Monifieth weather

Hurricane Bawbag

2011-12-09T12:44:00.000Z

An intense storm passed over Scotland yesterday, with hurricane-force winds on hilltops (the Cairngorm station in the highlands recorded a gust of 165 mph). The Monifieth station recorded a maximum of only 58 kph (around 40 mph) but even so, it managed to dislodge some PVC siding on my house, so some repairs will be necessary (grumble). No records were broken at the Monifieth station though.
On the Internet, the storm got christened 'hurricane bawbag'. A 'bawbag' is Scottish slang for the scrotum ('ball bag', basically). There is even a wikipedia article on it already. From news reports, the storm was a lot worse in the west of Scotland, where a lot of places are still without power and a lot more damage was done.

Warm November

2011-12-01T08:25:00.000Z

November 2011 was exceptionally mild, with a mean temperature 2.3 C above normal for Monifieth. Rainfall was about average.
December is starting off on a much colder note though, so the overall mean temperature for the year could work out at close to normal. Hopefully we can avoid the misery of snow falling on a country that seems to think if you just ignore the stuff it won't cause any problems.

Another weird year

2011-10-02T16:58:00.000+01:00

For the second year in a row, the warmest temperature of the year was not recorded in the summer. In 2010 the year's hottest temperature was in May; this year it was in late September (that is, assuming no higher temperature is on the cards for the rest of the year). Unlike the rest of the UK, there were no records broken for hottest October temperature since for the past couple of days it's been thoroughly cloudy and rainy up here. Before the global warming crowd jumps in, however, it must be remembered that the three traditional summer months of June, July and August were all distinctly colder than normal.

February: warmer but wet

2011-03-01T08:11:00.000Z

With some warmer days in the last week, February 2011 managed to buck the trend of colder than average months that had hung on for more than a year. It was, however, the wettest February on record for the Monifieth station, with close to twice the monthly average rainfall.
Because of the cold winter, crocuses were appearing only at the end of February, when usually we would see some at the start of the month. No sign of any daffodils yet, though with the weather for the next week forecast to be moderately warm for the time of year, and settled under a large area of high pressure, we might see things start to grow.

Cold January but not a record

2011-02-01T17:15:00.000Z

The first month of 2011 (where does the time go?) has gone into the record books as a fair bit colder than normal, but still a bit warmer than January 2010. The cold temperatures were due mainly to the beginning of the month which saw the last (hopefully) of the snow disappear off the streets. The last couple of weeks have been dominated by highish pressure which has resulted in mostly dull and uneventful weather. The month's rainfall was a bit below average but nothing remarkable.

The big high

2011-01-21T15:52:00.000Z

Graph watchers may have noticed that in most years, the highest pressure of the year occurs around mid-December, with the (barometric) mercury usually hitting around 1040 mm for a week or so. In December 2010, there was a very brief high pressure period, but that month seemed mainly preoccupied with dumping snow on Monifieth and keeping the temperatures unseasonably low.
However, after the new year, weather patterns seem to be returning more or less to normal. The pressure has been building for the past week or so and currently sits around the 1040 mm we would expect for mid-December.
Although January 2011 continues the colder-than-normal pattern, the cold weather we are getting now is of the more usual type, with crisp, sunny days and overnight frosts. Hopefully normalcy has resumed for real and there isn't some huge snow-dump waiting round the corner.

Ice gone, finally

2011-01-16T15:45:00.000Z

For the first time since the last week in November, my street is totally ice- and snow-free. Also for the first time since late November, the temperature has gone above 10 C, and allowed me to go outdoors wearing only a light jacket rather than the winter coat + scarf + funny hat + gloves. Sadly the temperature is set to fall again over the next few days, but hopefully we'll be spared streets covered in sheets of death-ice, where venturing outdoors risks a visit to the broken bone clinic.
It wouldn't be so bad if there was a community spirit in this country that told people to clear the sidewalks (or 'pavements' as they insist on calling them here) when it snowed. The first few years I was in Scotland I always did this whenever we got snow (which was a lot less often than lately), but then I noticed that I was the only one on my street (or any other) that did this, so it seemed fairly pointless. But leaving the snow on the 'pavements' to get compacted into ice that is impossible to take a step on without performing unintentional gymnastics is just plain anti-social.

More ice

2011-01-08T15:26:00.000Z

After a couple of cold days, last night began with a dusting of snow followed by a fair bit of rain as the temperature edged above freezing. However, once the rain cleared the temperature plummeted again with the result that today everything is covered with a thin, but highly dangerous for walking, layer of ice. The forecast is for another couple of days of this stupidly freezing weather before a return to somewhat milder conditions.

Not suprisingly, the cold weather in Europe and North America (or at least the populated parts of it) have led to a decline in public belief in global warming, which from the point of view of we skeptics can be only a good thing. However, the cooling trend isn't global, as the Canadian arctic is a fair bit above normal for the time of year, with the result that the arctic ice cover is somewhat lower than would be expected for the time of year.

Claims that 2010 is either the warmest or second-warmest (or close to the most-warmest or whatever) year "on record", however, need to be taken with a large pinch of salt. First, these claims are, of course, made by those with a vested interest in keeping public anxiety over global warming high, namely the UK Met Office and NASA's GISS. The latter's data must be suspect as (somewhat ironically, considering it's NASA) they insist on using only surface-based weather stations, which of course are spread very thinly over those regions of the globe with sparse populations (such as the oceans and polar regions). As well, GISS has been caught fudging the data over the past few decades to make it look warmer, relative to prior decades. The Met Office is justly infamous for its inability to get much of anything right, and is of course closely associated with the University of East Anglia (of Climategate fame).

As for any climate phenomenon being the most extreme "on record", we must remember that, for truly global data, obtainable only from satellite measurements, the "record" in question goes back just 30 years, which is nothing on the geological time scale. Thus any phenomenon which hits an extreme value within that time frame means absolutely nothing.

The simple fact is that nobody has a foolproof way of measuring the Earth's temperature with any high degree of accuracy, and nobody has any computer models that can correctly predict climate over the coming decades, so nobody really knows what is going on, despite all the claims.

Monifieth weather in 2010

2011-01-01T12:36:00.001Z

Well that's another year round the S-bend, and from the point of view of Monifieth weather station, quite a remarkable one. 2010 was easily the coldest year in the station's 7 year record, with a yearly average of only 8.4 degrees, 1.2 degrees below the station's average. December 2010 was also easily the coldest month on record with a mean temperature barely above freezing, at 0.2 C. This breaks the record of coldest month set only a year ago, when December 2009, January 2010 and February 2010 all had averages of 2.5 C. Every month in 2010 except June was colder than average.

Over the longer term, 2010 continued (and in fact accelerated) the longer-term trend of cooling (see the 'whole year' graph at the bottom of this page). Obviously the readings at a single point on the Earth's surface can't be generalized to any conclusions about world climate, but they certainly do show that the longer-term predictions of the UK's Met Office are just plain wrong. For years, their computer models have been predicting warmer summers and winters, and the reality is just the opposite. It is important to note that it is these same long-term models that they (and other climate research organizations around the world) are using to predict climate doom over the coming century, so it is pretty strong evidence that they really don't have a clue how to model the climate.

Despite my personal dislike of warm weather and disbelief in global warming, I really do hope that we are not in line for a long series of colder winters. The prolonged sub-zero temperatures and excessive snow (for the UK) that we've had over the past 2 winters has been unpleasant, to say the least.

More white poo

2010-12-19T16:58:00.000Z

Another few centimetres of the white poo has fallen in beautiful downtown Monifieth. Fortunately I was able to keep the driveway clear using only a broom, but it will no doubt mean yet more disruption on the roads, late or missing buses, difficulty walking anywhere due to this country's lack of social responsibility in keeping pavements clear of snow, etc etc.

We've had snow on the ground for around 3 weeks now, which is highly unusual for these parts (although we had snow for that long last year as well). I know it's against the government's directive to link the increasing harshness of British winters with (the absence of) global warming, but after enough colder temperatures, there's no other conclusion that can be drawn. With December about 2/3 over, and no drastic rise in temperatures forecast for the next week or so, it is looking like the month will break the lowest average monthly temperature record by a large margin.

The average temperature for 2010 as a whole is 1.2 degrees below normal for this station, which is a *huge* variation, considering that up to now, all variations have been only small fractions of a degree. Eleven out of the twelve months in 2010 were below normal, some of them significantly so. If that's global warming, I'd hate to see what happens when the climate actually does get colder.

Easy weather forecasting

2010-12-09T08:12:00.000Z

I remember reading somewhere that if you predicted the weather by saying simply that tomorrow's weather will be the same as today's, you'd be right about half the time. Since I now have a fair archive of detailed weather data for my own back yard (dating back to June 2003), I thought I'd give this notion a bit of a test.

