ocean, and doesn't work - it has an extra 'http//' in it! This should work, though: http://www.mantonjersey.co.uk/userimages/Current_Vantage_pro.htm

"Anyone could do this", Pieman? Yes, of course they could, but would they be remotely right? Bar the extreme north of Scotland, 20th April has been dry as a bone and exceptionally warm for everyone away from cooler eastern (not western) coasts, where there's also been the odd patch of fog/drizzle coming in off the North Sea. Describing the climatic norm for the time of year is one method of making a long-distance forecast, I suppose, but it's demonstrably not necessarily a very good one! :winky: As far as I know, the Met Office don't use it, at least not on its own.

Quite the contrary, Jethro. I think you are one of the most even-handed, fair-minded, least prejudiced, intellectually curious inhabitants of these boards, and my respect for you has grown continuously over the years. Oh, and I forgot humane, and just plain intelligent... I had intended to answer many of Alan Robinson's points - especially those that rebutted a post of mine - myself, but I got waylaid by the requirements of HMRC (Self-assessment return finally completed with about an hour to spare!). You have made a number of my points for me - and probably better than I would have done - but I may still go there in the next few days. After three days of taxes, though, I'm slightly dreading another long session on the computer; and since a careful, detailed and properly-researched reply is what's needed, I may just go for a very long bike ride instead! I'm with you on the otters. For well over forty years I've been a quiet, often still, always observant trout fisherman, mainly on the wilder, upland rivers of the British Isles, and I have never yet seen a live one**. It's just not fair....or maybe I just need to get on the water a bit earlier in the morning! **The river I learned to fish on, the Ithon in Radnorshire, used to have an active otter hunt before WWII, and in the 1960s & 70s the hotel I stayed at still had a rather depressing row of mounted otter heads lining the walls of the residents' lounge....

Yes, it's a very interesting study indeed, Higrade - thanks for bringing it to our attention. But though it is undoubtedly another important piece in the jigsaw, BFTV's point is fair: is it reasonable to extrapolate from it that temperatures globally (and over the entire year) must have followed the same pattern, and suggest that it is de facto proof that the planet overall is not as warm as it was during the Medieval & Roman Warm periods? Edit: just seen G-W's simultaneous post. Yup, that's the problem - two bits of evidence from two different locations showing different things. Taken in isolation neither is proof of anything in the wider picture.

Um, I suppose you mean glyphosate - I don't normally pick people up on typos and spelling, but you do repeat the misnomer elsewhere; you are clearly a highly literate man, and to be frank it doesn't help the plausibilty of your case when you don't seem to know the name of the thing you're up in arms about. I'm surprised by the doctor's suggested diagnosis for your friend's brother's horrendous disfigurement. While Glyphosate may possibly be not quite as innocuous as the manufacturers maintain, it is certainly a great deal less problematic than many other herbicides that it has replaced. It has been around for nearly 40 years now, and I have never heard any reports of physical effects remotely like those you describe - this is a far from adulatory discussion of the chemical http://www.pan-uk.org/pestnews/Actives/glyphosa.htm , and even they don't mention anything like that. The worst that the Wiki article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate (which discuss its toxicity at some length) can come up with is "Dermal exposure to ready-to-use glyphosate formulations can cause irritation, and photo-contact dermatitis has been reported occasionally; these effects are probably due to the preservative Proxel (benzisothiazolin-3-one). Severe skin burns are very rare." I'm also hard pressed to understand why a professional agriculturist would have regularly walked through fields freshly treated with it - you are specifically advised not to allow it to sit on naked skin, I believe. Did he regularly wear shorts, or are you saying he pushed his way through plants wet with it, and it soaked through his trousers? And do you really mean he walked through "crops sprayed with this stuff"? If so, it must have been a GM crop (or something woody, like apple trees) otherwise it would have been killed, surely? What country did he work in, I wonder, and on what sort of crops? All most perplexing, but perhaps I'm being dense.

