zaphod
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Posts: 210
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Post by zaphod on Feb 12, 2014 19:26:08 GMT
Thanks Graywolf. What I take from the paper is this: 1. The current weather conditions are anomalous. Very highly anomalous. 2. The Met Office concentrate on AGW rather than the more neutral "climate change", I believe it would be more responsible to consider the anthropogenic as a subset of climate change. 3. The Met Office cannot advise with any certainty whether climate change, let alone an anthropogenic factor, is a cause of or driver of the conditions reported. 4. So how can the Met Office, having accepted their own limitations in this paper, support the AGW cause both here and at IPCC level so confidently? 5. While there is very understandable concern in the UK and elsewhere about these weather conditions, why has the Met Office apparently found it necessary to refer to AGW at all? Other practicalities are more important - why didn't they see it coming years or months ahead?
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Post by nautonnier on Feb 12, 2014 20:39:16 GMT
These are bad storms - but they have still not beaten the records set 250 years ago. Therefore, anyone trying to claim modern industrial upsets to their gods has to also clarify why they were more upset more than 2 1/2 centuries ago when human industry was not present. Then you could go back even further to the beginning of 'The Great Famine' in 1315AD which started the same way with continual rains lasting through until 1321AD. But it's better for funding to claim it is due to upsetting the modern God.
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Post by neilhamp on Feb 13, 2014 8:20:19 GMT
January is the wettest January ever recorded in UK records www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/datasets/Rainfall/date/England.txtHowever it is only the 14th. wettest month in England since 1910 You could not call January’s rainfall “unprecedented” 1. 179.0mm. 1914 Dec. 2. 174.5mm. 1929 Nov. 3. 170.8mm. 2009 Nov. 4. 170.5mm. 1912 Aug. 5. 169.3mm. 1918 Sep. 6. 167.8mm. 1951 Nov. 7. 168.4mm. 1915 Dec. 8. 168.4mm. 1940 Nov. 9. 165.5mm. 1929 Dec. 10. 164.8mm. 2000 Oct. 11. 164.5mm. 1960 Oct. 12. 160.2mm. 1934 Dec. 13. 160.1mm. 1911 Dec. 14. 158.2mm. 2014 Jan Of the above top 14 rainy months:- 9 months were in 1910-1945 2 months were in 1946-1980 3 months were in 1981-2014
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Post by neilhamp on Feb 13, 2014 8:22:58 GMT
I decided to check the Met Office rainfall data for England. www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/summaries/datasetsI looked at the top 35 wettest winters in England in the last 100 years. The split is as follows:- 1910-1945 16 very wet winters 1946-1980 13 very wet winters 1981-2014 only 6 very wet winters Hmm! Only 6 of the wettest winters occurred in the last 35 years Very wet winters were almost 3 times more frequent in the early part of the 20th. century. This analysis is not very sophisticated, but it seems very difficult to make these wild claims regarding extreme weather due to climate change.
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zaphod
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Posts: 210
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Post by zaphod on Feb 13, 2014 11:25:02 GMT
Maybe not so highly anomalous, then. So why the fuss? Although the floodng is a disaster for many people, it happens in the UK from time to time. I recall Sig asked a while ago, why do people build on flood plains? The question is becoming, having built on flood plains why has Government of every level not done more to protect the land from weather events that are severe but have happened 35 times since 1910 (thanks neilhamp).
The rush to mention AGW by the Met Office appears unseemly and unscientific.
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zaphod
Level 3 Rank
Posts: 210
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Post by zaphod on Feb 13, 2014 11:39:38 GMT
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zaphod
Level 3 Rank
Posts: 210
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Post by zaphod on Feb 13, 2014 11:48:05 GMT
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Post by nautonnier on Feb 13, 2014 14:44:43 GMT
Maybe not so highly anomalous, then. So why the fuss? Although the floodng is a disaster for many people, it happens in the UK from time to time. I recall Sig asked a while ago, why do people build on flood plains? The question is becoming, having built on flood plains why has Government of every level not done more to protect the land from weather events that are severe but have happened 35 times since 1910 (thanks neilhamp). The rush to mention AGW by the Met Office appears unseemly and unscientific. There is a conflation of two different things here. There are lands that have been 'recovered from the sea' for centuries and those that have been built on for centuries - these include not only the Somerset Levels - reclaimed by Dutch engineers to provide more cropland during the Napoleonic wars, but also London itself built in the Thames flood plain as is Oxford (the clue is in the name there). There are also recently built areas where due to land shortage in UK people have started building in flood plains and areas that have been dry for at least 30 years which is not exactly a long time, they have also expanded the building of some areas with urban sprawl out into the areas that 'have been dry for 30 years'. A similar effect was seen in New Orleans with the expansion of building into the Mississippi delta when the floods came the urban sprawl of the 9th ward flooded, the old New Orleans like the French Quarter did not. There is no sympathy for those who built urban sprawl in the last 30 years onto areas that are flood plains. The problem in UK is that the Environment Agency which has only been in existence for around 15 years, decided to follow European Union 'sustainability directives' and that bird nesting areas, the silver mussel and the river voles should be saved by not dredging rivers that had been dredged for centuries. In Somerset they actually reversed the land reclaiming done by the Dutch so long ago, and scrapped special purpose dredgers and pumping stations. Unsurprisingly, when the rains came the land returned to flooded marshland. Killing all the small animals that were meant to be saved. Same has occurred in the upper reaches of the Thames where the agency stopped dredging and the flooding is an expected outcome from Oxford through to west London. Calling any area that has been reclaimed land for centuries 'wet land' and stopping the dredging and pumping is an intentional action and Malthusian. Would they do the same to most of the Netherlands? The answer is yes they would. So - new builds (last few decades) on flood plains as in Queensland deserve all they get, old builds where maintenance of existing water management has been deliberately prevented, is vandalism by the particular government agency(ies). I suspect that all of this comes under the Agenda 21 Chapter 18 on water. It is seen in the US EPA trying to define a muddy puddle in a meadow as 'protected wetlands'. These are deliberate acts with the intent of moving independent farmers off the land and into urban 'settlements'.