Obviously, the accuracy of this method of forecasting depends on how you define "same". If you require all weather readings to be identical over both days, you will never get a match, so we need to define a tolerance. For starters, I have used the maximum, minimum and mean temperatures and the rainfall as indicators, and I've allowed tolerances to be set on each of these values so we can vary the definition of "same".

I've written a little C# program which reads in the data from my station and allows the user to define tolerances for the four key quantities in terms of how much the next day's data is allowed to vary from the current day in order for the two days to be judged as having the "same" weather. The results are rather interesting, so here's a taster.

The data cover a total of 2540 days, between 26 June 2003 and 10 June 2010. If we use the mean temperature as the only indicator, and allow a tolerance of plus/minus one degree C, the prediction is correct 44% of the time (that is, for nearly half the pairs of days, the mean temperature varied by less than 2 degrees C). If we use rainfall as the only indicator, and allow a tolerance of plus/minus 0.1 mm (which isn't very much - it's the smallest amount my weather station can measure), we get a correct prediction 36% of the time.
Requiring both mean temperature and rainfall (with the same tolerances) to match, the hit rate drops to 15%.

If we require all four indicators to match (with tolerances of plus/minus 1 degree for the three temperature readings, and plus/minus 0.1 mm for the rainfall), the rate drops to 4.4%.

I figure the results are interesting enough to merit expanding the program a bit. I could extend the prediction period (e.g. how good is a prediction of the weather n days in advance, rather than just one), produce some plots of accuracy versus tolerance or time lag, and perhaps even try some time series analysis to produce some curves that fit the data and allow more accurate predictions.

However, it does put the forecasts from the Met Office in perspective. If a simple little program that you could run on your mobile phone (well, you could if I wrote it for a mobile - this one runs on a desktop, but never mind) can get things like mean temperature and rainfall correct between a third and half the time just by looking one day ahead, is the met office's multi-million pound computer really giving us our money's worth?

It's a bit like playing the stock market based entirely on past performance of shares, rather than doing some research on the companies in which you want to invest.

Still cold

2010-12-07T11:24:00.000Z

With the first week of December gone, the temperature is still solidly below zero. Last night saw a minimum temperature of -6.3 C which, although not as cold as the -9.4 C recorded last week, is still unusually cold for the location. Fortunately, the temperature is predicted to rise above freezing in a couple of days, so hopefully we can get rid of some of the piles of snow and ice that still litter the streets.

New coldest temperature record

2010-12-03T05:19:00.001Z

Today saw a new coldest temperature record for the Monifieth station, with the temperature falling to -9.4 C overnight. This is probably not the coldest temperature ever for this location, since I can remember one year prior to the installation of my weather station when the temperature dropped to (at a guess) below -10 C. However, it must be very close to an all-time record.
The forecast for the next few days is for the freezing conditions to persist, although it's not supposed to get quite as cold as this. Watch this space for further developments.

Still snowing

2010-12-02T10:31:00.001Z

We've had significant snowfall every day since last Saturday, so the stuff is really piling up now. For followers of my weather station data, no precipitation has been recorded since early on Tuesday because the temperature has been below freezing since then, so the snow that falls into the rain gauge doesn't melt and register as precipitation. When the thaw comes (and it can't come soon enough for me) there will be a large blip in the precipitation as a result of the accumulated snow.

It's difficult to say how much snow in total has fallen since Saturday since Sunday and Monday were largely above freezing so a lot of it has melted. It is a very long time since Monifieth has had this much snow however, and as far as I know it has never come this early in the year (it's not even officially winter until 21 December, after all). Hopefully it is just getting it out of its system early, and the rest of the winter will be largely snow-free, but only time will tell (as the Met Office is certainly incapable of telling us).

The one promising bit in the forecast is that the wind direction is due to change to the west over the next couple of days, which means that the east coast should be in the shadow of any snow, so we might get some snow free days. However, the temperature is also set to drop a bit so it's unlikely much of it will melt.

Good old Met Office blunders along...

2010-12-01T16:04:00.000Z

In case anyone missed this little gem, the Met Office predicted at the end of October that the coming winter would be milder than usual with "60%-80% confidence". (Notice that now they are uncertain about how confident they are, which makes no sense statistically...you predict something with a specific confidence level, usually...).

However, many lowest temperature records for November were broken in the past week, and today's long-range forecast for the last half of December reads: "Temperatures are likely to continue below average, with widespread frosts, sometimes severe."

And these are (some of) the people that we are supposed to trust for long-range climate predictions? Yeah, right. If they argue that "weather isn't climate", I would point out that the same atmospheric models ('general circulation models', since you ask) are used for both weather and climate prediction, and that the models used for weather (i.e. short-range, up to a few weeks) prediction are supposedly more accurate than those used for climate.

Coldest November on record

2010-12-01T09:03:00.000Z

The November 2010 records from my weather station are now online (see the Archives link). It was the coldest November on record by quite a long way, with a mean temperature for the month of 4.9 C. Since December is expected to be colder than normal as well, 2010 as a whole is set to be much colder that average.

It's been a while since I've posted anything much on the global warming scam, so I'll take this opportunity to provide a bit of an update on my thoughts. Two things are fairly obvious at this point: first, any international accord agreeing to do anything much about the climate isn't going to happen and second, the number of people who are global warming believers is declining rapidly. The "science", such as it is, hasn't changed. It still consists of the same computer models that aren't capable of predicting anything (or at least, anything that actually comes true), and of course reliable data on the climate still doesn't extend any further back than the satellite era (about 30 years) so the time scale on which current trends are based is worse than meaningless on a climatological basis.

Public belief in global warming was justifiably shaken by the Climategate scandal in which it was revealed the those in charge of pumping out the scary predictions were preventing the skeptics from getting papers published, trying to find ways round the Freedom of Information act to avoid releasing their data, and massaging the data so that it supports their warmist propaganda. Public confidence fell further when it was revealed that the IPCC (the UN's panel on climate change) had cited non-peer-reviewed sources (frequently leaflets produced by greenist pressure groups) to arrive at false conclusions concerning things such as the melting of Himalayan glaciers and disappearance of tropical rain forests.

My own interest in the area is fading, since it is increasingly obvious that the warmists have lost the argument, and that most people are now simply bored with the whole thing. The conference this week in Cancun, Mexico, billed as the successor to the big Copenhagen flop last year, is attracting hardly any media attention and is virtually guaranteed not to produce anything significant. After the mid-term elections in the US, it is highly unlikely that the Americans will do anything much to satisfy the warmists, and surely it is just a matter of time until the other governments in the western world bow to public opinion and life gets back to normal.

First snow of the winter

2010-11-24T18:54:00.000Z

Nothing much of note, but the first flakes of snow in Monifieth were observed this afternoon. A very light dusting stayed on the ground for a few minutes. The forecast is for a fair bit more of the stuff over the next few days and the longer-term outlook is for December to start off colder than normal. Oh joy... Still it does put this global warming nonsense into perspective, since if we do get another cold winter that's the second in a row, and it continues a cooling trend that has lasted for most of the past 5 years here.

Air frosts begin

2010-11-16T09:28:00.001Z

Yesterday and today the station recorded its first air frosts of the season. (Reminder - an air frost is when the temperature of the air at about 1.5 metres above ground level is below zero; ground frosts are more common and can occur with an above-freezing air temperature since cold air sinks to the ground). Although many people are commenting on "early frosts", they aren't really out of the ordinary. Most years since 2003, the Monifieth station has recorded several air frosts in November, so there's nothing particularly noteworthy here. What continues to be remarkable is that 2010 is still on course to be coldest year on record by quite some margin. Of course this could all be overturned if December turns out to be balmy and mild. Time will tell.

Official new low pressure

2010-11-12T07:15:00.000Z

The low pressure cell has now passed Monifieth, and the new lowest barometric pressure was 955.2 mb, recorded around 21.10 on 11 November 2010. Disappointingly, it wasn't accompanied by any dramatic weather; we had a few showers and a moderate breeze, but that's it.

For comparison, the pressure in the eye of a hurricane is typically well below 900 mb, so I suppose I shouldn't expect anything truly dramatic (not that I'd welcome a hurricane in Scotland), but at least some steady rain would have been nice.

New low pressure record for Monifieth

2010-11-11T17:08:00.000Z

The previous low pressure record of 959.6 mb (set jointly on two separate dates of 3 Dec 2006 and 10 March 2008) has just been broken, as the barometer dropped to 959.5. However, it's still falling so I'll wait a while to see where it bottoms out before I update the archives page.

Usually such a low pressure means a considerable storm, but although the weather has been a bit windy, it's mainly just a succession of dull grey skies with a few showers off and on at the moment.

