C.E.T. forecasts for December 2015 (start of 2015-16 competition year)

[Weather-history]

13 hours ago, The underwriter said:

The CET series goes back over 300 years and if the monthly values were set out on a graph it would be bell-shaped with the most frequent values clustered around the mean. December 2015 at 9.7c would sit at the far right of the distribution. I would be interested to know, if anyone can calculate it, what the return period would be for such a value.

Bearing in mind that no December has come remotely close in over 300 years it is reasonable to assume that the return period is more than 300 years but at such an extreme value could it be a 1 in 1000 year return period?

What's so peculiar is that we have yet to record a 5.9 December. If you did a histogram for the number of Decembers against each CET value to a decimal point, there will be hole at 5.9

[Timmytour]

In terms of the CET comp, it must be a record for how far the winning entry was out?

As for second and third place, the amounts they were out by must come close to Craig's average anomaly!

[Nick L]

Is this the first time that Craig's prediction was colder than the actual?

[Lettucing Gutted]

Not only have we just suffered the warmest December on record, but just to add insult to my injury even I was 0.7C too low!  Damn!    At least in all the years since I started posting CET predictions in May 2007 this is also the first time that everyone has predicted too low.  The first and only other time I was too low was September 2010 when I predicted 13.4C.  However unlike December 2015, September 2010 was only slightly above average at 13.8C.  This is the first time I was too low with a record warm month.  Oh well I knew it was bound to happen sooner than later.  It can also be comfortably said that December has also finally left August as the only cooling month post 2010 which has been cooling slightly and erratically post 2004.  CET Warming Stage 4 here we come.. 

14 hours ago, AderynCoch said:

So there we have it - surely the worst winter month ever recorded. This after a terrible November too.

Mother Nature owes us big time after the fail year of 2015.

The problem is, I fear that we may be paying big time for the recent classics of December 2009 through December 2010 and January through June 2013.

11 hours ago, Nick L said:

Let's lock that December away and never speak of it again...

Amen to that!  Rest in pieces December 2015!

Edited January 2, 2016 by IHaveNoTrueFriendsNow!

[reef]

Since 2001 we've now had record warm months in April, July, September, October, December, Spring, Autumn and the year. There's also a good chance we'll take the mildest winter on record aswell.

Out of those months and seasons we haven't recorded a record, in the same time period we've had the 4th warmest winter and Summer, 5th warmest January, 8th warmest February, 4th warmest March, 12th warmest May, 5th warmest August and 2nd warmest November.

In the same time period, only March 2013 (15th coldest) and December 2010 (2nd coldest) have featured in the 30 coldest months/seasons/years.

[Timmytour]

1 hour ago, IHaveNoTrueFriendsNow! said:

.....  It can also be comfortably said that December has also finally left August as the only cooling month post 2010 which has been cooling slightly and erratically post 2004.  CET Warming Stage 4 here we come.. 

The last 25 Decembers (1991 to 2015) were cooler on average than the preceding 25 (1966 to 1990) .....it's just a blip.....a bloomin big blip, but a blip nevertheless!!

[Weather-history]

45 minutes ago, reef said:

 

In the same time period, only March 2013 (15th coldest) and December 2010 (2nd coldest) have featured in the 30 coldest months/seasons/years.

Spring 2013 was joint 29th coldest so does creep into top 30

[Weather-history]

What December 2015 did was the meteorological equivalent of what Bob Beamon did at the Olympics in 1968

Maybe we should nickname December 2015 as Bob Beamon, it certainly did a Bob Beamon!

[Relativistic]

7 hours ago, Timmytour said:

In terms of the CET comp, it must be a record for how far the winning entry was out?

Nope. The lowest guess in March 2013 was 4.4C and that month was 2.7C.

[BornFromTheVoid]

Below is a table with all the rankings (out of 357 years) for each month, season and year since Jan 2001. 1-30 are the warmest 30 and 328-357 are the coldest 30, and all in the top (red) or bottom (blue) 30 are highlighted.

