On Oct 7, 8:35*pm, Teignmouth wrote:
I've twice tried to post this under Joe's hinting of another cool
winter for Europe thread, but for some reason it's not appearing, so
here goes again.

Looking at the Met Office Ensemble-mean maps for Dec/Jan/Feb, they are
forecasting temperatures between 1°C & 1.5°C above average.http://www..metoffice.gov.uk/science.../ensemble/ens_...

And looking at their European long-range probability maps *for the
same period they are forecasting the following probability;http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/science/.../probability/g...

Temperatures above average 60-80% confidence
Temperatures average 20-40% confidence
Temperatures below average less than 20% confidence.

So on both counts the Met Office are forecasting a Mild Winter.

Will they have Egg on their Faces 2 years in a row?

If someone could avoid having egg on their face with a LR seasonal
forecast that was correct 5 times on the bounce, I'd start to take
notice of them. There's not a single forecaster, or organisation, that
has managed to do that over the last 5 years, AFAIK. The MetO could
get the winter forecast wrong this coming year, then be right the next
8 running. How would you feel about them then, T? Not that the general
pubic, the media and almost anyone else would take a blind bit of
notice, as they only focus on the mistakes and the ridiculous (and
painfully real) PR gaffes.

It's difficult, incremental work by good research scientists, which is
showing very slow progress and relies on an awful lot of peer reviewed
research and hindsight stats, to tease out cause and effect. Anyone
who thinks they can do better needs their last 5 seasonal forecasts
examining.......and their bumps. *)) It's fun watching and reading
their forecasts each winter though! Reading their gloating and that of
their followers when they get one right (after messing up and
conveniently forgetting the last 4 or so years' forecasts) is not so
edifying.

As it happens, in terms of temperature, warmer than average, with a
spread around +1C sounds a very good bet for this winter, as the world
is warmer than it was in comparison to the 1971-2000 mean and the UK
is hardly immune to that trend. If Lockwood (2010) is correct, in
saying that a solar minimum can produce changes in stratospheric winds
which can lead to more NH blocking at the surface, a spread around
+0.5 might be better.

I'd just go for warmer than average, but then again, I have every
winter, spring, summer and autumn, since about 1990 when I first
started talking about this. If you can beat about 75% correct over 20
years and 80 forecasts, then well done (less than 75% in winter,
mind)*. UK seasonal forecasting for me remains pretty impossible and
that's a real regret. 20 years ago, I thought we'd be far better by
2010 than we actually are. I don't think precipitation is forecastable
at 3 months in advance with any decent accuracy at all. i.e. it's
pretty much a guess. The MetO has about a 65% success record in
predicting the sign of the NAO from using N. Atlantic SSTs in early
summer, but even a -ve/+ve NAO is not an accurate indicator of the UK
winter weather.

*Hardly a claim to fame: it's the ability to predict the cold ones
that counts and I have no idea, the same as everybody else, when they
will come along. If I'd have forecast a cold winter every year since
1990, I'd have been correct 7 times and wrong far more (Hadley,
below), but I'd have great fun saying how good I was, after the 7
colder than average ones and I'd be on a real roll after the last 2!!
*))

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/...ics/uktemp.txt