The temperature trend for 2010 continues its below normal theme, with November shaping up as significantly colder than normal. Even after I redefined the 'normal' values for my weather station to be the averages over the seven year period from July 2003 to June 2010 (which lowered the 'normal' values slightly over what I was using before), all months in 2010 except for June have been solidly below normal, with 2010 shaping up to be easily the coldest year on record for the Monifieth station. Move along folks, there's no global warming to see here...

First frost

2010-10-20T12:00:00.000+01:00

Monifieth had its first ground frost this morning, with the air temperature dropping to 0.8 C in the hours before sunrise. This sets a new low temperature for October, although only just - the previous low was 0.9 C in October 2008.

August summary

2010-08-31T12:45:00.000+01:00

Most of August has been fairly unsettled, in the sense that the pressure has been low and the skies have been blessed with a lot of interesting cloud formations. The main lack this month was rain. What rain we did get came mainly in the form of the occasional shower, but the monthly total is only about half the normal. Having said that, the 'normal' value for August has been skewed by a couple of very wet Augusts in 2004 and 2008, so the total this year is more in line with the other non-deluge years.

What has been noticeable in the last couple of weeks is a pronounced cooling trend. Usually, the temperature in August remains fairly constant throughout the month, with autumnal cooling beginning around mid-September. August this year looks to be about a full degree below normal, even after my updating of the normal values to include the full station record up to 2010.

It's probably a tad early to say whether the year's maximum temperature has come and gone, since September sometimes has a warm day or two in its first week. However, since the maximum temperature this year was 26.3 C set back in May, it's highly unlikely we'll see anything that high from now on. If that stands, this will be the first year on record where the year's highest temperature did not occur during the summer. Bizarre indeed.

Updated 'normal' values

2010-08-20T12:47:00.001+01:00

For a long time, the Monifieth station has been using 'normal' values for temperature and rainfall based on the short 3-year period from 2004-2006. I have now updated the 'normal' values by calculating them from averages of station records for the continuous 7-year interval from July 2003 to June 2010. All 'difference from normal' values reported in the archive data now use this new baseline.

As can be seen from the monthly trends shown in the recently-posted graphs (see links on the archive page), there has been a slight cooling trend in the yearly temperatures over the past few years, so the 'normal' baseline is now a bit lower for some months than it was before the recalculation. As a result, some values will show a slightly higher 'difference from normal' value than they did previously.

Although this sounds like a trick worthy of those who devised the Hockey Stick graph, I felt it was better to use a larger set of data for calculating the averages. The interesting thing to note is that even with these lower average values, 2010 still stands out as a very cold year. Only one month (June) shows an above-average temperature (so far, of course), and the yearly average is 0.8 C below normal for the corresponding period in other years. This is a very large deviation, and if the cooling trend that seems to have started early towards the end of August continues throughout the autumn, we could see some new records.

Monthly trend charts added to weather site

2010-08-16T13:44:00.000+01:00

For anyone following the Monifieth weather station, I've added a couple of new pages showing the trends in temperature and rainfall for each calendar month. The first full month of data was recorded in July 2003 so I now have more than 7 complete years of data, which I thought was enough for a trend graph to be interesting, if not scientifically relevant (although many of the arguments in the battles between the climate change die-hards and the skeptics seem to revolve around data on a shorter time scale than that).

Have a look at the station's archive page, then select either of the "monthly trends" links in the Plots box near the top of the page.

Although it's difficult to read much into graphs over such a short time scale, it does seem that there is a pronounced trend towards colder winters and a mild trend towards colder summers over the past 4 years or so. Spring and autumn temperatures don't seem to show much of a trend either way. The averaged temperature values for entire years (visible at the bottom of the page) show a slight cooling trend over the past 4 years. Certainly no evidence of global warming in my back garden anyway.

Rainfall doesn't seem to show much of a trend, with wet and dry months occurring at any time of year. Viewed at a yearly level, the trend over the past 4 years is for increasingly wetter years, although 2004 was still quite rainy.

Wet July

2010-07-31T12:10:00.000+01:00

With more than 75 mm of rain this month (and judging by the dark clouds visible outside, possibly a bit more before the day and month are out in 12 hours), July 2010 has been a fair bit wetter than normal, although similar to last year. The temperature has been a bit cooler than average, so it looks like June's slight peek above the normal temperature was a blip.

On the limited amount of data from this station, the last few years have been noticeably cooler than the few years before them, which I can only welcome. Not that Scotland is known for heat waves anyway, but the cooler the better, especially in the summer.

A study in contrast

2010-07-11T20:55:00.000+01:00

The weather has turned more unsettled of late which is much welcomed by yours truly, and I imagine by a fair number of farmers, since June was very dry, and is also the peak growing month for many crops. July so far has had a respectable amount of rain and the outlook is for the weather to stay unsettled, so all smiles in the rain-worshippers' tent.
The contrast referred to in the title occurred yesterday, when the south-east of England was frying in a heat wave of up to 30 C, while here in beautiful suburban Monifieth, the temperature topped out at 14 C, with the weather dull and damp to match. It was cold enough, in fact, that I had to put the heating on, while a mere 400 miles south the old and vulnerable were succumbing to heat stroke.

Halfway in 2010

2010-07-01T12:05:00.000+01:00

Hard as it is to believe, that's 2010 half gone. The year to date has been by far the coldest first six months recorded at the Monifieth weather station, which has been running for almost seven years now. June warmed up a fair bit in the last couple of weeks, resulting in the first 'above average' monthly temperature for the past 12 months. What was notable about June 2010 however was the lack of rain.

July has started with a fairly dull first day, but the much-promised 'heavy rain' has yet to materialize. We've had only a few spots, which isn't enough to do the gardens much good, but is just enough to make the air feel humid and sticky. Roll on autumn.

Rain needed - really

2010-06-25T11:05:00.000+01:00

June has been a very dry month, with only 16 mm of rain so far. Now that we are officially into summer and the daylight hours are decreasing once more, the temperature has increased somewhat in the last week or so with daily highs hitting the high teens or even 20 or 21 C occasionally, so that the average temperature for June looks set to come out around normal as we head into the last 5 days of the month.

But rainfall is something that would be very welcome, since we haven't had any for about 2 weeks (which isn't a lot of time by Arizona standards I suppose, but for Scotland, it's an age) and the gardens are looking a bit dry, although there are no signs yet of browning grass and wilting plants.

Besides I like rain at any time of year.

Mid June and still cool

2010-06-16T11:21:00.000+01:00

June (and in fact, 2010 itself) is almost half over, and the below average trend continues. We've had a few warm days (today being one of them) but on the whole, the weather has been cool enough to merit wearing a jacket outdoors, and even to have the heating on occasionally.
Although we've had the odd rainy spell, for the most part the weather has been quite dry, which of course doesn't please me or the plants. Ah well, we can always hope for a wet summer...

Cool trend continuing

2010-06-10T07:09:00.000+01:00

Although there have been one or two warm days, June so far has been cooler than normal, with temperatures running more than a degree below normal. The air flow has been mainly from the north or east, which in the summer keeps temperatures down (north because it comes from the cold bits in the arctic, and east because it comes off the cold North Sea). Although we had a fair bit of rain over the last couple of days, rainfall is still fairly sparse and we could use a lot more.

Cool end to May

2010-05-31T15:22:00.000+01:00

Despite a peak of (for here) searing heat a week ago, the weather since then has been quite cool, and much of the lack of rain from the earlier part of the month has been made up, especially with a decent 15 mm yesterday. The last day of the month has been pretty well clear all day, but an easterly breeze has kept the temperature to a refreshingly cool sub-15 C.

A bit more thunder

2010-05-27T17:54:00.000+01:00

This afternoon, Monifieth had a proper thunderstorm, with some lightning to go with it. It wasn't really dramatic as thunderstorms go, since there wasn't much rain to go with it, but it was still impressive while it lasted.

One odd effect, which could have been coincidence, was that when one of the peals of thunder hit, I happened to be looking out my living room window, where a small spider (one of the spiral web variety) had set up house. When the thunder hit, the spider came rushing out onto its web. Maybe the vibration from the thunder fooled the spider into thinking a meal had arrived. It seemed to wander about for a bit and then went back into its corner in disgust.

A touch of thunder

2010-05-27T06:09:00.000+01:00

The weather has, thank god, turned much much cooler since the hellish day last Saturday when it hit 26 C. May looks set to end on a cool note, though whether the cool conditions will persist throughout the summer, as they have done for the past couple of years, remains to be seen. We can only hope.