 

Year	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
2001	206	152	183	202	43	180	58	53	171	1	52	224
2002	42	8	20	51	107	164	159	37	61	142	16	67
2003	98	193	24	32	84	21	37	6	71	241	25	126
2004	59	77	83	44	84	61	188	15	27	96	46	84
2005	21	162	40	79	154	46	78	97	15	2	165	161
2006	114	208	222	111	62	28	1	111	1	4	25	28
2007	5	52	40	2	100	80	266	204	125	61	63	117
2008	10	77	119	183	13	240	128	97	160	182	87	237
2009	214	175	50	18	84	113	141	66	82	28	11	262
2010	294	262	119	91	240	70	65	218	125	119	265	356
2011	162	25	67	1	72	254	266	204	20	9	2	50
2012	48	201	5	259	115	285	220	66	222	182	110	126
2013	182	239	345	229	276	272	12	46	134	11	165	35
2014	31	33	20	10	72	80	33	278	20	11	13	98
2015	107	183	93	68	231	220	176	139	271	51	4	1

 

Year	Annual	Spring	Summer	Autumn	Winter
2001	54	135	63	14	41
2002	7	22	98	26	89
2003	10	10	4	68	53
2004	12	36	46	23	47
2005	18	48	50	11	151
2006	2	115	5	1	5
2007	14	3	185	49	28
2008	51	51	147	117	204
2009	32	13	92	11	300
2010	263	129	86	160	247
2011	3	1	261	2	61
2012	86	58	187	152	174
2013	107	328	45	36	13
2014	1	5	82	3	105
2015	26	95	178	23

Some of the above are joint records too.

[snowray]

Who won December?

[Ǝssex Ǝasterly]

What did the final december anomaly (61-90) work out to be in the end? 5.1c? Thanks

[Dancerwithwings]

33 minutes ago, snowray said:

Who won December?

 

https://forum.netweather.tv/topic/84464-cet-forecasts-for-december-2015-start-of-2015-16-competition-year/?do=findComment&comment=3312069

Edited January 2, 2016 by Dancerwithwings

[Roger J Smith]

One more astounding stat from Dec 2015:

First half (1-15) __ 8.9 C

second half (16-31) __ 10.4 C

or if you prefer,

First half (1-16) __ 9.1 C

second half (17-31) __ 10.3 C

 

 

 

[I remember Atlantic 252]

3 hours ago, snowray said:

Who won December?

Craig Evans!!!!!!!

[Weather-history]

19 hours ago, Relativistic Sting Jet said:

Nope. The lowest guess in March 2013 was 4.4C and that month was 2.7C.

That's no surprise, there wasn't a hint how cold it would turn out. It was 4.9C by the 9th. Within three years, two low climatic probabilities occurred, a March recording a sub 3C CET from a point when it was nearly 5C almost a third into the month and a December near to 10.0C.

[reef]

18 hours ago, BornFromTheVoid said:

Below is a table with all the rankings (out of 357 years) for each month, season and year since Jan 2001. 1-30 are the warmest 30 and 328-357 are the coldest 30, and all in the top (red) or bottom (blue) 30 are highlighted.

Autumn (and all three individual months contained within it) are the standout here, which makes sense really as its the time of year which is reliant on latent heat and less on solar insolation. With a slow warming in the background you would expect SSTs to be warmer and mild airmasses to be more potent at that time of the year. Spring shows similar on the upside, but is more reliant on sunshine than airmasses, so shows less warm extremes. Its pretty consistent with the winter season slowly shortening at both ends. Summer (reliant mostly on synoptics and sunshine levels) shows little change other than the background level increase and the odd exceptional month as we've always had.

It is perhaps an eye into the future of how our climate could become should warming continue:

A short variable winter, with December being Autumn-like and February Spring-like on average. A warm front-loaded spring with occasional summer-like months, a summer similar to now with occasional very warm (or hot) spells and an Autumn that is very warm, but mainly due to warm nights as the latent heat of the summer dissipates gradually. CETs would vary on average between January and July perhaps a couple of degrees less than now.

Edited January 3, 2016 by reef

[Timmytour]

1 hour ago, Weather-history said:

That's no surprise, there wasn't a hint how cold it would turn out. It was 4.9C by the 9th. Within three years, two low climatic probabilities occurred, a March recording a sub 3C CET from a point when it was nearly 5C almost a third into the month and a December near to 10.0C.

In view of Rogers remarkable stat about the two halves of December, I'd put that March as its nearest competitior to most remarkable month ever. I guess the anomaly for the last two thirds of that March must run pretty close to this December's anomaly as a whole?
 

Edited January 3, 2016 by Timmytour
spelling

[Timmytour]

20 hours ago, Thunderbolt_ said:

One or two other members say this at times and I have to agree. It's a bit of a dodgy argument the payback one, when it comes to any season. Eg. how do you know that winters 2013-14 and 2015-16 weren't payback for the previous year's cold winters... and what's to say that those cold winters weren't payback for the noughties mild winters, like 2006-07 and 2007-08?

