Winter/Spring 2013 (Model Output Discussion)

Trotter

jeltz wrote: »

Still, I like the idea a lot, the connection has been long mooted, the hypothesis has a nice ring to it. . . :pac:

Could you explain a bit about the connection and the hypothesis? Thanks!!

Blizzard 2010

rickdangerouss wrote: »

Spin 103 today, said that Ireland was getting 2 months of snow and this was trending on twitter. After a few clicks I found this site link.

http://www.stephenoconnor.info/about/latest-news/big-freeze-2012.html#.UJam-sUxqt0

No need to click on it, The site does Insurance and it quotes BWS senior meteorologist Jim Dale.

Its all about something other than weather when i read 2 months of snow in Ireland.

Looked at Matt's blog and trending towards an mild, wet and winding spell for the second half of Nov.

He does say this has an building affect for early winter. MT could be spot on!!

http://matthugo.wordpress.com/

I think it is a more of a month of two halves, the second half being "interesting" I dont know where you are getting your mild wet month from It is still early days

Conrach

Sponge Bob wrote: »

He forecast months of continual snow and cold..not a small bit of a day or two. Sure if it warms up at all before Feb then bastardi is wrong for the winter...again may I add.

He specifically stated before the 5th Nov. I don't have great faith in the man but I will always give credit where credit is due. Just as I do with the Donegal postman. . I will hunt out the tweet and attached chart when I get the kids to bed or if you are bored you can do it for me...:)

Daniel2590

Wolfe_IRE wrote: »

No. the purple is sea ice i think

I think you read my post wrong I mean the gray areas around the white.

Calibos

Daniel2590 wrote: »

Do the grayer parts just indicate areas with less snow?

No. The green is vegetation.

notnumber

Iancar29 wrote: »

Hail River anyone?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

My view from Citywest of that shower..the sky was jet black looking east but apart from a few half-melted hailstones we missed the action..

Su Campu

The grey shows partial or broken snow cover

jeltz

Trotter wrote: »

Could you explain a bit about the connection and the hypothesis? Thanks!!

The Snow Advance Index SAI is the idea that the rapid advance of snow cover in Eurasia indicates a colder more severe winter for much of the northern hemispere, including us.

People have had the idea for a long time, there wasn't enough good data to be confident about the link, and as I said the level of confidence is still not high at about 85%.

The idea is that a pool of cold air forms over the snow covered area of Eurasia early in the season and this links up with the artic air early on, before it reaches its coldest during polar night (around Christmas time). This means that when blocking conditions occur due to the weakening and southward drift of the polar jet stream (normally just the 'the jet stream' but its full name is even more telling in winter than in summer) it is already very cold early on and so when the air comes behind the jet stream it is colder than it would usually be bringing harsher weather than there would be if the cold air had not had a chance to form early on in the season. The jetstream tends to become blocked, as it has been over the summer, and so the cold sits on top of us. More importantly it provides cold air for the 'Beast from the East' which tends to arrive a bit later in the winter.

As you probably know the sun is as quiet as it was in the Dalton Minimum, going by the sun spot records. During that time, according to the weather records, there was a transition from benign weather in summer and winter, apart from some fierce windstorms in autumn winter to a climate pattern of cooler wetter summers, fewer windstorms and more intense cold periods with snow in winter. This matches the gradual change in our weather patterns since around 2006 / 2007. During the Dalton Minimum there was around 15 winters when the Thames froze over, with less than half of them having thick enough ice in the middle to hold a 'Frost Fair'. Paintings made at the time still exist, some are on the net.

Last winter 2011 - 2012 the sun had a peak of solar activity and that may have stopped us and Scotland from getting the two weeks of intense cold that England and Wales got last year. The sun has gone quiet again since then.

There are a number of scientists making solar hypotheses. Lockwood professor of Space Physics in Reading and Svensmark professor of Solar Physics in Copenhagen are some of the best known. Lockwoods hypothesis about cold winters is covered here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8615789.stm but he has mentioned more mechanisms than are mentioned there. When they say he is working on the influence of low solar activity in summer, he is looking at the transition to cooler and wetter summers that occured in the Dalton Minimum and has reoccured in the last few years. Svensmark is more difficult but he hypothesises that the quiet sun allows particles from space to influence the weather. Proxy temperature records from soil and ice cores rely on deposits of these particles from space to show that the sun was quiet at many times in the past, on a timescale of tens of thousands of years into the past.