Yesterday Monifieth had a few rumbles of thunder, although nothing very dramatic. Apparently the centre of the storm was some 6 miles to the west in Dundee city, where there were reports of lightning strikes, loud thunder and a hail storm. Out here, the weather was considerably less dramatic with only a few dark clouds and a scattering of rain.

I hate this weather

2010-05-22T21:04:00.002+01:00

OK, somebody has to write an antidote to these weather forecasters who orgasmify over hot, sunny weather. I hate it; I always have and I always will. And I'm not alone. There is nothing enjoyable about sweating, skin cancer or sleepless nights.

Having got that out of the way, I can now report that we've had the hottest day since August 2006, as the temperature peaked at 26.3 C today. Although it wasn't an all-time station record, it was a record high for the month of May.

Before the warmist alarmists start bleating on about global warming, I will quote their favourite phrase back at them: "weather is not climate" and point out that (if the forecasts are true), we are due to return to more sensible and liveable temperatures in the next week. And, oh yes, despite the hot weather of the last couple of days, May is *still* a degree below normal for this weather station. Let's hear it for some blustery, cool winds and some healthy downpours. Bring it on.

20 C barrier broken

2010-05-20T20:03:00.000+01:00

Today was the first day above 20 C this year, with the temperature topping out at 23.4 C around 5 PM. Looking at the station archives back to 2004, this date is fairly late for the first warm day of the year. The earliest was in 2007 when the first few days of April were unusually warm, while in 2005 we had to wait until the beginning of June. If the forecast is to be believed, however, the warm weather won't last; they are predicting a return to below normal temperatures, with the possibility of some frost, next week. We will see.

Rain needed

2010-05-19T11:05:00.000+01:00

Things have warmed up a bit from the frosty conditions we were experiencing recently, and if the forecasts are to be believed, the next 2 or 3 days might see the first day this year when the temperature breaks the 20 C mark. I'm not a fan of warm weather - makes me feel distinctly uncomfortable - but I suppose it would be good for the plants, who haven't been exactly bursting into life.

What we do need, however, is some rain. The back garden is looking distinctly dry, although not to the stage yet where the plants are wilting. May has been very dry so far, although you'd never know it from the weather forecasts which, as usual, continue to report any possibility of rain as a "threat". I really wish they would realize that there are a lot of us who have no desire to contract skin cancer from an over-abundance of solar radiation.

Still frosty

2010-05-10T10:07:00.000+01:00

May continues with its cold theme, since there was a ground frost this morning. The air temperature got down to 1.0 C, but there were white patches on exposed surfaces outside. It's not unheard of to get frosts in May, but the weather has been consistently colder than usual for almost a year now. Although the Met Office has given up on seasonal forecasts after last year's prediction of a 'barbecue summer' fizzled in a summer of cool temperatures and torrential rain, their longest range forecast (up to 30 days) has June beginning on a colder-than-usual note. We will see...

Cold start to May

2010-05-02T09:11:00.000+01:00

April's mean temperature this year continued the below average trend which has persisted for almost a year now. Although the last few days of the month showed some signs of warming up a bit, May began with a sharp drop in temperature, with the 1st being grey and cold, and temperatures not reaching 10 C.

Dreich Friday

2010-04-24T15:00:00.000+01:00

Although I don't fall for the argument that Scots is a 'language' in its own right (a glance through a Scots dictionary will show that almost all the words are simply slight variants on their English equivalents), some words in the local dialect are spot-on when used in the local context. One such word is 'dreich' (pronounced with a throat-clearing 'ch' at the end), which is used to describe dull, cold, drizzly days. Although such days are most common in the autumn and winter, yesterday was dreich in the extreme. The temperature hovered between 5 C and 6 C all day, and the leaden skies never opened; they just dribbled off and on.
Today seems much more springlike, and the next few days are supposed to be almost warm, so the contrast is all the more noticeable.

Snow reported

2010-04-20T16:30:00.000+01:00

I haven't noticed any snow myself out here on the palm-fringed east coast of Scotland, but apparently in Dundee itself, a scant 6 miles to the west, a few flurries were spotted today. Although snow in April always causes eyebrows to rise around these parts, it really shouldn't. Snow during spring is actually fairly common in Scotland, although not to the extent where it stays on the ground and the MSM goes nutty with stories of motorists stranded and councils running out of grit. After all, when you consider that Dundee is further north than every major city in Canada, even the Gulf Stream can't keep the effects of the arctic away all the time. When the wind blows from the north, as it is doing today, it will naturally enough get colder.

Almost summer for a day

2010-04-17T15:32:00.000+01:00

Yesterday it reached the dizzy heights of 16.9 C despite Scotland being assaulted by Icelandic ash (not in evidence here on the east coast). Quite a warm and pleasant day, although it looks set to end quite quickly, with the return of single digit temperatures and some precipitation, possibly even of the solid form briefly.

Cold front advances

2010-04-14T11:20:00.000+01:00

After a few days of sunshine and temperatures into the low teens, a cold front yesterday has knocked the edge off spring for now. For the past couple of days, the temperature barely managed to crawl above 10 C, and there is a decidedly chilly feel to the weather again. Today is quite dull and raw. The below normal feature continues...

A few days of spring

2010-04-08T18:49:00.000+01:00

The temperature today hit 14.5 C which is the warmest it's been since last October (Hallowe'en, to be exact). We're supposed to get a few days of this, although looking beyond that it may get a bit cooler again.
The first daffodils in my back yard came out this week, which really must be about a full month behind what's been usual over the past few years.

The temperature still remains quite far below normal for April, but we would expect a warming trend as the month progresses, so that will probably change.

A couple of sunny days

2010-04-02T16:41:00.000+01:00

The first two days of April have been quite pleasant spring days, with a good amount of sunshine and (thankfully) much reduced winds compared with the end of March. This morning there was a sharp frost, although once the sun came out, things warmed up a fair bit. Rain is forecast for the next few days, though.

March almost recovers

2010-04-01T07:03:00.000+01:00

I was tempted to post an item this morning saying that I now believe in climate change, and that I've just sent off my membership dues to Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, sold my car and become vegetarian. However, I doubt it would take my one follower (thanks Alex, whoever you are!) and 2 or 3 other readers long to notice the date, so it's not really going to work.

Anyway, back in reality, now that March 2010 has officially ended, we can see that what may have looked like being a record-breaking month in several respects has managed to pull itself together and come out almost normal.

For the first three weeks, we had essentially no rain, making it look like the month might be the driest on record. However, in the last week, and particularly in the last 3 days of the month, we had a fairly major storm that brought the rainfall level back to where it should be. As detailed in the last post, Monifieth escaped the serious side of the storm, as all we had were some strong winds and some rain. All I had to do was repair a few fence panels in the back yard. Elsewhere in the north of Britain there were some pretty serious snowfalls and wind damage.

March also started on a distinctly chilly note, but the middle of the month was fairly mild. Although the final days of the month reverted to mid-February in the temperature domain, the average for the month was about normal.

Out like a lion

2010-03-31T11:18:00.001+01:00

Proverbially, March is supposed to come in like a lion and go out like a lamb. This year, March came in a bit on the lionish side and looks set to leave like Godzilla, leaving a trail of destruction behind it. Last night saw major weather problems througout Scotland and Northern Ireland, with up to 30 cm of snow in some places, and high winds pretty well everywhere. There are numerous reports of fallen trees and roads blocked by snow, and this time it looks like it might actually be genuine, and not your usual British overhyping of mediocre weather. Monifieth, as usual, missed the worst of it, as all the precipitation was liquid, but the winds were pretty strong (as the fence in my back yard can verify).

The wind peaked here with a gust of 75.6 km/h just after midnight, although the average speed was around 30 km/h. Not hurricane force by any means but still pretty blustery. The temperature didn't reach even 4 C yesterday, making it the coldest day since 19 February (and feeling a lot colder due to the wind), and dragging the mean temperature for March down into negative territory again. With only 12 hours to go until the end of the month, and the temperature unlikely to breach 5 C today, another below average temperature for the month seems pretty well certain.

Windy and cold

2010-03-30T16:00:00.000+01:00

Decidedly a day to stay in and read a book. The temperature has been steady around 3 C all day, with strong winds making it feel much colder. A fair bit of rain and sleet mixed in makes for a thoroughly unpleasant day outdoors, but a delightful day for being inside looking out.

With only just over a day left in the month, it seems March saw the prospect of going above average in its temperature and took a dive back into negative territory.

Cold again

2010-03-29T11:15:00.000+01:00

After a couple of weeks of milder, almost spring-like conditions, we're back into winter again. There are 'severe' weather warnings out this week, for such things as heavy rain and even snow. Of course, 'severe' in Britain is a bit of a joke, but still, the prospect of significant snow at the end of March is rather unusual here. It remains to be seen what actually materializes, but certainly today is quite a bit colder than it's been for a while, with the temperature barely edging above 5 C.

