Weather, Climate Models and the UK

Staying with the theme of yesterdays blog, here is a prediction about weather for the UK in May 2012:

“Summer will arrive early tomorrow with a 17C temperature swing finally delivering sweltering highes of 27C as experts forecast a sweltering summer on a par with the record-breaking 2003 and 2006 scorchers. Weather Services International, part of the Weather Channel, said the ‘pressure blocking’ system which made recent summers cool and wet has disappeared. Instead, forecasters expect hot and dry high pressure systems, comparable with patterns which delivered the 2003 and 2006 scorchers. WSI chief meteorologist Dr Todd Crawford said: “The last four summers have been fairly wet and cool across the UK.  “We expect a summer pattern more like 2002-06, with above-normal temperatures.” --The Daily Telegraph, 21 May 2012

The UK has been bathed in water almost since this prediction was made. In fact, barring a warm and dry spell towards the end of May, the weather has been persistently dull and wet since April – which was also the wettest in records dating back to 1910.

The potential for severe flooding events across many parts of the country is still a high-risk scenario for the remainder of July too, due to some further heavy and slow moving thundery downpours that are likely to develop towards the end of this week and onwards. Flooding has been widespread, especially in Wales and North Yorkshire.

The general situation for the remainder of summer is now also becoming more and more favourable for the jet stream to remain displaced to the south, hindering any chances of a significant change to a more prolonged and settled period of warmer weather as we progress throughout the remainder of July and into August.

So much for the May prediction based on the very models used to predict climate 90 years from now.