It's the same when people say it in summer too. Some argue that summers 2013 and 2014 were payback for the cool and wet summers between 2007 and 2012. But again, how do you know that those summers weren't payback for the hot summers before it?

It's a really slippery argument, to be honest. 

When looking at the "compensation" argument, the best example to find is surely the two Junes of 1676 and 1677.....the former was the coldest one ever, the latter was the second warmest ever!  (I also find it strange that none of the top 15 warmest Junes have occured in the last 40 years!)...Why can we get the warmest first month of winter but not the warmest first month of summer!!!

Edited January 3, 2016 by Timmytour
Whoops was referring to July instead of june!

[BornFromTheVoid]

2 hours ago, reef said:

Autumn (and all three individual months contained within it) are the standout here, which makes sense really as its the time of year which is reliant on latent heat and less on solar insolation. With a slow warming in the background you would expect SSTs to be warmer and mild airmasses to be more potent at that time of the year. Spring shows similar on the upside, but is more reliant on sunshine than airmasses, so shows less warm extremes. Its pretty consistent with the winter season slowly shortening at both ends. Summer (reliant mostly on synoptics and sunshine levels) shows little change other than the background level increase and the odd exceptional month as we've always had.

It is perhaps an eye into the future of how our climate could become should warming continue:

A short variable winter, with December being Autumn-like and February Spring-like on average. A warm front-loaded spring with occasional summer-like months, a summer similar to now with occasional very warm (or hot) spells and an Autumn that is very warm, but mainly due to warm nights as the latent heat of the summer dissipates gradually. CETs would vary on average between January and July perhaps a couple of degrees less than now.

The graph below shows the squeeze that the warming climate is putting on winter. A clear drop in the number of days under 5.0C, and a slight increase in the day above 15.0C.

This shows a loss of 1 <5.0C day per decade over the entire record, increasing to 3 per decade since 1950.
At the same time, we've gained 0.4 >15.0C days per decade , but this has increased also to 3 per decade since 1950

Since the start of the record, we've gone from having about 50% more days under 5.0C compared to over 15.0C, to the ratio now being equal between the number of <5 and >15C days.

[Timmytour]

i think a factor in the warmer CETs for the UK, aside from the world getting warmer as a whole,  has to be the increased comfort levels we live in.   When I was young, living in a three bedroom house, the only room that had any heating was the one room we'd we used the open fire on. I can remember as a small four of five year old being the first of the family to get up on a freezing morning, ice inside my bedroom window, coming down the staris  and getting the fire going.  Can't imagine the first bit of that now let alone the horror there would be allowing a child to do the second part!!!

Now of course nearly every room is going to be at a comfortable temperature.  And whole swathes of the country where there was previously nothing, but where there are now sprawling estates and tower blocks will have every room similarly heated.  All that heat has to go somewhere, has to have an impact somewhere.  So regardless of whatever effect man-made factors are having on world temps, just the pure fact we live in times where it's not acceptable to be as cold as we once were, must have had some impact on mean CETs  in my opinion

[Roger J Smith]

Here are a few comparisons which tend to make Dec 2015 and the cold spells of spring 2013 and late 2010 look fairly similar, in fact the cold of 2010 is more anomalous:

31-day period __________ CET and anomaly vs 1981-2010 normals

31 Oct - 30 Nov 2015 __ 9.6 __ +2.4

1-31 Dec 2015 __________ 9.7 __ +5.1

31 Mar - 30 Apr 2011 __ 11.8 __ +3.3

21 June -- 21 July 1976 _ 20.2 __ +4.1

1 July -- 31 July 2006 ___ 19.6 __ +2.9

2 June -- 2 July 1846 ___ 19.3 __ +4.7

2 May - 1 June 1833 ___ 15.3 __ +3.6 (same for 3 May - 2 June where 15.5 also +3.6)

9 Mar-8 Apr 2013 ______ 2.3 __ --4.8

(9 Mar - 31 Mar 2013) _ 1.95 __ --5.0

26 Nov-26 Dec 2010 __ --1.5 __ --6.1

in fact 35 days 22 Nov to 26 Dec managed to average 5.9 below normal ( --0.8 vs 5.1 ).

Some mid-winter cold anomalies are even larger:

1 Jan - 31 Jan 1795 ____ --3.1 __ --7.5

27 Jan - 26 Feb 1947 __ --2.1 __ --6.6

23 Jan - 22 Feb 1895 __ --2.5 __ --6.8