C.E.T. forecasts for January, 2016

[ARTDEMOLE]

Expecting a 5.8c. Today.. Met office Hadley.. .....

[Summer Sun]

5.7c to the 29th

1.9c above the 61 to 90 average

1.3c above the 81 to 10 average

[snowray]

21 hours ago, reef said:

That's the thing with these warmer CET values these days. Even though 5.6C doesn't sound like anything special, it would still put this month joint 33rd mildest in the CET series.

Well its certainly a lot lower than January, but that wasn't going to be difficult, thats two consecutive months now that are way higher that average, even this afternoon with uppers of -7/-8c there are still temps showing up of +7/8c in the CET zone .

So where are we going to compensate for this then I wonder, I'm going for a close to average February then cold March and April. 

[March]

4 hours ago, snowray said:

Well its certainly a lot lower than January, but that wasn't going to be difficult, thats two consecutive months now that are way higher that average, even this afternoon with uppers of -7/-8c there are still temps showing up of +7/8c in the CET zone .

So where are we going to compensate for this then I wonder, I'm going for a close to average February then cold March and April. 

There's no such thing as "compensating" with cold/warm temperature, that's why there's global warming. The "compensating" comes in the form of more extremes, and not necessarily here. 

[Summer Sun]

5.7c to the 30th

1.9c above the 61 to 90 average

1.3c above the 81 to 10 average

[BornFromTheVoid]

With the minimum today at 2.8C, a maximum of 13.0C or more will leave us on 5.8C before corrections.
13.0C seems a little higher than what's expected, so 5.7C before corrections is most likely. Then anything up to a 0.4C drop is possible when corrections are applied.

[snowray]

1 hour ago, BornFromTheVoid said:

With the minimum today at 2.8C, a maximum of 13.0C or more will leave us on 5.8C before corrections.
13.0C seems a little higher than what's expected, so 5.7C before corrections is most likely. Then anything up to a 0.4C drop is possible when corrections are applied.

Thats seems like a lot up to a 0.4c drop, can it really change that much then at this stage? Why a drop though, sorry if this seems like a silly question.

[BornFromTheVoid]

3 hours ago, snowray said:

Thats seems like a lot up to a 0.4c drop, can it really change that much then at this stage? Why a drop though, sorry if this seems like a silly question.

They apply corrections to the daily values after the month has ended. They account for different things, for example: stations moving and the urban heat island effect. The overall corrections is almost always downward. Generally it's just 0.1 or 0.2C, but I think it's been close to 0.6C a few times before.

[snowray]

54 minutes ago, BornFromTheVoid said:

They apply corrections to the daily values after the month has ended. They account for different things, for example: stations moving and the urban heat island effect. The overall corrections is almost always downward. Generally it's just 0.1 or 0.2C, but I think it's been close to 0.6C a few times before.

Thanks for replying. Yes will be interesting to see what adjustments are made. 

 

Very mild this afternoon, 13c widely even 14c in places. 

[damianslaw]

Another very mild month - 3 in a row now. Not sure the last time we endured three months at least 1.5 degrees above the 61-90 value, Nov and Dec were exceptionally mild mind - so quite unprecedented I feel, similar to Dec 88-Feb 89 I imagine or Dec 06-Feb 07.. we seem to be able to manage 3 appreciably milder than normal months in a row at the winter end of the year, but not the summer...

[Summer Sun]

Confirmed as 5.4C

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cet_info_mean.html

Edited February 1, 2016 by Summer Sun

[North-Easterly Blast]

January 2016 had a final CET of 5.45*C, co-incidently identical to the CET of January 2012.  So Jan 2016 came out as another milder than average month, though not as markedly so as in December, though it did have a colder week of weather around mid-month.

With no sign as yet of a decent cold spell, it looks as though winter 2015-16 will go down as another poor winter.  It seems as though a strong ENSO anomaly either way often does not favour lengthy cold spells, although with in the last two strong El Nino winters (1982-83 and 1997-98) the Februarys of each of them were very different.

[summer blizzard]

What was the CET for the middle third of the month?

16 hours ago, North-Easterly Blast said:

January 2016 had a final CET of 5.45*C, co-incidently identical to the CET of January 2012.  So Jan 2016 came out as another milder than average month, though not as markedly so as in December, though it did have a colder week of weather around mid-month.

With no sign as yet of a decent cold spell, it looks as though winter 2015-16 will go down as another poor winter.  It seems as though a strong ENSO anomaly either way often does not favour lengthy cold spells, although with in the last two strong El Nino winters (1982-83 and 1997-98) the Februarys of each of them were very different.

I notice each year that most people put on their rose tinted glasses and latch onto one choice thing that guarantees a cold winter. As much as i did think we were going to go colder than average in Jan-Feb, a cursory evaluation of +MEI/+QBO combinations would have told people that most December's and February's were pretty awful.

