osmposm

Stew, if you - genuinely - believe the CET records are tweaked, then all these monthly CET threads, and our discussions and guesses (including yours) are pretty pointless. If you don't, and it's just a joke....well, it's getting to be a rather old and very tired one. So, give it a rest, would you? There's a Climate Change forum where you can go on about that to your heart's content - and where I can happily avoid it. Thanks, Ossie

Haven't really got a clue - I suspect this winter's got a few parting shots yet to offer us even in CET-land....on the other hand, today felt wonderfully springlike. Within the range I fancy, there are just two as yet unguessed slots left, 6.0 & 5.2....I''l go for one of those, but which one? All right, for the time being I'll plump for the colder, that is to say +5.2oC

Things still pretty cold up in the Baltic. New ice has now formed among the Danish islands and over to Sweden, with apparently a continuous, if thin cover country-to-country: http://www.itameriportaali.fi/html/icef/icemap_c.pdf . In the northern Baltic the overall situation remains the iciest for many years, and mostly above 'normal' (though there are signs of a retreat at the Estonian [southern] shore of the Gulf of Finland): http://www.itameriportaali.fi/en/itamerinyt/en_GB/jaatilanne/#middle . Most of the large unfrozen area east of southern Sweden and west of the Baltic states is now down to 1-2C, but significant freezing will certainly not happen there now. Sorry, can't help with the North Sea charts, I don't know where they're to be found - why not send AFT a PM for the link?

No need to be so rude......despite being Norwegian, he/she at least writes better English than you do - what on earth are "Antartica" & "The Artic"? Well, I know what an "Artic" is, actually...it's a long lorry with a bend in the middle. The ArCtic, on the other hand, is a cold place in the far north.

I suspect you may be rather closer than my +4.4C guess, Kold!

Um, Scotland doesn't have a CET, though of course it has its own mean temp figures. CET = Central England Temperature record, a measure specifically of that, and based currently (with input from other stations) on three sites stretching from Stonyhurst (Lancs), down to Pershore (Worcs), and across to Rothamsted (Herts). That is the Hadley/Met Office version. The distinguished meteorogist Philip Eden maintains his own index that he considers is more consistent with earlier versions calculated by Gordon Manley in the early 1970s, and that covered central English temp records back to 1659. See here http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/about/archives.html and here http://www.climate-uk.com/page5.html . The Met Office's specifically Scottish series only goes back to 1914 (part of the "Areal" series). See here http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/seriesstatistics/scottemp.txt , though the figures don't seem to have been calculated, or at least published yet beyond 2008.

I hope you don't think I was saying that - I have been at pains in various posts to say that (1) although London has seen no extremes, a host of other places in many different parts of the UK have, and (2) London, like everywhere else, has experienced exceptionally - and I would say historically significant - long-lived and consistent cold. I rather agree with the last part of your post - I am hoping for a spring & summer of gardening slightly less blighted by fungal diseases and rampant insect pests than of late....perhaps it may even have slowed down the multi-pronged attack on our Horse Chestnuts, which have been in a sorry state in recent years. Unfortunately the South-East's huge flocks of ring-necked parakeets - unsettling, incredibly raucous aliens (far commmoner now than the 'cockney sparrow') that often drown out our native birdsong - don't seem to have been affected at all!

Absolutely - and everywhere, too...though the heavy snowfall and extreme cold has been more regional, and even local. London has had neither, while places only 30 or 40 miles west - Reading, for example, and of course Benson - have had one or other in spades.

It would probably be sensible to be more precise, but I think we all know it means "ever recorded" (notwithstanding your reasonable concerns about the reliability of even that). Would you have minded so much if Scotland had got down to -30C this winter, and it was described as the coldest night ever in the UK?

And perhaps worth noting this from the Phil Jones interview with the Beeb ( see here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8511701.stm ): "He said many people had been made sceptical about climate change by the snow in the northern hemisphere - but they didn't realise that the satellite record from the University of Alabama in Huntsville showed it had been the warmest January since records began in 1979." I also heard a TV commentator in Vancouver yesterday discussing the lack of low-level snow at the Olympics. According to him - and I have no references to back this up - it's been "the mildest winter here for a hundred years". We in the UK may, perhaps, be entering a period of colder winters (I certainly hope so)......but never, EVER assume that local experience represents anything significant on a global scale.