And it's stupid time again

2010-03-28T07:14:00.001+01:00

At varying dates in the late winter/early spring, most northern hemisphere countries engage in this mass stupidity known as 'putting the clocks forward', or daylight savings time (DST). The idea originated with New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson in 1895, although in Britain it appears to be one loony in particular who lobbied for it in the early years of the 20th century. In 1905, William Willett became dismayed that in the summer, many people slept through the early daylight hours, and he also disliked having to cut short his evening rounds of golf due to sunset. Although he lobbied for the introduction of DST, Britain didn't adopt it until the first world war.

DST is particularly daft in a country as far north as Scotland. In Dundee, at a latitude of 56 N (further north than every major Canadian city, even Edmonton, Alberta, just to give you an idea), DST means that in much of June and July, the sun doesn't set until after 10 PM. In fact, the only European country that seems to have realized that DST is utterly stupid is the furthest north of them all - Iceland - which does not use DST. Bizarrely, the Canadian province of Saskatchewan also doesn't use DST. Although this is eminently sensible of them, there are many other reasons why living in Saskatchewan is a bad idea.

In Scotland, it would make much more sense to put the clocks forward in the winter, so we'd get sunset at 16.30 rather than 15.30. In fact, if we retained GMT from March to October, giving sunset times between about 18.30 and 21.00 during the spring and summer, then switched back to a later time during the autumn and winter, it would even things out a bit and give us some decent daylight hours in the afternoon all year round. We'd also get a bit of darkness in the mid to late evenings even in June. Won't someone think of the vampires?

Global warming (not that it exists; I'm just saying...) has also been blamed on the introduction of an "extra hour" of sunlight due to DST. I'm not entirely convinced that anyone who proposes this is being serious, but given the intelligence levels of much of the world's population, it's more than a little probable. These are no doubt the same people who thought the 21st century started in 2000 rather than 2001. The ability to count seems to have been another casualty of declining standards in schools.

End of drought

2010-03-26T11:28:00.000Z

Just when I thought (yesterday) that March might get its own entry in the record books for being the driest month, we get 10 mm of rain overnight, so no minimum rainfall record after all. We're still slightly below normal on the temperature front and with the next few days forecast to be a bit chilly, it looks as though a proper spring is still on hold. There are at least a few daffodils showing round Dundee now, although it's about a month later than usual.

Dry March

2010-03-25T12:10:00.000Z

We haven't had any appreciable rain since the closing days of February, and in fact with only 6 days to go until the end of March, we are currently more than a millimetre short of the minimum rainfall record for a month, set back in April 2006. The weather this week has been a bit more unsettled than during the past few weeks, though, but we still haven't had much rain.
After a mild couple of weeks, the temperature is falling off again, although currently the mean temperature for March is hovering around normal. The forecast for the next week or so is for colder weather so it looks like March will end up below normal, continuing the trend since last May.

Spring, maybe?

2010-03-19T12:09:00.000Z

After more than 3 months during which the temperature bumped along near the freezing point, the last week or so has seen a decided warming trend. The last time we had an air frost was 10 March (just over a week ago), although there have been a couple of light ground frosts since then. During the day, the temperature has managed to top 10 C pretty well every day since then - in fact the two days when it didn't it stopped at 9.9 C almost as though it was frightened of crossing the barrier. The mean temperature for the month so far has now edged up to 0.4 C below normal, and if the warming trend continues, it could even prove to be the first month with an above-average mean since May 2009, some 10 months ago. A lot can happen in the last couple of weeks of the month though.

Peak temperature for 4 months

2010-03-14T07:23:00.000Z

Yesterday the temperature peaked at 12.5 C, which is the highest temperature since 20 November (nearly 4 months ago). It was fairly sunny too, so was a quite pleasant, almost spring-like day.

The unusual aspect of the weather at the moment, however, is that it hasn't rained for 2 weeks. Not that we're running short of water, but I do like my rain fairly often.

Slightly more spring-like

2010-03-09T16:51:00.000Z

...but only slightly. The temperature broke the 10 C barrier for the first time since 27 January, but even at that it was only 10.3 C. There is some noticeable warmth in the sun now, though, even though the air is still quite cold.
The crocuses (croci?) are now showing up in greater numbers, but there is still no sign of any daffodils. Things are close to a month late, since usually some early daffodils are out by mid-February around here. The mean temperature for March so far is still 2.4 C below normal, although of course this time of year you would expect the end of the month to be warmer than the beginning, so we'll see.

Met office abandons seasonal forecasts?

2010-03-03T08:43:00.001Z

It seems that the Met Office has actually abandoned its infamous seasonal forecasts in favour of a monthly forecast. On its UK forecast page, the 'Seasonal' tab has been replaced with a 'Day 16 to 30' tab. Probably the medical bills for extracting feet from mouths were getting prohibitive, even with their massive budget.

Parliamentary enquiry into Climategate

2010-03-02T06:05:00.004Z

For anyone interested in the Climategate scandal, the broadcast of the parliamentary enquiry into the goings-on at the Climate Research Unit is a must-watch. The full enquiry lasts for 3 hours, but it is quite revealing. If you don't have the time or the patience to watch the whole thing, a good blow-by-blow summary can be found at Bishop Hill's blog. (If you're coming to this some time after the event, look for posts on his blog dated 1 March 2010.)

The enquiry opens with Nigel Lawson and Benny Peiser giving the skeptics' point of view. Richard Thomas, someone responsible for much of the Freedom of Information legislation, is next. The main event, however, is the appearance by Phil Jones, the head of CRU at the time of the Climategate scandal. He is followed by Muir Russell, who is heading up the CRU's own enquiry into the scandal. The last act is a threesome comprised of dyed-in-the-wool warmist believers: John Beddington and Bob Watson, government scientific advisers, and Julia Slingo, a senior bod at the Met Office. These three, with very little imagination, can be seen as the three monkeys: see/hear/speak nothing against the creed of alarmism.

Jones himself comes in for a good kicking from some members of the committee, and is decidedly unconvincing in his attempts to weasel out of an indefensible position. This is picked up by several newspaper reports, and a good intro to this can be found at Watts Up With That. Jones's sidekick, the University of East Anglia's vice-chancellor, Edward Acton, is unbelievable. His defence of the CRU's shenanigans is so over-the-top and unconvincing that he deserves a Razzie for overacting. Now there's someone I'd never buy a used car from. "This baby has only 12 miles on the clock and can do zero to 60 in 3 seconds. Don't let the flat tire, broken windows and missing engine worry you: it's actually better than a Porsche. It's a steal at only £6 billion [or whatever the current bill for warmist research funding and government-sponsored projects to tackle a non-existent problem is] of taxpayers' money."

Overall, although some of the key skeptic scientists were not invited to appear, the grilling was fairly balanced and the skeptical side was certainly given an airing. It remains to be seen what, if anything, will come of it, of course, but it is encouraging that the government is at least taking it seriously.

Another coldest month

2010-03-01T06:23:00.000Z

For the third month in a row, the mean temperature has remained at the record low value of 2.5 C. February is an odd month in that in three out of the past six years, its mean has been lower than January's, even though you might think that with more daylight hours and with the sun higher in the sky, it should warm up a bit. In fact, in 2006, March was the coldest month in the year, so there's no guarantee that we're on a warming trend yet.

February 2010 had 12 days with an air frost, including 8 days in a row from the 16th to the 23rd (this isn't a record stretch, since Feb 2009 had an 11-day stretch with air frost). There were 3 days in which the mean air temperature was below freezing. It is the first month on record where the temperature didn't get above 10 C (the maximum for the month was 8.1 C on the 12th).

The forecast for the next couple of weeks? "Rather cold", says the Met Office. Sigh.

No spring forecast, Met Office?

2010-02-25T09:31:00.002Z

Unless they have kept it very well hidden, it seems that the UK's Met Office has not bothered to issue a seasonal forecast for spring this year. Spring, to the Met Office, begins officially on 1st March, and usually seasonal forecasts appear at least a month in advance of the start of the season, so something is amiss here.

The Met Office is, of course, notorious for its track record over the past few years, in which it got pretty well every seasonal forecast wrong, sometimes spectacularly so. The famous "barbecue summer" of 2009, the "mild" winter of 2009/10 and so on have provided much amusement for those whose homes weren't flooded or whose heating bills haven't skyrocketed. Maybe they are finally taking to heart the old Chinese proverb:

Better to remain silent and appear a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

Weather change

2010-02-24T16:30:00.011Z

Although the temperature hasn't changed much, a bit of a storm rolled in today with a mixture of rain and snow and fairly strong winds all day. Not a pleasant day to be outside.
With four days left in the month, it's still on course for a new record low monthly mean temperature. I have a few crocuses that huddle near the house that have been brave enough to have some flowers, but nothing much is showing anywhere else.

