THERE IS AN ANTARCTIC POLE TOO

The Meteorological Office, and yes that's the same Meteorological Office who predicted a BBQ summer and a warm winter last year, are reporting on their website that ice melt at the arctic can partially be attributed to man-made climate change. The report examines the panic that was engineered by the dramatic decrease in arctic sea ice in 2007, and now attributes that dramatic increase to extreme weather.
[source : The decline in Arctic summer sea ice, The Meteorological Office 15/10/2009]

As with the failed predictions we have been given over the last year, were such extreme weather conditions predicted? If not, why not? I suspect that if they had been predicted correctly that we would have heard about it, before and after.

But I would like to remind the Met Office that we also have the Antarctic pole too.

And sea ice at the Antarctic has increased.

Without the 2007 drama then over the last few decades sea ice levels at the poles would have been pretty much balanced, with a net effect of ice transferred from the Arctic to the Antarctic (though obviously the ice would not have travelled physically from one pole to the other).

Check out the graphs at the bottom of the page at
http://nsidc.org/seaice/characteristics/difference.html
(and remember the freak of 2007)

So I say, like I would to the EU about us not killing little old granny off fast enough to pay for the bank bailout; don't panic!

They said we were entering a man-made ice age. A few years later they said we were causing global warming.

They said last winter would be warm.

They said last summer would be a barbecue summer.

And now they say that an event in the Arctic in 2007 which led to a dramatic increase in sea ice which was initially attributed to man was in fact due to freak weather (which was not predicted).

We can predict weather and thus climate to a significant accuracy just days ahead.

Not weeks.

Not months.

Not years.

Not decades.

Despite all the computing power and the rinky dinky mathematical models and numerical methods we have (in the public domain anyway, the military may have more accurate methods), we can only predict the weather to any degree of accuracy just one or two days ahead.

And if you don't believe me check out the Met Office predictions today for next Thursday, and not just for your area but for the whole of the UK, and you'll see what I mean.

I really wish the Met Office could be more accurate (and I would be very interested in applying the CFD methods I am researching on the computers I am using to predicting weather) but unfortunately it is not. Occassionally they get it right 3 or 4 days ahead but that is only becuse there is a large slow moving high pressure system bringing clear conditions.