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Met Office to Issue Revised Summer Forecast
You will need a brolly on holiday in the UK in August – the Met Office is issuing a revised forecast for more unsettled weather well into the month.
It is a far cry from the “barbecue summer” it predicted back in April.
The news will raise questions about the Met Office’s ability to make reliable seasonal forecasts.
But the organisation has defended its record, saying people have already forgotten the hot weather experienced across many parts of Britain in June.
It also highlights the absence of the sort of major floods that blighted 2007 and 2008; and the largely fine weather for the Wimbledon tennis championship, the cricket Tests and the Open golf.
The Met Office also says temperatures have been around or above normal, and that the end of August might be better again.
The real problem for the Met Office is that this is the third summer in a row where its forecast has failed. In 2007, the Met Office chirped: “The summer is yet again likely to be warmer than normal. There are no indications of a particularly wet summer.”
We got downpours and floods in the wettest summer for England and Wales since 1912. Temperatures were below average.
In April 2008, the Met Office forecast: “Summer temperatures are likely to be warmer than average and rainfall near or above average.”
That did not prepare people for one of the wettest summers on record with high winds and low sunshine.
In both instances, the Met Office failed to predict the movements of the jet stream – the high-level wind that races round the world 10km above the surface.
The past two years it got stuck above the UK – and that locked a low-pressure system in place which in turn brought misery and rain. That has been happening again this July.
Temperatures in both previous years were dragged down by the Pacific La Nina effect which makes it four times more likely that we will suffer a bad summer in Europe. But this year, the La Nina effect no longer applies.
Read the entire BBC News website article: ‘Met Office cools summer forecast’
See more fun CRN Met Office articles here.
December 11th, 2009 at 6:21 am
[...] Met Office, Ewen McCallum, said a repeat of the wet summers of 2007 and 2008 is unlikely." Climate Research News Met Office to Issue Revised Summer Forecast "The real problem for the Met Office is that this is the third summer in a row where its [...]