...and again with the record breaking

2010-02-23T12:26:00.000Z

Yet another coldest February temperature set this morning in Monifieth, with a low of -5.4C. Not only that, but this is the 8th day in succession where we have had an air frost (i.e. the temperature at a height of around 1.5m above the ground is below 0 C - ground frosts are much more common, and are not recorded by the weather station). The past few days have been clear and sunny, with very little wind, and with the sun reaching higher altitudes, the mid-day temperatures are a tad higher, although even here, they seldom get much above 5 C. The current monthly mean for February is 2.2 C which, if it stands at the end of the month, will be yet another all-time low monthly mean.

All this record-breaking is fun, but I'm really starting to hope it warms up soon, for the sakes of my heating bills and the garden, if nothing else.

Yet another cold record

2010-02-21T09:59:00.000Z

This morning, only 4 days after the previous record, the Monifieth station recorded a new record low temperature for February when it hit -4.6 C this morning. The weather remains settled and mostly sunny despite the continuing low pressure, but there seems no break in sight for the continuing cold over the next week or so.

More snow in Monifieth

2010-02-18T14:42:00.000Z

There was a light fall of snow in Monifieth this morning and, because the temperature stayed low all day, it never went away in places untouched by the sun. Although there is enough energy in the midday sunlight to warm things up a bit, the nights are still abnormally cold, so the ground remains frozen in shady areas.

New February record

2010-02-17T16:28:00.000Z

This morning a new record low for February was set. The temperature dipped to -4.0 C, just edging out February 2006's -3.9 C. The mean temperature for the month is still 1.6 C below normal for this station, at 3.1 C so far. The forecast for the next week or so is for the cold to continue, so it looks as though 2010 will start off with two months significantly colder than usual.

Yet more snow

2010-02-16T16:21:00.008Z

After staying above freezing for a few days, it seems we're in store for more frosty weather. With the pressure falling, this could mean some form of precipitation. Although we got no snow in Monifieth, Dundee itself (barely 2 miles to the west) did have a dusting.
Being a Canadian it might sound a bit odd complaining or commenting on snow in February (after all, most cities in Canada get snow right up until May), but here in Scotland, especially on the coast, it is fairly unusual. Normally by this time of year the crocuses (croci?) would be in full bloom, but they are just starting to show now. Spring is some way off yet.

Cold again

2010-02-08T14:12:00.000Z

After several days of dull, damp weather, it seems we're heading back downwards again in the temperature category. Today is decidedly colder, with a raw east wind that makes it feel distinctly unpleasant when out walking. The forecast for the next couple of weeks still looks cold, so it seems that spring will be significantly later this year than in the past few years. Certainly no signs of any spring bulb-type flowers yet, and by this time of year, usually the odd snowdrop or crocus is showing.

Cold but sunny

2010-02-04T15:55:00.001Z

The first few days of February have been cold (considerably below the February average) but fairly calm and sunny. I've always liked the sun this time of year, since my large south-facing windows allow me to turn off the heating during the day. The sun also has a certain quality in its late-winter guise that makes it seem somehow more cheerful than at other times of the year. From November through January it's not up long enough to notice on most days (and doesn't rise high enough in the sky to clear the house to the south of me, so it's not much use for replacing the central heating). During the late spring and summer, the south-facing windows become more of a curse since they heat up the house too much unless the shades are drawn. But during February (and its autumn counterpart of October) the angle and timing are just right.

Poor show, January

2010-02-01T05:17:00.001Z

January 2010 was on the cusp of shattering December 2009's record cold, but blew it at the last minute (almost literally) by managing only a tie. So we've now had two consecutive months with a mean temperature of 2.5 C, which remains the record minimum mean monthly temperature for the Monifieth station.

January, however, did manage a record of sorts, as it was 2.8 degrees below 'normal' for the month. This is easily the largest deviation (in either direction) for any month on record. This is, of course, over a relatively small time period (around 6.5 years), but it shows that if 2010 is going to be the "warmest year on record" (as predicted by some warmist organizations) it's going to have to heat up pretty fast. The forecast for the first couple of weeks of February is for little change in the temperature so it doesn't look like anything is going to happen for a while.

Given that in previous years I've had crocuses blooming in the back garden by this time, and that this year they are barely showing above the soil, I wonder if we'll see any media stories about how much later spring arrives this year to counter the stories in previous years about how much earlier it is...

What makes a good scandal?

2010-01-31T16:56:00.002Z

I noted in my previous post that articles about the various scams and misdeeds of many of the world's most influential climate-people are starting to make it into the MSM. However, it is interesting to analyze exactly why these stories are making it into the media now, rather than years ago.
Probably the first singular event that could be identified as a climate scandal was the exposure of Michael Mann's "hockey stick" graph as due to incorrect statistical methods. This exposure happened in a (yes, peer-reviewed) paper published in 2003. Although it was widely reported in skeptic blogs, it never made it into the MSM, although you don't see hockey sticks mentioned much any more.
The other issue that has been continuous all through the global warming debate is the quality of the computer models used to make the predicitons of impending doom. It has been known ever since the first such model was written (and probably known by those who wrote them) that the models are hopelessly inadequate for any serious climate predictions. This is due primarily to the lack of knowledge of the various interacting subsystems in the Earth's atmosphere, and its interactions with land areas, oceans and the biosphere. In other words, although the computer models might merit publication in obscure academic journals as first tentative steps towards a 'real' climate model, they should never have been used to influence public, economic or government policy even in the smallest degree.
Yet neither of these issues made it out of the relatively isolated world of skeptic blogs. When Climategate broke a couple of months ago, however, it started as an obscure post on an obscure blog, but it took a matter of only days for it to explode into a major story that hit headlines in the MSM around the world. Why the difference?
I suspect it is because the debunking of the hockey stick and the shaky nature of computer models involve actual scientific arguments. The pair of statisticians that exposed the hockey stick scam used statistical arguments to do it. The flaws in the computer models require an understanding of how science works on at least some basic level in order to comprehend why the models are rubbish.
Climategate, on the other hand, had what the public can understand and what the media love to publish: scandal! People in high places doing naughty things. Yum, give us more. The scientists at CRU had apparently fudged data, concealed or destroyed evidence, and, most appealing of all, sabotaged the work of their opponents by arranging for their work to be excluded from journals. More recent revelations about the IPCC itself have its leader, Pachauri, implicated in cover-ups (and now even authoring a pornographic novel...honest).
I am old enough to remember watching the Watergate (the original 'gate') hearings on live TV back in the 1970s. It was rivetting stuff, and anyone who watched them would be lying if they said they weren't hoping for more scandals every day, leading to the downfall of those in high places. It's the same mentality that loves sex scandals with politicians or Hollywood stars. It's the urge to see the high and mighty brought down to our own level, and made to look evil or silly.
It's unfortunate that the climate debate had to take on this aspect in order to become widely reported (although if the people involved did do naughty things, we do deserve to know about it, and they deserve to be punished). It would be much better if people were educated enough to appreciate the science behind the hype, and to be able to see that the global warming stories are false because of that.

Lots of gates

2010-01-30T16:56:00.000Z

The global warmists must be feeling quite a sense of despair these days as they watch their hysteria-fuelled world crumble around them. There's little point in rehashing all the various stories since they are treated admirably and fully in numerous other places, but it's worth a brief summary of some of the more recent bits of the warmist edifice that have fallen off recently.

The 'tipping point' (irony intended) was, of course, the release of the Climategate files (emails and computer code) from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. This made it quite clear that many of the most influential (in terms of persuading governments to panic and spend billions on addressing a non-existent threat) figures in the field have been less than honest in their portrayal of the Earth's climate. Things have moved along to the extent where government investigations are proceeding into the affair, with the possibility of criminal charges being laid.

Across the pond, there are allegations that other major climate data sets have also been heavily manipulated to make it seem warmer now than it was decades ago. Some investigations (e.g. against Michael Mann in Pennsylvania) have started in the USA as well.

Within the past couple of weeks has come the revelation that the IPCC has been using non-peer-reviewed literature (much of it from pressure groups such as the WWF and Greenpeace) as 'evidence' to support its contention that global warming is real and dangerous. The chairman of the IPCC has come under fire for knowing about the faulty theories and data used to claim that Himalayan glaciers are disappearing some time before the Copenhagen conference in December, but keeping quiet about it so as not to upset any deals. Not that it made much difference, since the Copenhagen conference was a complete flop anyway.