The trouble is, if everyone just kept quiet and waited to see, there wouldn't be anything in this thread, would there? What exactly would you like people to have discussed here for the last two to three months? Surely kicking the ball about - challenging, disagreeing, supporting, hoping - seeking to find how and why it might be right or wrong, how it might or might not fit in with what we currently understand, is the whole point? What a dull place it would be if all that stopped. Sometimes people go a little far, but only a little, and not often - and if MB seeks (and sets himself up publicly) to overturn so profoundly everything that everyone thinks we know (or at least everything they think we don't know) about weather forecasting and indeed much of science, then this process is surely to be expected, and entirely healthy? I would also hazard a guess that MB would far prefer to be challenged and argued with than not noticed or ignored... I have to say also that if you think Roger was being patronising and narrow-minded, then I fear you may not have really understood what he wrote in his post. And I, in turn, am shocked by your suggestion that he has ironically "joined the gang" of the (allegedly) narrow-minded stiflers of radical, new thought. To my mind he has been consistently respectful to MB - not least by taking a lot of time and trouble to compose and write substantial, well-reasoned and interesting posts. How on earth is talking in detail about the best way of objectively assessing the accuracy of MB's forecast "denigrating" it? I'm utterly perplexed, sorry.

Well, it's a description of one sort of UK climate, certainly; but the North being forecast to be generally milder than the South, it's not exactly the only - or even the most usual - one for early/mid February. And granted it was talking of the situation two to four weeks ahead, it's not surprising it was pretty loosely worded for the latter part of the period. We all know how unreliable models and predictions are at even ten days! As for your general-purpose forecast for three months hence....yup, not bad. Could be that....or not. It'll be fun to see how it pans out! :winky:

I'm glad to say my home has been standing for 127 years, and will certainly outlive me - though courtesy of the gentle hill the terrace is built on, and flexible lime mortar, it's got some interesting sections of brickwork! I'm not too inspired by those cheap new-builds, with or without a ten-year guarantee. But on the whole they're at least sitting on (for the time being) solid-ish ground, and you can always patch and mend the cracks and holes - come the flood, though, I think I'd prefer my houseboat to serve me for a bit longer than a decade before starting to leak....by the time the builders (?plumbers) had arrived it could be on the bottom (however deep that is by then)! :winky:

. Or maybe I mean :unsure: - I see the first one is only guaranteed 10 years!

That seems reasonable, prof. The problem lies in deciding exactly who is "in a position to understand it" - in many case that would not be apparent until after they had seen it, and even then I'm sure opinions would differ. I'm sure the Attorney-General of Virginia and his team of lawyers and political aides believe they could understand it enough to dig out the evidence of fraud they believe is there.....I (and others), on the other hand, am pretty sure his team would not be able to, and in fact are not interested in doing so anyway. I imagine they are more interested in finding phrases in emails and memos that sound suspicious and dishonest to laymen's ears......you know, Climategate USA. A deep, complex and confusing analysis of a deep, complex and confusing science is the last thing they want to give their voters. I'm all for other scientists having full access - it's the politicians (and the internet bloggers) I worry about.

The investigation by Cuccinelli (the state attorney-general) seeks to find fraud by the skeptics' arch-villain Michael Mann. It is suggested Mann may have defrauded the commonwealth when seeking grants between 1999 & 2005 by including in his resume two papers that "have come under significant criticism" for "a complete lack of rigor regarding the statistical analysis of the alleged data." Cuccinelli is an ardent climate-change skeptic. The senators' reasoning for trying to block the compulsory surrendering of documents to him seems to be that they believe the investigation is an entirely political act, whose main purpose is to pillory Mann, and boost the popularity of the attorney-general. In the US, he is, like district attorneys and police chiefs, a directly-elected political figure; the senators believe that as such his investigation will be more interested in reaching a nice and simple populist conclusion than in seriously looking into the inherently complex and confusing real science: "This particular statute has been used to get at an issue that would be discussed more appropriately by scientists, not legislators or elected officials"....the statute being used (or mis-used) by Cuccinelli to force the documents' release being the one they wish to repeal. Cuccinelli has already had his demands for the documents turned down once by the courts, but is continuing to appeal. It's now before the Supreme Court, where the university lawyers are arguing that Cuccinelli’s new demands are the same as those already tossed out: "They may represent [Cuccinelli’s] view on a scientific, academic debate. What they do not do is describe conduct constituting an alleged violation of [the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act]". The senators believe Cuccinelli’s efforts to get Mann’s information, and to fight global warming issues, should not be taxpayer funded: "There are 50 scientific organizations in 50 countries all around the world that came to the same conclusion... this is really an inappropriate use of tax dollars." Hmmm.....a complex one. I don't much like the idea of changing a law to do something that will be seen by many as equally political, however much I may agree with the motive. I suspect that it might be better in the long run if the taxpayers of Virginia and their senators bite the financial bullet, and the university releases the documents. The senators can then concentrate their efforts on trying to ensure that the investigation is not too absurdly biased. If it is even remotely fair, I find it hard to believe that Mann can be shown to be fraudulent, even if some believe him to be wrong or even deluded.

