Philip, this confuses and surprises me somewhat:

Felly sgrifennodd Philip Eden philipATweatherHYPHENukDOTcom:
Note the use of the word "will", and the absence of any
percentage probability.

To be fair, there was a probability if you looked up the forecasting
methods, where they said that the May SST anomalies (?I think) predict
with 2/3 certainty the NAO. That's from memory, and I am open to
correction!

Month.....Iceland/Azores....1961-90 norm......NAO-index
Dec 2005 ...... 18.1 .................17.0 ..................+1.1
Jan 2006 ....... 28.7 ................. 17.4 .................+11.3
required
Feb 2006 ........ 2.2 ................. 14.7 ................. -12.5

So why is it that the weather that has dominated here and in continental
Europe recently is exactly what one would have expected from a negative NAO
(is it not?). It certainly matches closely what I made a point of reading
about when I saw the NAO forecast.

Adrian
--
Adrian Shaw ais@
Adran Cyfrifiadureg, Prifysgol Cymru, aber.
Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, Cymru ac.
http://users.aber.ac.uk/ais uk