The House of Commons transport committee is being urged to investigate the winter weather advice provided by the Met Office amid concern that transport authorities were left ill-prepared for December’s record cold weather.
The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has written to committee chair Louise Ellman, asking her to investigate a BBC report that the Met Office and Government knew December was likely to be exceptionally cold but did not pass on the information.
The BBC’s environment editor Roger Harrabin wrote in the Radio Times: “Why didn’t the Met Office tell us that Greenland was about to swap weather with Godalming? The truth is it did suspect we were in for an exceptionally cold early winter, and told the Cabinet Office so in October. But we weren’t let in on the secret. The reason? The Met Office no longer publishes its seasonal forecasts because of the ridicule it suffered for predicting a barbecue summer in 2009 – the summer that campers floated around in their tents.”
The GWPF points out that the apparent private advice to the Cabinet Office is at odds with information on the Met Office website that stated in late October there was a 60-80% chance of warmer than average temperatures this winter. GWPF director Benny Peiser told LTT the Met Office’s computer models were “all based on the chances of cold winters diminishing.” “That’s what they say because of the CO2 influence.”
The Met Office’s assumptions were reported in the interim report of the Government’s winter resilience review last July. The review was chaired by RAC Foundation chairman David Quarmby.
Reflecting on conversations with the Met Office’s Hadley Centre climate research team, it said: “The starting point is the slow but steady rise in average global temperature. The consensus on the UK is that on average summers will become warmer and winters will become warmer and wetter, though the next 10-15 years may be dominated by natural variability.
Quarmby said: “We are advised to assume the chance of a severe winter in 2010/11 is no greater (or less) than the current general probability of 1 in 20. The effect of climate change is to gradually but steadily reduce the probability of severe winters in the UK.”
The GWPF says there have now been three severe winters in a row. It wants the scientific basis of the Met Office’s work investigated.
Transport secretary Philip Hammond has asked Government chief scientific adviser Sir John Beddington to advise on “the longer-term implications of the changing climate and the way in which they should influence investment decisions in relation to winter resilience”.