OK, Keith - you're off the hook. I'm sure you were just about to post the help I asked for yesterday, but I don't need it now, thanks! I've belatedly noticed the thumbnail at the bottom of Iceberg's explanatory post above, which makes things much clearer. And also playing around with the link that didn't work, I've found a link that does: http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/amsutemps.html . As Iceberg says, if you go there you can ask it to draw the graph lines (on which we think yours is based) for a satellite measurement of the av global temp at various different heights in the atmosphere. There are problems with the near-surface measurements at the moment, but the 14,000 ft height is apparently a good substitute. You can ask it to show as many years as you like from July-Aug 2002 to today, and also the average. 2011's temperature trace has been rising rapidly since your post, and as of 14th Jan (the last date given) it is, by coincidence, precisely the same as the average. But your point (if it is relevant) is still valid - the 14,000 ft temp is now even cooler than the same date last year, by 0.48 or 0.49oC. But how relevant is a single date, or short sequence of dates, that's the question - particularly when, as Iceberg points out, the year you're comparing it with (2010) was way above average, and easily the highest in this satellite measurement sequence? Have a look at it yourself, Keith, and tell us what you think. Should we not at least wait till later in the year before being sure there's a cooling-down going on - even a short-term one? Edit: a suggestion - why don't we revisit this dataset and graph once or twice a month, say, and see how things move as the year progresses? We do just that on the Arctic Ice thread using the IJIS graph, and I find it very interesting.

Sorry if that's true, Keith. We are all - certainly me and even you - subject to something called "confirmation bias" - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias. But in order to be open to different opinions, I do need to understand fully the interesting evidence you've come up with. Iceberg has attempted to clarify what the graph you posted shows, and why it may be relevant. Unfortunately, though, the link he gave doesn't work - and I'm still a bit uncertain about the different lines on it, and exactly what they represent. So, as I previously asked, it would be really helpful if you could help us understand by explaining/confirming what they are yourself. I hope you think that's a fair request.

I am puzzled by just about everything in this post. Are you seriously saying that because the global average temperature (?at 14,000 ft) on 11th January this year was 0.7oF lower than it was on 11th January last year, the planet is cooling? And I don't fully understand the graph, it has two lines on it - could you give us the link and/or explain what it shows? And am I right in assuming that the '0.7oF cooler' factoid relate to the temperature at 14,000 ft (as on the graph)? (1) The temp comparison for one particular date is irrelevant; the weather changes all the time, some days are colder than normal, some warmer. If I find you a single day when this year is 0.7oF warmer than the same date last year, would that prove to you that global warming is taking place? Of course not. That's why they measure the temps on all the days in a year, average them out, and compare them with the average of all the days of previous years. On that basis, at the surface, globally 2010 is either the warmest or second warmest (measurement/processing bases/methods vary) in the record. (2) Why are you looking at the temps 14,000 ft up anyway? Can you tell us how that relates to temperatures on the surface? Or are you planning to move your house to the top of the Matterhorn? (3) Not that it really matters for the reasons above, but 0.7oF is not 0.07oC. Multiply by 5/9: the answer is about 0.4oC. Edit: no, I think the graph actually has three lines on it, though one is rather hard to see. I see that it seems to come from Steve Goddard's website, but I can't find it there, and I still don't know exactly what the lines represent. Any ideas, Keith? I can't believe you would have posted a graph for us to look at at without understanding what it showed. Second edit: OK, after much thought I reckon the blue line must be 2010, the short brown one is 2011, and the yellowish one the mean (for which years, though?) - is that right? The temperatures at 14,000 ft, that is.