The important thing to know about Lockwoods and Svensmarks theories is they depend upon partical physics to look at the chain of events between the sun, space and our atmosphere. We know puck all about particle physics, it is very complicated and a lot of it is 'hard to demonstrate in the real wold' theory. So it will take years if not decades to get closer to knowing more about what really is going on up there.


-AO negative Arctic Oscillation and -NAO negative North Atlantic Oscillation is shorthand for the effect of all this cold air, but its not that simple, the mechanisms are many and there are many missing parts of the jigsaw puzzle, and many question marks over parts we have.

jeltz

If anyone has forgotten what last winter was like outside of the island look at this http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2096372/UK-weather-forecast-15cm-snow-way-Met-Office-issues-severe-weather-warning.html and this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_European_cold_wave

pad199207

Place is gone nearly white with Heavy Hail in South Naas now

Lucreto

pad199207 wrote: »

Place is gone nearly white with Heavy Hail in South Naas now

I live near the ball in Naas and nothing here.

pad199207

Lucreto wrote: »

I live near the ball in Naas and nothing here.

Now thats local!

Lucreto

It happens all the time.

It could be lashing rain at the CBS and dry by the time I reach that side of naas.

cunnifferous

Nevermind

Wolfe_IRE

polar maritime northerly next saturday on GFS


Another indication that the trend set this day last week is continuing to show in the models
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=81484640&postcount=1306

jeltz

What a lot of people haven't realized is that the forecast night time temperatures from the Met Office are total shoíte. Over the last couple of days temperatures forecast overnight for the Down coast has been +3C to +5C. I was told earlier today by people living right by the sea they had to scrape the ice off their windscreens yesterday and it froze up again last night though taken off by cold rain around dawn.

Only the Met Office could think that water freezes at +3C to +5C. :mad:

Katesbridge got to -5C this week.

Loads of examples of this in 2010 with the forecast of -1C to -2C overnight beside the sea and people telling me their car thermometers said -9C and -11C in the morning. :rolleyes:

That is partly why I switched to all season tyres years ago, so I can't be caught out by that kind of dangerous nonsense.

The Met Office have said that October 2012 was the coldest since 2003 at 8.2C average and 1993 was the next coldest at 7.3C. Their temperature records are likely as shoíte like their other attempts with temperatures I would say it was something less than they claim. I think it is being skewed by UHI and measurement variations due to poor station siting though by how much is anyones guess.

Trotter

jeltz wrote: »

The Snow Advance Index SAI is the idea that the rapid advance of snow cover in Eurasia indicates a colder more severe winter for much of the northern hemispere, including us....

Wow, thanks for such a detailed answer! Cheers!

catch.23

jeltz wrote: »

The Snow Advance Index SAI is the idea that the rapid advance of snow cover in Eurasia indicates a colder more severe winter for much of the northern hemispere, including us.

Not technically true, there is correlation between northern hemisphere snow cover and arctic oscillation. That doesn't imply a cold winter for us, as we can be in a mild flow with a negative AO.

Wolfe_IRE

this day week according to tonight's GFS. Could and probably will be all gone in the morning

jeltz

catch.23 wrote: »

Not technically true, there is correlation between northern hemisphere snow cover and arctic oscillation. That doesn't imply a cold winter for us, as we can be in a mild flow with a negative AO.

There are really too many variations for the correlation to be straightforward. In my earlier post I did mention confirmation bias and the somewhat sparse data.

There is the problem of what is meant by a cold winter anyway which is often a problem of statistics. We could easily have a record mild winter this winter even if we had three cold events with overnights of -15C and snow on the ground for a total of a couple of weeks.