Right. Well, it is a sort of Scandinaviagate - but the people left with egg on their face turn out not to be the IPCC at all...at least not on the evidence of the supposedly "Scandinavia-but-not-identified-as-such" IPCC 'NEU' temp graph, which as I suspected is not the Scandinavian temp record at all. The original source for the hubbub is probably this piece of Nov 2009 by Willis Eschenbach on WattsUp: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/29/when-results-go-bad/. This perhaps makes a bit of a mountain out of a molehill re the confusing/incorrect email replies received by Professor Karlen from Phil Jones & Kevin Trenberth about the nature of the IPCC's graph(s); still, the matter of the included-or-not ocean temps certainly needs to be cleared up, and other points raised, especially the urban sites question, are interesting. But with regard to the IPCC graph question, what Karlen does not seem to have realised - or perhaps he's been misrepresented or I have misunderstood - is that the designator 'NEU' is apparently in fact fully identified in Appendix 9.c of the IPCC report, as Eschenbach helpfully points out. It is "Europe, NEU, 10W to 40E, 48N to 75N, land". This is a vastly larger and different area to Scandinavia alone, stretching from Ireland in the west to beyond Moscow in the east, and Munich & Vienna in the south to Bear Island in the north. Whether or not it includes the ocean temps, I cannot see how anyone could attempt to draw conclusions from comparisons between it and the NORDKLIM (Scandi) temp record. Despite WattsUp's clear revelation that 'NEU' is identified by the IPCC, and that Scandinavia is only a small part of it, Frank Lansner at HidetheDecline completely missed this, and wrote a piece on 13th Feb declaring an IPCC "Scandinavia-gate", based particularly on a comparison between two graphs that actually show quite different things: http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/scandinavian-temperatures-ipccacutes--scandinavia-gate--123.php?id=123 . On 15th Feb John O'Sullivan at Climategate http://www.climategate.com/scandinavia-gate-climate-cooling-but-scientists-hide-the-decline then copied and truncated Lansner's piece without checking anything, declaring "It looks like we now have the evidence of a full-blown Scandinaviagate to further crush the credibility of the crooks that run the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)". O'Sullivan - clearly a journalist, not a scientist - today rejected criticism of his article on the grounds that it was his editors who chose the graphs, and that there are plenty of other graphs and evidence to show that "alarmist climate scientists" cull inconvenient temp records, but that space constraints mean he can't show it. Lansner initially defended his claims also, saying that Karlen had done "everything in his power to get information" (about what 'NEU' covered, for instance), but had been given "missing and misleading answers" (by Jones & Trenberth). When it was pointed out that the missing answer was in the IPCC report all along, he today had the honesty and good grace to admit "You might very well have a strong point. I will look into it and update the article - Thank you very much for digging this up!!" Oh dear....rather a sad own-goal, it seems. Which is a pity, as I take no satisfaction in seeing the thoughtful 'sceptic' viewpoint brought into disprepute.

As always, thanks for that, J1, though I've only just got around to looking at it. Hell's Bells - currently lying a scintillating 52nd. I think that's the lowest position I've ever been at....and February's not looking too promising either. I feel like a synoptic modelling program with a default warming bias that has been tested and found sadly wanting!

(Click to enlarge) I'm confused. Surely the IPCC graph that is being compared against Scandinavian temps is for all of Northern Europe - that's why it's called "NEU"? It is confusingly positioned over Scandinavia, certainly, but the only other graph the IPCC shows for Europe on the map from which the graph comes is placed over the Mediterranean and is called "SEM". I presume, therefore, that "SEM" is the temp graph for Southern Europe and the Med, and "NEU" is the graph for all of Northern Europe, including the British Isles, Germany, Poland, the Baltic States, European Russia, the Netherlands, Northern France, etc etc - not just Scandinavia. What is the point in comparing this with a graph for Scandinavia alone? Why would anyone expect them to be the same? And besides, the (very rough) IPCC graph DOES show a cooling in the relevant period, especially between c1950 & c1980, though unsurprisingly different to that in Scandinavia alone. And as TWS says, nobody has ever pretended that there was no cooling in the Northern Hemisphere in the years after 1940 - indeed it is a subject that has been much discussed, and very publicly. I don't really understand what the problem is supposed to be. Can anyone enlighten me, am I being dense? Or indeed am I completely wrong about the area the IPCC graph shows temps for?

And so it turns out (finally!). So two "proper cold winter" CET mean measures achieved (7 days at or below zero, which we managed twice, and 3 days at or below -2)....but one (a single day at or below -5) still narrowly eluding us. Twenty-three years and counting.....

Just thought I'd copy this post I made yesterday in the Media section (here re an interesting Met Office press release), since it relates to conditions in London this winter relative to other years. As I've said elsewhere, in London things this year (unlike many other places) have not been severe either in cold or snow terms, though as elsewhere the consistency of the cold has been remarkable. And that is what I will remember about 2009/10....the almost relentless 'proper' winter weather - two solid months of it so far - something I thought I was unlikely to see again in my lifetime: Optimus Prime, on 10 February 2010 - 21:55 , said: .......Even C.London dropped to -6.4c. The record there is -9.1c in January 1987. Certainly some exceptional temps recorded nationwide. However, that -6.4C figure is not for central London. After studying a blown-up image of the map, I'm pretty sure the figure is for Hampstead: the two central London ones (?St James's Park & London Weather Centre) are the double blob below & slightly right, close to the river. Not sure where to access their figures, but their minima would have been nowhere near as low. The -7.9C to the left, by the way, must be Northolt (I think). (Min temps overnight 6-7 Jan 2010) Hampstead is classified as Inner London, but not Central. It is about 4 miles NW of Charing Cross, in the very large (790 acres) and undeveloped Hampstead Heath. It is also much the highest station in the metropolis at 128m asl. It generally records temps much lower than any other true London station, and the -6.4C is only the lowest since Jan 1996 (which equalled it). In the last fifty years or so for which data is easily accessible (see here http://www.weather-u...pstead/data.htm ), lower minima than that were recorded in 14 winters throughout the 60s (5), 70s (3) & 80s (4), including temps below -10C in Feb 1956 & Jan 1963, and the record -11.9C on 13th Jan 1987. There had been a marked scarcity of low temps recorded in the years since '96, but 2008/9 finally broke the run with -6.0C on 7th Jan last year.