Perhaps most significantly, public opinion has swung even further towards the skeptical end of the spectrum. Now of course public opinion shouldn't matter in affairs of science, since science is supposed to be verified or falsified solely by an examination of the evidence. After all, it doesn't matter whether 87% of the population doesn't believe in gravity. Gravity is real and this is easily demonstrated. However, in the case of climate 'science' there is virtually no firm evidence, and what data and models have been presented are now deeply suspect because of the various revelations of fraud and other dishonesty. So in a case like that, public opinion does matter, and matter a lot (at least in a democracy, and the non-democratic countries seem to be firmly in the skeptical camp already), since if the public doesn't believe in warmism, they aren't going to stand for governments that ban things and increase taxes to fight a non-existent problem.

Finally, the most heartening thing about all this is that many of these stories of scandal within academia and the IPCC are making it into the MSM (main-stream media). So far, left-leaning media such as the Guardian and the BBC are trying to pooh-pooh these stories, but the fact that they are forced to mention them at all is progress.

Is it too much to hope that 2010 will be the year when the tide turns completely in favour of the skeptics and we start to see governments (especially that in the UK) see sense and stop wasting time, energy (yes, energy) and money on warmism?

UV returns

2010-01-30T16:37:00.000Z

One of the signs of the coming of spring is the first day that my UV sensor registers greater than zero. This isn't exactly an age-old tradition (yet) since I've had the UV sensor only since June 2006 (the damned things are expensive, so I didn't get it at the same time as the original weather station, which was also expensive...)

Today was the first day in 2010 that the UV sensor picked up a reading. For the record, the first day in previous years was:

4 Feb 2009
19 Jan 2008
18 Jan 2007

I'm not sure why the date varies so much. The cloud cover has something to do with it, although UV seems more able to penetrate moderate cloud than visible light. Yesterday, for example, was a virtually cloudless day and although it was about 10 days later than the first-UV dates in 2007 & 2008, nothing was registered.

Anyway, even though the temperature shows no sign of spring, when UV comes, can spring be far behind? (With apologies to Shelley).

Heat wave

2010-01-27T17:36:00.000Z

Well that's how the warmist press would probably report it, but today the temperature 'soared' to 10.7 C for a couple of hours. This is the highest temperature since 24 November, and only the second time since then that the temperature has exceeded 10 C. The January mean so far has now risen to 2.5 C, tying with December 2009 for coldest month on record. However, the forecast (for what it's worth) is for temperatures to fall back to around freezing again for the last few days of the month, so it's still possible that January could prove a clear winner in the coldest-month-on-record stakes. Watch this space.

High and dull

2010-01-26T13:34:00.000Z

The pressure today is very high, peaking at just over 1040 mb. In the winter this usually means a crisp, clear day but this time for some reason it's dull, cloudy, damp (humidity over 90%) and cold. Very boring on the weather front.

Dull dull dull

2010-01-23T18:41:00.001Z

The weather has returned to more or less normal for January, in that the temperature is hovering just below 5 C and there is a thick cloud cover, with occasional rain. The mean January temperature has crept up to 2.1 C but it's still a fair ways below the 2.5 C record currently held by December 2009 (last month), so unless there is a dramatic warming in the last week of the month, we will probably have a new record.

By the way, one of the common arguments used by warmists during the abnormally cold winter being experienced by most of the northern hemisphere this year is that 'weather isn't climate', and the cold is just a minor blip on the road to thermal armageddon. 'Warming will resume in [insert number here] years' they shriek.

What these people seem to miss is that ultimately, weather must turn into climate, so the cold temperatures being experienced this winter, and over the past few years, are indicative that something is wrong with the warmists' models. The point is made with greater depth and force here.

Finally, the recent claims that the first decade of the 21st century (which, being a purist, I insist doesn't end until the end of 2010) is the 'warmest on record' have to be taken with a few tons of salt, given that those who are making these claims are the very organizations that have been involved in revelations about data manipulation. Even if that accusation were not true, the 'warmest decade' claims need to be looked at with a more level head, as they are here.

Still waiting for sunrise

2010-01-20T15:04:00.000Z

...or so it seems. It has been very heavily overcast all day, so much so that the solar meter barely flickered above zero. A strong wind and the occasional driving splatter of rain complete the dismal picture. At least it's above freezing.

Freezing fog

2010-01-19T12:21:00.000Z

It seems that it will be a while before we are clear of the freezing weather. Yesterday's high of 8.6 C was the warmest we've had since 9 December, but the temperature dropped off rapidly in the evening, and this morning started with a dense freezing fog. The forecast for the next few days is for daytime temperatures only a few degrees above freezing but hopefully without any snow.

Pot, kettle, black

2010-01-18T08:29:00.001Z

It's been a week for irony. On Sunday I happened, by accident, to pick up part of a church service being broadcast on BBC Radio 4, in which prayers were being offered up for the victims of the Haiti earthquake. This sort of thing happens after every natural disaster, with the participants seemingly oblivious to the fact that the god they are praying to for help is the same one that caused the disaster in the first place.

But I digress. The weather-related irony award of the week must go to the BBC, who are rumoured to be considering dropping the Met Office as their provider of weather forecasts due to their abysmal record over the past few years. The irony, of course, is that the BBC has been one of the world's main mouthpieces for broadcasting the global warming scam over many years, and one of their main suppliers of 'data' (using the term in its loosest sense, in which it may denote numbers that have been significantly altered from their original values for the purposes of supporting a pre-determined conclusion) in this endeavour has been the Met Office. For the BBC to complain that the Met Office isn't getting things right, while still spouting warmist propaganda themselves, is laughable. The biggest service the BBC could do for its audiences is to drop its belief in global warming and offer up some balanced news on the climate.

January half-way

2010-01-17T08:02:00.000Z

Yesterday saw the mid-point of January, and so far the mean temperature for the month is 1.4 C, easily beating the previous coldest mean which was just last month, at 2.5 C. It's unlikely that it will stay as cold in the last half of the month, so I can't claim any new records yet. However, the current January mean is 3.9 C below the station's 2003-2007 average, so it looks like January will come in as significantly colder than usual.
We had some heavy rain yesterday morning, so all memories of the snow are gone, and the ground had thawed to the extent where I was able to do some digging in the garden.

Mega-dull

2010-01-13T13:25:00.000Z

Although all the snow is gone, the weather today is surprisingly horrible. A temperature steady between 3 and 4 C, strong winds off the North Sea pushing a penetrating, cold drizzly rain into every crevice it can find, and a sky so dark you need a light on to read, even sitting by a wall-to-ceiling sized south-facing window. The current level of solar radiation is 5 watts/m^2, and this is near mid-day. (In mid-summer, the value can be close to 1000 watts/m^2 on a clear day.)

Flat weather

2010-01-12T13:16:00.000Z

We've entered a period where nothing much seems to happen with the weather. The temperature hasn't varied by much more than a degree in the past 48 hours, remaining pretty much flat between 4 and 5 C, day and night. As a result, most of the snow from the past 3 weeks has gone, with only the odd stubborn icy patch remaining, almost as if it hopes to bag just one more broken bone before its wickedness melts away.
Today, the weather is so dull and dark that the streetlight outside my house has come on at 1 PM. Outside, the wind is picking up and there's a raw drizzle whipping against the windows. Good day for a good book.

Snow melting nicely

2010-01-11T13:46:00.000Z

For the last 24 hours the temperature has held steady at around 5 C, so the snow is disappearing quite quickly. Can't say I'm sorry to see it go. When I lived in Vancouver, snow was a novelty, but after 6 years in Toronto I'm quite happy to see it only on Christmas cards.

And for the second day, Monifieth is warmer than Miami. Can't be good for the orange crops.

Weekly posts added to web site

2010-01-10T18:42:00.002Z

I've added a new page to the Monifieth station web site - you can now see weekly plots of weather data in addition to the daily, monthly and yearly plots that have been there all along. You will find the link to the weekly data on all the other pages so give it a look.

Sued if you clear snow?

2010-01-10T18:02:00.000Z

This has got to be one of the daftest things to come out of the winter weather. 'Health and safety', that enemy of common sense and killjoy of public life, has struck in the silliest way possible: advising homeowners and businesses not to clear snow and ice on sidewalks ('pavements' in UK-speak) in front of their dwellings. Why? Because you might get sued if you don't do the job properly. If you do absolutely nothing, so the street in front of your house is a skating rink with a few craters in it, and people are falling down at a rate of knots and breaking bones left, right and centre, you are immune from prosecution. Apparently the 'reasoning' (using the term loosely) is that, since you don't own the pavements in front of your house or business, you can't be held liable for anything that happens on them, unless you take some action yourself to change their condition. So if you make an attempt to clear away the ice but miss a patch, and then someone falls and injures themselves on that patch, it's your fault.
In Canada (where in most of the country, the amount of snow the UK has had so far this winter would be regarded as a minor flurry), it was considered your civic duty to clear sidewalks. Although you weren't legally required to do it, you got black looks from your neighbours if you didn't. Now this was back in the 1970s when I still lived there, so who knows what the situation is now.