We are stuck between a huge ocean that stretches from the frozen arctic to the warm tropical zones and a continent that gets very cold in winter and a number of mountain ranges on our lattitude which unpredictably disrupt the air flows as the earth turns so we get caught between huge air masses that are of opposing characteristics. Often violently opposing. That means the AO and NAO are going to be variable as they always are.

These factors are all interrelated so picking any one out like the speed of Eurasian snow advance is not in itself going to say much.

The concept of the SAI is that taking a long list of other factors into account it should be possible to give stonger indications that intense cold periods may occur during the winter period of three - four months. No particular phase of AO or NAO will dominate for that entire period (if -AO does call a new ice age :eek: it won't though). It will still be characterized by changeability due to our position on the globe.

But there is still a lot we don't really know, e.g. the effect of stratospheric warming in winter which is something we know very little about and research has only really started on it in the last few years. Like the experimental SAI it may eventually be a part of weather forecasting and like the SAI it will go through a long evolution until it can be used reliably.

Su Campu

jeltz wrote: »

What a lot of people haven't realized is that the forecast night time temperatures from the Met Office are total shoíte. Over the last couple of days temperatures forecast overnight for the Down coast has been +3C to +5C. I was told earlier today by people living right by the sea they had to scrape the ice off their windscreens yesterday and it froze up again last night though taken off by cold rain around dawn.

Only the Met Office could think that water freezes at +3C to +5C. :mad:

Katesbridge got to -5C this week.

Loads of examples of this in 2010 with the forecast of -1C to -2C overnight beside the sea and people telling me their car thermometers said -9C and -11C in the morning. :rolleyes:

That is partly why I switched to all season tyres years ago, so I can't be caught out by that kind of dangerous nonsense.

The Met Office have said that October 2012 was the coldest since 2003 at 8.2C average and 1993 was the next coldest at 7.3C. Their temperature records are likely as shoíte like their other attempts with temperatures I would say it was something less than they claim. I think it is being skewed by UHI and measurement variations due to poor station siting though by how much is anyones guess.

Everyone knows that you can have ground frost with air temperature several degrees above zero so your criticism is unfounded. Surfaces such as grass, windscreens, etc. lose heat through radiative loss very easily in clear skies and with slack winds they can be up to 10 C colder than the air at 1.5 m. Take Mace Head's 06Z synop just issued now, which shows an overnight minimum air temperature of +3.8C but a grass minimum of -3 C.

03963 15984 /1401 10051 20015 30074 40103 52031 69912 80/// 333 20038 3/103 87/75=

You should research a little more before making such allegations.

gbee

jeltz wrote: »

I think it is being skewed by UHI and measurement variations due to poor station siting though by how much is anyones guess.

I'm not a fame of their mean temperature recordings either, wind chill and exposure can lead to ice and colder conditions than the mean temperature would suggest.

For the cold, I tend to look for the 'feels like' to get a better idea. If one tracks many of the stations one encounters many anomalies, I have posted in the past but there are so many possible variations, no consistency can be applied ~ however I more suspect the equipment and maintenance of same, now with so many automatic stations, maintenance is massive money.

Kippure

The 2 Joes talk about winter 2012 2013 in Britain.

http://blogtalk.vo.llnwd.net/o23/show/3/829/show_3829041.mp3


Link found here.

http://www.snow-watch.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=59&p=21029#p21029

odyboody

Kippure wrote: »

The 2 Joes talk about winter 2012 2013 in Britain.

http://blogtalk.vo.llnwd.net/o23/show/3/829/show_3829041.mp3


Link found here.

http://www.snow-watch.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=59&p=21029#p21029

Stopped listening when he mentioned he has a lot of time for Piers Corban:rolleyes:

Jaffusmaximus

Daily Sun: 05 Nov 12

QUIET SUN: With no sunspots actively flaring, the sun's x-ray outut has flatlined. Solar activity is very low and likely to remain so for the next 24 hours

Source

http://www.spaceweather.com/

I wonder if this will have an impact on this years winter if it continues!

tylercollins

Not sure if posted yet but Will Cooper Weather long range winter forecast winter 2012/2013

http://willcooperweather.weebly.com/long-range-forecasts.html

And his summary is as follows..