Cetainly some exceptional temps recorded nationwide. However, that -6.4C figure is not for central London. After studying a blown-up image of the map, I'm pretty sure the figure is for Hampstead: the two central London ones (?St James's Park & London Weather Centre) are the double blob below & slightly right, close to the river. Not sure where to access their figures, but their minima would have been nowhere near as low. The -7.9C to the left, by the way, must be Northolt (I think). Hampstead is classified as Inner London, but not Central. It is about 4 miles NW of Charing Cross, in the very large (790 acres) and undeveloped Hampstead Heath. It is also much the highest station in the metropolis at 128m asl. It generally records temps much lower than any other true London station, and the -6.4C is only the lowest since Jan 1996 (which equalled it). In the last fifty years or so for which data is easily accessible (see here http://www.weather-uk.com/hampstead/data.htm ), lower minima than that were recorded in 14 winters throughout the 60s (5), 70s (3) & 80s (4), including temps below -10C in Feb 1956 & Jan 1963, and the record -11.9C on 13th Jan 1987. There had been a marked scarcity of low temps recorded in the years since '96, but 2008/9 finally broke the run with -6.0C on 7th Jan last year.

I wrote a long post a week or so ago discussing Baltic freezing, but it disappeared into a cyber black hole, and I couldn't face putting it together again! Even then the chances of a Baltic freezeover were small - the freezing was pretty close to the long-term 'normal', and full freezing has always been very rare. The situation now is pretty much the same http://www.itameriportaali.fi/en/itamerinyt/en_GB/jaatilanne/#middle - very close to 'normal', though it's many years since even that was true. If you click on 'Previous Ice Map' you can also see there's been little change to the cover in the last week - it's reduced a little in some areas, though in others it's got a bit thicker. The full ice chart http://www.itameriportaali.fi/html/icef/jaakartta.pdf shows that the temp has dropped in most of the large unfrozen area between Sweden & the Baltic States to between +1 & +3C - a week ago it was more like +2 to +4....but it's still a long way off freezing, and I very much doubt it will. Even the narrow passages between the Danish islands & across to Sweden are largely unfrozen, though the sea is of course saltier there (the Baltic has fresher water the further away from the North Sea you go).

I've just posted several of my friendly-neighbourhood-streetlamp under after-dark snow attack in 2004 & 2007....on reflection, I think the date (11th Feb) on the 2004 one may be wrong, as I've a feeling it was taken during the famous "thundersnow" episode of 28th Jan. Oh, and after re-reading your first post, Paul, I'm wondering whether one photo would have been enough anyway! If so, please feel free to choose one, and delete the other four.

I suspect it will depend very much on what part of the country you live in, and how old you are. Here in the south, in many parts - and particularly in London - by longer term standards it has been unexceptional for either snow quantity or extremity of cold, and in fact I will remember more vividly Feb 2009's Thames streamer and the resultant snow dump in (especially) SW London. I know, though, that some parts of the south have had exceptional snowfall - didn't Reading get hit...twice?. If you're younger, the frequency of snow, and persistence of cold will be memorable - and even by longer term standards I agree that this persistence and consistency of the cold has been most unusual. In that it has been most like 62-63, though nowhere near as extreme in nature. So, yes, historic in part - and particularly in comparison with what we had got used to. In the north - and especially Scotland - it is clearly a different matter. But being a thorough sassenach I have no personal experience of northern winters in years gone by to judge it against.

Every single synoptic chart from the models that is discussed here is a "could", and the further ahead you go the less likely it is to look anything like what actually happens. This is not science in the strict sense that science means "knowing". We do not "know" - none of us - and in my opinion, however powerful the computers, and however much more is discovered about teleconnections, we never will (though we will probably get a bit better over a few days). It is all interesting "maybes". From where I'm standing, Ian generally writes lucidly, intelligently and with a well-argued case. I don't always agree with him, and as he honestly admits, recent experience has left him prone to warm bias. But whether you share his opinions or not, he has been a member here for 6 years and has made 4,000 posts. You have been here a month and have posted 21 times. In the circumstances, your request to him to change how he writes or stop posting strikes me as being exceptionally rude and not a little arrogant.