That NASA link doesn't seem to work, WS, at least not for me. But I think this one may http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2011/jan/HQ_11-014_Warmest_Year.html EDIT: Ah, now they both seem to work.....I guess it was work in progress!

Yeah, quite good, Barrie. Though your deliciously vague description of 6 mins and 29 seconds as "less than 10 minutes" puts me in mind of the imprecision of a lot of sceptical scientific analysis! Yes, I know, you are just contrasting "less than 10 words" with "less than ten minutes", but I just felt like a half-baked laserguy-style cheap jibe, OK? :winky: You can, of course, also come back by pointing out the similar imprecision of future climate modelling; but it's the imprecision in addressing actual, existing measurements that I'm talking about. But sorry, of course, I'd forgotten - all those figures are fudged by the conspiratorial piggies at the trough, aren't they? Whoops, there I go again. Anyway, as you may have noticed, I don't argue about climate stuff any more on here - and with the single exception of this post, I don't (um, unlike some people!?) say that I don't...and then inexplicably keep coming back regularly to drop in more quick jabs. But I do watch and listen all the time. And I'm very happy to admit that I - like many people who should have known better - was quite wrong about what our own local climate was still capable of. I wish I could say the same about my view of the planet as a whole. Ossie

Depends on your definition, really. Until this current period (and I don't know where we stand now) the last 7.0+ CET mean day was the 18th November, and the last double-digit one was the 5th November (though the 12th was very close).

This website - which, unknown to me, has for a long time had a section, "Cloudy Language", celebrating the linguistic glories of (mainly) Rob and other weather presenters - bids him farewell with this fine tribute: http://asburyandasbury.typepad.com/blog/cloudy-language/ Read down the whole page, there's a feast of great stuff there.

Think yourself lucky, Adam - at least you know someone's read your views. I've just finished two marathon posts on here, complete with copious quotes, images and links, and I've no idea if anyone's even seen them, let alone had the energy and inclination to plough through them! As Oscar Wilde observed, "The only thing that's worse than being talked about is not being talked about."

A very late response, but the situation hasn't changed materially in the last fortnight. I don't think it's terribly likely as things stand. Water temps around Iceland are currently average to high, and very high off the coast facing Greenland. The cold winter has so far been particularly a phenomenon of continental/near-continental North & West Europe, as the anomaly maps show - seas surface temperatures are at least as much the result of cold weather, as they are the cause of it (though once established, as with snow cover there is of course a reinforcing effect). Here's the current anomaly map: P.S. On the subject of both the last time there was a "bridge" and what causes it, it is perhaps worth reading this March 2005 post by Martin Crozier on Weather-banter here http://www.weather-banter.co.uk/uk-sci-weather-uk-weather/92140-sea-ice-reaches-iceland.html : <<I don't think it necessarily means anything except that this winter's circulations patterns (surface winds) have tended to concentrate sea ice in this area. There are other areas in the polar region that normally have sea ice at this time of year and don't have any this year. We have had higher pressure than normal over the mid atlantic during much of the late winter and this has produced a lot more south-westerly winds than normal along the south-east coast of Greenland. The sea ice that has formed in this area has been shovelled (technical term there) north-east to meet the ice that pushes down from the north along the east Greenland coast and it has all ended bunched up near Iceland, hence the "ice bridge". If this is accepted as the first Greenland / Iceland ice bridge since 1968/69 (or whenever, I think that is a disputed date) then no doubt the global warming lobby will start saying that it was caused by global warming whilst the anti-global warming lobby will say it's proof that it isn't happening. IMHO unless you happen to be trying to circumnavigate Iceland at present the significance of this is pretty close to zero. It's interesting news to be sure, but it doesn't have to mean anything.>>

Interesting to compare progress this winter with those figures from last. We haven't had a 7.0+ CET mean day since the 18th November, and a double-digit one since the 5th November! Remains to be seen how long they'll last unbreached - I wouldn't think the 7.0+ one will last beyond next week, perhaps even this weekend.