SUMMARY OF THE UPCOMING WINTER
All in all, I think there are good signals for Northern Blocking to become established at times during the Winter, with retrogression from Scandinavia, to Greenland. Significant snowfalls are likely at times through the Winter. Precipitation amounts overall, will be around average or below for the north, perhaps around or above normal for the south. Temperatures overall, will be below average, so this Winter is likely to be a colder than average Winter overall. Milder periods are likely at times, but the main emphasis is for colder weather. Some wet and windy spells are likely, especially during any milder periods. The Jet Stream is likely to remain to the south (JSS), warm Sea Surface Temperatures are good for blocking, as is snowcover over Northern Europe & Asia.

In conclusion, this Winter will be very interesting to say the least, and will be very different from last year. This year is looking better for cold and snow, but you also have to expect milder weather at times, although nothing on the scale of last Winter's unusually mild temperatures.

Overall Confidence - Winter 2012/13
CONFIDENCE OF A COLDER THAN AVERAGE WINTER: 60-90%
CONFIDENCE OF AN AVERAGE WINTER: 40-50%
CONFIDENCE OF A MILDER THAN AVERAGE WINTER: 0-40%

CONFIDENCE OF SIGNIFICANT SNOW EVENTS: 50-80%
CONFIDENCE OF WETTER, WINDIER WEATHER: 0-50%

Nabber

Will cooper stop posting after his forecast was questioned on information sourcing and copying other forecasts word for word.

Think it was Mindgame.

jeltz

Su Campu wrote: »

Everyone knows that you can have ground frost with air temperature several degrees above zero so your criticism is unfounded. Surfaces such as grass, windscreens, etc. lose heat through radiative loss very easily in clear skies and with slack winds they can be up to 10 C colder than the air at 1.5 m.

No.

Very few people know that. If you go out on the streets and ask people you will get a range of replies. The chances of getting a scientific definition or anything close will be very low unless you are lucky. Or maybe if you hang around in front of the local yacht club or garden centre and ask people going in or out.

Su Campu wrote: »

Take Mace Head's 06Z synop just issued now, which shows an overnight minimum air temperature of +3.8C but a grass minimum of -3 C.

03963 15984 /1401 10051 20015 30074 40103 52031 69912 80/// 333 20038 3/103 87/75=

Try showing that code to people in the street and ask them what it is. You may be amused by the responses you get. It could be anything from an industrial catalogue number for kermel protective gloves to a swiss bank account. You could try telling them it was great in the days when primitive data transmission systems like telex was used to flash it around the world but doubtless they will say they prefer to watch the weather summary on tv.

People have a very simplistic idea of the weather. That is where the Met Office is falling down. They are not showing enough caution when making predictions. Over the last five years they have consistently failed to give proper ice warnings in the North of England, borders, Southern Scotland and NI regions. Too often this has lead to major incidents with multiple cars off the roads and fatalities. Anyone with the slightest amount of sense would make a conservative call because it is many times better for people to be warned of possible ice and so be wary of driving over ice and finding none or a few small patches than saying nothing at all with fatal results. This is the time of year when gaps start appearing in hedges round these parts due to people hitting ice and running off the road. Modern vehicles have more safety features than ever before but there are still fatalities. The Met Office have given ice warnings this morning, thats several days too late which is inexcusable given the freezing overnights of the last few days, even right by the sea. Joe Bastardí comes in for criticism sometimes for calling for more cold than people think is justified - he is only doing his job and making sure people are well prepared. It is always better to be warned of and wary about ice than to hit it at speed. Have you ever hit unexpected ice when driving first thing in the morning?

The Met Office are not the organization they used to be. They have taken to lying to build up their image. When the cold weather arrived in Nov - Dec 2010 they pretended they had warned the UK cabinet! The cabinet and PM rightly told them to stop lying because they said it would be mild. Later they pretended they had forecast the heavy snow which blocked the M8 motorway between Glasgow and Edinburgh and other roads. With some people sleeping in their cars due to blocked roads it was remarkable there were not fatalities with -14C at night in places. The Met Office pretended they issued warnings but that was a load of rubbish and people certainly have not forgotten it.

