“There seems to be little robust evidence either of any change to date, or of a significant change in the future.”
The e-mail is below.
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cc: “‘m.hulme@uea.ac.uk'”
date: Fri, 01 Oct 1999 10:22:12 +0100
from: “Jenkins, Geoff”
subject: TV prog
to: “‘m.kelly@uea.ac.uk'”
Mick
I saw the Nick Ross TV programme about weather disasters earlier in the week
– there seems to be a weather disaster programme on every night these days
although they all seem to be more human-interest than science. I thought you
made some very unequivocal statements along the lines of global warming
leading to more crazy weather. I can’t remember your words, but it came
across as pretty certain to me (and, more importantly, to my mum Mrs
Averageviewer).
What do you base your views on? Warming will probably lead to a greater
frequency of temperatures above a certain limit (eg 30C) as the whole pdf
moves up, but we don’t know if the pdf itself will change. There are clear
indications from models that there will be a greater frequency of heavy rain
days – although interestingly the RCM (which does a much better job of
simulating today’s rainfall distributions) the frequency doesnt change half
as much as in the GCM. And there are some signs from Tom Karl (and Mike
Hulme’s recent work) of this in the obs. But on the real crazy waether stuff
(gales, storms, hurricanes, tornadoes etc) there seems to be little robust
evidence either of any change to date, or of a significant change in the
future.
I hope I’m not being too precious about this! but I think we need to give
the public the right message – even if its a load of unsexy boring
uncertainties.
I’m copying this to Mike in case he wants to join in.
Cheers
Geoff
Geoff Jenkins
Head, Climate Prediction Programme
Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research
Met. Office
BRACKNELL RG12 2SZ
UK
Tel: +44 1344 85 6653
Fax: +44 1344 85 4898
http://www.meto.gov.uk/sec5/sec5pg1.html
This below (see link ) article was very interesting as to “why ” there appears to be more global extreme weather, it is all based the fact that we have an amazing global communications system . We can now watch live a tsunami in Japan, or follow a plume from a volcano as it drifts across the ocean. Here is the article : http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/19/why-it-seems-that-severe-weather-is-getting-worse-when-the-data-shows-otherwise-a-historical-perspective/
The Met Office are now pushing the climate disruption meme, that we are now seeing more extreme weather events.
I wonder what has caused them to change their view from that expressed in 1999. It cannot be that the world has warmed since 1999 since the Met office acknowledge that there has been no warming for the past 15 years and even suggest that there will be no warming before 2017.
All quite curious given the comment set out below:
“What do you base your views on? Warming will probably lead to a greater frequency of temperatures above a certain limit (eg 30C) as the whole pdf moves up, but we don’t know if the pdf itself will change…”