On Sunday, September 16, 2012 9:27:04 PM UTC+1, Adam Lea wrote:


I've been visiting a friend in hospital today and he said he read in the

Telegraph that the upcoming UK winter was expected to be mild and wet.

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I can't find any such report in the Telegraph. If it exists I wonder who it is from.

By the way, ECMWF O/N/D forecast has milder probabilities than GloSea4; so, as Norman, says take with a pinch of salt.

Seasonal forecasts are hard enough anyway but we're looking at almost unprecedented teleconnections; such a strong -ve PDO and +ve AMO have only coincided once in about the last 100 years, for example. We have a weak (moderate at best) Modoki El Nino, which is early and already weakening further (possibly a hiatus but expected to peak early and become neutral through winter/early spring anyway). And Arctic sea ice melt is unprecedented.

I'm all for the UKMO extended model (it re-forecast the 2009-10 winter better than the standard model) but it won't be the be all and end all (I'm not sure how well it did at the time with the 2010-11 winter, particularly the early extreme cold). Models are bound to struggle.

Stephen.