I don't blame El Nino on it's own for this winter but i'd say that to expect a west based pattern when the east Pacific is still above 1C is highly unlikely. 

[snowray]

On 1/29/2016 at 4:46 PM, reef said:

 

So is it exactly 5.45c, who wins though the 5.4s or the 5.5s?

[Roger J Smith]

They must have different rounding conventions from pure math. The website is now updated and shows the January CET as being 5.4. The raw data average out to 5.4516 which is higher than 5.450 so technically it should round to 5.5. However, I did not check their values for mean max and mean min which may explain this.

As to the other question about middle third of the month, not sure what period that would be exactly but the mean for 11th to 21st inclusive was 2.4 C and for 11th to 20th it was also 2.4 C. So it was definitely colder in the middle than either end, from 1st to 10th averaged 6.0 and the last ten days (22nd-31st) had a mean of 8.2 C.

Worth noting that the 25th set a daily record of 11.6 that tied two other dates in 1834 and 1932 for warmest January day, while the 27th (10.5) also nudged out a record from 2003 by 0.1 deg.

[snowray]

11.6c is well high for January, wow factor there! I wonder what records will be broken this month?

[The PIT]

Should be 5.5 if the do proper maths.

Sunny Sheffield finished on 4.8C

Edited February 2, 2016 by The PIT

[Don]

2 hours ago, The PIT said:

Should be 5.5 if the do proper maths.

Sunny Sheffield finished on 4.8C

No!  Should be 5.4.... 

[snowray]

Surely should be rounded up to 5.5c?

[Don]

30 minutes ago, snowray said:

Surely should be rounded up to 5.5c?

It should be 5.4C because that was my guess! 

[BornFromTheVoid]

We only get the data to 1 decimal place, where as they use more themselves.

The average max and min according to the Met Office is 8.35C and 2.56C. Averaging them gives us 5.455C, which is 5.5C when rounded to the nearest 0.1C. However, with 3 decimal places those 8.35C and 2.56C could well be 8.345C and 2.555C, which when averaged gives us 5.4475C, which is 5.4C.

[damianslaw]

A rather disappointing figure then, had the colder spell hung around a bit longer and dug deeper than perhaps a more near average value would have been recorded. I think though we have at least returned a winter month colder than any in winter 13/14 - can anyone verify this..

Yes strong El Ninos don't appear to correlate well with delivering cold Decembers and Januaries - quite the opposite as shown in 82/83 and 97/98 particularly, and I do believe it has been the major player this season in scuppering any significant cold weather. The most notable aspect of Jan and Dec has been the propensity for exceptionally mild conditions to invade the country, with air originating from deep within the tropics, we saw similar extremes in Feb 98 as well.. with a plume from N Africa. People were saying this winter would offer some extremes given the unusual link up between super El Nino, West QBO, coming on the back of a solar cycle peak.. unprecedented times, and yes we have ended up with some exceptionally wet and exceptionally mild weather.

Despite the fact so far we have seen little in the way of cold weather, we have seen a Jetstream locked in a less than normal state, this time most of the time we have been on the mild side, and it has been highly amplified as well, its a theme we have seen since winter 07/08, ever since we have see lengthy amplified pattern, sometimes UK locked on cold side, other times warm side (much of 2014 for instance), so its still business as usual in this respect.

What has been most notable has been the position of the longwave trough, long long periods of it becoming unstuck in the same position, this year to our west, unable to make eastwards progress, same as in winter 2013/2014, summers where it has locked itself over the country, winter 12/13 where it kept disrupting, winter 09/10 where it stayed well away from us forced to our south thanks to the southerly Jetstream. Its forecasted behaviour this week being a case in point, it is programmed to stay to our west propped up by shortwave activity and going nowhere.. frustratingly so, allowing no window for dry weather other than fleeting half days.. thank goodness its not mid summer.

 

Edited February 2, 2016 by damianslaw

[J10]

For some reason, the Met office

round up with an odd first decimal place, e.g. 5.55c goes to 5.6c while
round down with an even first decimal place, e.g. 5.45c goes to 5.4c

Scores will be uploaded Thursday evening.

Edited February 4, 2016 by J10

[Weather-history]

8 hours ago, J10 said:

For some reason, the Met office

round up with an odd first decimal place, e.g. 5.55c goes to 5.6c while
round down with an even first decimal place, e.g. 5.45c goes to 5.4c

Scores will be uploaded Thursday evening.

That's how I was taught Maths at school with rounding up decimals. Always to the nearest even one.

[Roger J Smith]

The above is undoubtedly true but I think the actual reason in this case is what BFTV suggested, they calculate the mean from the average of max and min, and that turned out to give a result that was marginally lower than 5.45 so that's where the 5.4 originates for Jan 2016.