Take that, Miami

2010-01-10T12:18:00.000Z

Not something you'd expect in the middle of a cold snap and the coldest winter since 1995, but today, Monifieth (in the form of my backyard) is actually warmer than Miami. Yes, the one in Florida. With a shift in the wind, the temperature in Monifieth shot up from around 0 C to close to 6 C in the space of a few minutes this morning. Miami is getting its first frost warning for many years, and its current temperature is 2 C.

I suspect it won't last long, so I must head outside and sip a piña colada in the sun while I can.

Yet another record

2010-01-09T11:31:00.000Z

Yesterday (8 Jan 2010) set yet another weather station record - this time for lowest mean daily temperature, with a value of -2.6 C. To celebrate, my central heating system decided to break down, but as I discovered the following day, it wasn't exactly a coincidence. The problem turned out to be that the pipe that drains the condensed water away from the boiler had frozen, as it makes a short journey outside before going into the ground. The helpful repairman fixed it by pouring boiling water on the pipe, and then insulating it.

The Met Office forecast for the next few days for the Monifieth area is for temperatures to remain above freezing so we'll see if this is really the end of the freeze. One must remember, of course, that the Met Office also forecast that the winter would be 'milder than average'.

So far, temperatures in Scotland seem to be setting 'second coldest' records, with the coldest year being the winter of 1995-96, where it managed to hit -27 C in the central highlands (it has gone down to -22 C there so far this time round). The difference this time is that the cold weather has lasted longer.

Searching fixed

2010-01-08T08:21:00.001Z

It seems the blog admins have fixed the search facility, so it should be possible to search this blog, as well as links from it and the web in general, from now on.

And another minimum temperature record

2010-01-08T08:17:00.000Z

Only a couple of weeks after the all-time minimum temperature set on 24 December 2009, this morning the temperature edged a little lower, for a new record minimum of -6.1 C.

I have to confess that although setting records is entertaining, I'm getting tired of the cold weather. One of the reasons (apart from the job) that I moved here from Toronto was to get away from their winters (and their summers - let's face it, I don't like extreme temperatures).

So, listen weather, enough is enough. You've made your point that global warming isn't happening. We get it. It's OK to warm up a bit now.

BBC in hot water

2010-01-07T11:08:00.001Z

In the "I'll believe it when I see it" department, it seems the BBC is to be investigated, or rather, it will investigate itself, over accusations of bias in its science coverage, particularly with regard to "climate change", GM food and the MMR vaccine. Although I (along with many thousands of others) have lost any confidence in the BBC's impartiality many years ago, it is still good to see that something is finally happening. Of course, it depends on who does the investigating, and how impartial the investigation itself is. Results are due in 2011, so we can only wait until then.

Carrots??

2010-01-06T12:19:00.000Z

Buried amid the media hype about the UK's current bout of winter weather, I found this line in an article in The Scotsman:

"In shops across the country, goods selling fast included salt, sledges and carrots."

Salt...ok...sledges....ok, but carrots?? Maybe you'd need one as a nose for a snowman, but how many snowmen are you going to build?

By the way, the headline in that article ("worst winter in 30 years") is rubbish as well. The winter of 1995/6 was much colder than what we have now, with temperatures in Dundee below -10C, Glasgow around -20C (I was there waiting for a train...), and down to around -29C in parts of the highlands.

And as usual, the weather here in Monifieth makes the locals wonder what all the fuss is about. The temperature is a fair bit colder than we're used to, but there's been very little snow. Today, in fact, is crystal clear with beautiful winter sunshine.

Local searches broken

2010-01-05T15:28:00.000Z

In case anyone has tried the 'search' bar at the top of this blog, I am aware that it doesn't work for searching the blog's posts, although it does work for searching links within the posts (and the web in general). This is a Known Problem and the people who run the blog's host machine claim it is 'top priority', although it's been broken for 6 months...

Homage to Ray Bradbury

2010-01-05T15:24:00.000Z

With the freezing weather set to continue for the foreseeable future (although one wonders just how much of the future is foreseeable by weather forecasters these days), I spotted this bizarre story in the Metro. Apparently, old books from charity shops are cheaper than fossil fuels for home heating, so those on low incomes are buying them up and using them as alternative fuel. One can only wonder what Ray Bradbury (author of Fahrenheit 451, in which he depicts a society in which books are banned and 'firemen' patrol people's homes looking for books and burning them if found) would think. By the way, Bradbury is still writing at age 89.
The article doesn't give many details on what books are favoured for the fireplace, but surely stacks of An Inconvenient Truth, tightly bound, would provide hours of warmth. And paper is a renewable resource, so Al Gore could hardly complain.
For those outside the UK, the Metro is a free newspaper available in places like train stations and the London Underground. And since it's free and combustible, maybe it will be the next bastion against the cold.

Another freezing day

2010-01-04T05:49:00.000Z

Yesterday was the second day on record with a maximum temperature below freezing. No new snow but what's on the ground isn't going anywhere (either by melting, or by the council clearing it away, that's for sure).

Snow showers continuing

2010-01-03T06:23:00.000Z

The first 2 days of 2010 saw temperatures hovering just above freezing, with the odd snow flurry. The flurries keep the ground white, but not much more (although they do seem to provide enough cover to prevent the council from keeping side roads clear).

The current forecast is for the cold weather to continue for the next couple of weeks, so if that happens, a new January record will most likely be set.

It's interesting to note that the Met Office has finally decided that a "colder than average" winter is the most likely, after predicting initially that the winter would be milder than average. Mind you, it's doubtful that anyone pays any attention to the Met Office's increasingly comical predictions, except as a source of light humour. However, as Christopher Booker points out in his column today, considering it is a publicly-funded agency and that their predictions are used to form government policy both at home and abroad, the Met Office's incompetence is turning into a national and international scandal.

Review of 2009

2010-01-01T01:15:00.001Z

The yearly plots for 2009 have now been posted on the Archives page. Using 2004-2007 as the baseline, 2009's mean temperature was 0.2 C below average, making it slightly warmer than 2008, but still cooler than earlier years.
The year started and ended with abnormally cold months, with December setting an all-time record for coldest mean temperature (and a few other records - see previous post). July was the warmest month with a mean of 15.6 C, although the year's maximum temperature of 24.0 C was set on 22 June. The year's minimum temperature of -5.9 C (also the coldest temperature so far recorded) was on 24 December. Snow was lying on the ground for around the last 10 days of the year, and the forecast for the first couple of weeks of January is for the cold weather to continue.
Total precipitation for the year was 619.9 mm, which was 81.9 mm above average. The wettest day of the year (and the wettest day on record) was 3 September, with 34.6 mm of rain. The wettest month was November, which was also very wet for most of Britain, with extensive flooding in Cumbria. However, the rainfall figure for November in Monifieth is a bit misleading in that 30.4 mm of the 100.4 mm total for the month fell on one day (1 November).

December 2009 records

2009-12-31T10:06:00.000Z

Although the UK media typically over-hype any weather event, December 2009 has been exceptional in several respects, as far as the Monifieth station is concerned. With 14 hours of the month remaining, it looks as though four records or firsts will be set this month:

Lowest temperature recorded (-5.9 C on 24th);
First day where the max temperature was below freezing (26th);
First month where the mean min temperature was below freezing (mean min = -0.1 C for the month);
Lowest overall mean temperature (2.5 C, which could change slightly by the end of the day).

Now of course it could be argued that these don't mean a lot since the station has been recording data for only 6.5 years, but so much of the climate "news" one sees in the MSM is based on records that, in historical terms, aren't much longer. The Arctic ice cover, for example, has been observed by satellite only since 1979, so when you see something about the Arctic reported as the most extreme "on record", keep in mind how short the record is.

Web site changes

2009-12-31T09:48:00.000Z

Today marks the end of the sixth full calendar year of operation for the Monifieth weather station, and I've made a few minor modifications to the web site to mark the occasion. I've added a few bits of information to the archives page, such as some station record values for temperature, rainfall and precipitation, and improved the layout of the pages.
I've also added a link to the Watts Up With That blog run by Anthony Watts, an American meteorologist. His blog was voted the best science blog in 2009, and contains a mine of information on the climate and related matters. The blog has gained a certain notoriety amongst the warmist-alarmist camp in the global warming debate, but no matter what your views on this subject, it is well worth a visit to see how many of the warmist stories reported widely in the MSM (main-stream media) are flawed or biased.