So the precautionary principle should be used with less caution, as Bastardí does, where snow and cold and ice are concerned. It is better to loose a little time in the morning and not your life.

Su Campu wrote: »

You should research a little more before making such allegations.

I studied climatology in relation to experimental design and mathematical modelling at university. I am acutely aware of the short comings of the data gathering efforts, the data sets and the shortcomings of mathematical and statistical approaches because I have had it drilled into my head. There is no end of problems with the data sets. There is a longstanding joke among real scientists that it is more a kind of pseudoscience than the real thing.

I am sure people on the board would welcome mathematical stochastic thingy and regression whaty what like they would welcome a dose of the clap. I like to keep it straightforward and something that anyone can follow. Even so I know so much of the data is shoíte and has significant ranges of errors and omissions. I know the amount of criticism and revision of modelling approaches that goes on which never gets into the public eye. And I know a lot of hypotheses are built on the back of theories and hypothesis which does not give a high degree of confidence in them and I am going to call it as I see it with that in mind.

Wolfe_IRE

Su V Jeltz

Su Campu

jeltz wrote: »

No.

Very few people know that. If you go out on the streets and ask people you will get a range of replies. The chances of getting a scientific definition or anything close will be very low unless you are lucky. Or maybe if you hang around in front of the local yacht club or garden centre and ask people going in or out.





Try showing that code to people in the street and ask them what it is. You may be amused by the responses you get. It could be anything from an industrial catalogue number for kermel protective gloves to a swiss bank account. You could try telling them it was great in the days when primitive data transmission systems like telex was used to flash it around the world but doubtless they will say they prefer to watch the weather summary on tv.

People have a very simplistic idea of the weather. That is where the Met Office is falling down. They are not showing enough caution when making predictions. Over the last five years they have consistently failed to give proper ice warnings in the North of England, borders, Southern Scotland and NI regions. Too often this has lead to major incidents with multiple cars off the roads and fatalities. Anyone with the slightest amount of sense would make a conservative call because it is many times better for people to be warned of possible ice and so be wary of driving over ice and finding none or a few small patches than saying nothing at all with fatal results. This is the time of year when gaps start appearing in hedges round these parts due to people hitting ice and running off the road. Modern vehicles have more safety features than ever before but there are still fatalities. The Met Office have given ice warnings this morning, thats several days too late which is inexcusable given the freezing overnights of the last few days, even right by the sea. Joe Bastardí comes in for criticism sometimes for calling for more cold than people think is justified - he is only doing his job and making sure people are well prepared. It is always better to be warned of and wary about ice than to hit it at speed. Have you ever hit unexpected ice when driving first thing in the morning?

The Met Office are not the organization they used to be. They have taken to lying to build up their image. When the cold weather arrived in Nov - Dec 2010 they pretended they had warned the UK cabinet! The cabinet and PM rightly told them to stop lying because they said it would be mild. Later they pretended they had forecast the heavy snow which blocked the M8 motorway between Glasgow and Edinburgh and other roads. With some people sleeping in their cars due to blocked roads it was remarkable there were not fatalities with -14C at night in places. The Met Office pretended they issued warnings but that was a load of rubbish and people certainly have not forgotten it.

So the precautionary principle should be used with less caution, as Bastardí does, where snow and cold and ice are concerned. It is better to loose a little time in the morning and not your life.






I studied climatology in relation to experimental design and mathematical modelling at university. I am acutely aware of the short comings of the data gathering efforts, the data sets and the shortcomings of mathematical and statistical approaches because I have had it drilled into my head. There is no end of problems with the data sets. There is a longstanding joke among real scientists that it is more a kind of pseudoscience than the real thing.

I am sure people on the board would welcome mathematical stochastic thingy and regression whaty what like they would welcome a dose of the clap. I like to keep it straightforward and something that anyone can follow. Even so I know so much of the data is shoíte and has significant ranges of errors and omissions. I know the amount of criticism and revision of modelling approaches that goes on which never gets into the public eye. And I know a lot of hypotheses are built on the back of theories and hypothesis which does not give a high degree of confidence in them and I am going to call it as I see it with that in mind.

Are you for real?