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Post by neilhamp on Feb 13, 2014 15:16:56 GMT
Good summary of the problem, nautonnier.
The purpose of my posts on winter rainfall was to illustrate that the current rainfall is not exceptional. If the dredging in Somerset Levels had taken place the flooding would not have been so prolonged and extensive. The absence of dredging in the Thames is not yet fully appreciated. Lets see what happens over the next few days.
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Post by sigurdur on Feb 13, 2014 15:42:57 GMT
I decided to check the Met Office rainfall data for England. www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/summaries/datasetsI looked at the top 35 wettest winters in England in the last 100 years. The split is as follows:- 1910-1945 16 very wet winters 1946-1980 13 very wet winters 1981-2014 only 6 very wet winters Hmm! Only 6 of the wettest winters occurred in the last 35 years Very wet winters were almost 3 times more frequent in the early part of the 20th. century. This analysis is not very sophisticated, but it seems very difficult to make these wild claims regarding extreme weather due to climate change. Interesting! What happens near me is folks in Fargo are building south. The area of fast building today is in the same area that used to hold water in the spring. The Red River is one of the few that flows north, and you can imagine what happens. We haven't had an increase in actual precip, yet we have had an increase in flooding. Folks want to blame farmers. The only ones to blame are really themselves. The Airport Authority, when the air port was built, off course picked high ground for the airport. This is north of Fargo. People don't want to live near the airport, even tho it is high ground. So they expect other folks to pay for diversions, give up land, etc so they won't be flooded. Damnest thing you ever saw. I won't even delve into the "Navigable" water issue, but it is becoming troublesome to say the least.
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zaphod
Level 3 Rank
Posts: 210
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Post by zaphod on Feb 14, 2014 13:36:16 GMT
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Post by nautonnier on Feb 15, 2014 2:28:49 GMT
Zaphod, I will do that shortly. I am currently at 28 , ft over Georgia on my way South to the comparative warmth of Florida :-)
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Post by icefisher on Feb 15, 2014 3:54:18 GMT
Thanks Graywolf. What I take from the paper is this: 1. The current weather conditions are anomalous. Very highly anomalous. 2. The Met Office concentrate on AGW rather than the more neutral "climate change", I believe it would be more responsible to consider the anthropogenic as a subset of climate change. 3. The Met Office cannot advise with any certainty whether climate change, let alone an anthropogenic factor, is a cause of or driver of the conditions reported. 4. So how can the Met Office, having accepted their own limitations in this paper, support the AGW cause both here and at IPCC level so confidently? 5. While there is very understandable concern in the UK and elsewhere about these weather conditions, why has the Met Office apparently found it necessary to refer to AGW at all? Other practicalities are more important - why didn't they see it coming years or months ahead? Referring to AGW is like shaking the money tree. They have been shaking it for so long and hard if they stop they will have to wait a longtime for more funds to fall.
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Post by nautonnier on Feb 15, 2014 4:16:25 GMT
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Post by sigurdur on Feb 16, 2014 4:41:27 GMT
Professor Collins told The Mail on Sunday: ‘There is no evidence that global warming can cause the jet stream to get stuck in the way it has this winter. If this is due to climate change, it is outside our knowledge.’ His statement carries particular significance because he is an internationally acknowledged expert on climate computer models and forecasts, and his university post is jointly funded by the Met Office. Prof Collins is also a senior adviser – a ‘co-ordinating lead author’ – for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). His statement appears to contradict Met Office chief scientist Dame Julia Slingo. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2560310/No-global-warming-did-NOT-cause-storms-says-one-Met-Offices-senior-experts.html#ixzz2tRdMB4oB
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