Inside the new climate row as Mystic Met Office goes cool on warming

Inside the new climate row as Mystic Met Office goes cool on warming • The Register:

If it holds true, then global temperatures will have experienced a 20-year standstill, with no statistically significant warming.
The Met didn't predict, as the BBC erroneously reported, a 0.43C increase in global temperature over the next five years........
"By putting out the information on Christmas Eve they were just burying bad news – that they have got their climate change forecast wrong," said Stringer.

A twenty year period without statistically significant warming doesn't falsify the theory that manmade industrial emissions are the key driver in climate change - the oceans may be storing energy that isn't yet manifest in higher atmospheric temperatures.
But it certainly wasn't in the script, which raises questions over the validity of the models on which policy decisions have been made, as the BBC's Paul Hudson points out here.
11 of the last 12 annual Met forecasts erred on the warm side - so new and better models should be widely welcomed.

Another claim by the Met has also drawn fire - as the criticism directly addresses the validity of the Met's science, rather than its communications strategy.
Last week the Met made a widely-reported claim that Britain is experiencing more frequent extreme rainfall.
Statistical analysis of rainfall records by the Met Office claimed to show days of heavy rainfall had become more common in England since 1960.
"The apparent trend mirrors increases in extreme rain seen in other parts of the world," wrote the BBC's Roger Harrabin.

For Channel 4 news, the Met's statistical press release was apocalyptic.
There were "clear signals of wetter weather emerging", apparently:

But the claim has puzzled some observers, not least because last March the Met was predicting a continuing drought for the UK, advising last March that:

"The probability that UK precipitation for April-May-June will fall into the driest of our five categories is 20-25% whilst the probability that it will fall into the wettest of our five categories is 10-15%".
.....Comment

And that seems to encapsulate the problem.

Forecasting is notoriously difficult, and every scientist working in the field deserves some understanding. It's the agency executives' desire to feed the news media with alarmist and politically-motivated "stories" that's the problem - and perhaps the fact that the Met Office is dependent on global warming being a clear and present danger for much of its funding nowadays.

It's hard to imagine the shoddy rainfall press release being issued were this not the case.

Time for new management at the Met? ®