A lot of British people love talking about the weather. Scientists at the University of Sheffield have published a paper about recent weather patterns in the UK, where the winters in recent years have become more unstable than usual.
British winters are becoming increasingly volatile due to extreme variations in pressure over the North Atlantic according to scientists from the University of Sheffield.
The new research, published today in the International Journal of Climatology, shows that weather patterns over the UK have become distinctly more unstable, resulting in contrasting conditions from very mild, wet and stormy to extremely cold and snowy.
Winter weather conditions are commonly defined using the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). The NAO is a south-north seesaw of barometric pressure variations over the North Atlantic which indicates the strength of westerly winds impinging on the UK shore and resulting weather patterns.
Although the experts found that most seasons didn’t show overall long-term NAO trends, winter - especially early winter including the month of December - showed a significant systematic rise in variation over the last century.
The researchers found that over the last 115 years, three out of five all time record high NAO values and two out of five record lows for the month of December occurred over the last decade (2004-2013) , indicating that British winters have become increasingly unsettled.
Researchers found from their statistical analysis that there was a less than 0.04 per cent probability of getting such a clustering of extreme NAO years by chance.
Though this trend could be due to random fluctuations in the climate system, it could equally have been influenced by various driving factors including changing pressure/weather systems over the Arctic, especially Greenland, and changes in energy coming from the Sun.
Professor Edward Hanna, from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Geography, said: “Our study highlights the changing nature of North Atlantic atmospheric circulation patterns that has given the UK more variable winter conditions in recent years.
“We cannot use these results directly to predict this winter’s weather but according to the long-term NAO trend we can say that the probability of getting extreme winter weather – either mild/stormy or cold/snowy - has significantly increased in the last few decades. Further research is needed to show whether or not this increased volatility is linked to global warming. ”
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 11 2014, @07:47PM
"Further research is needed to show whether or not this increased volatility is linked to global warming"
Because you can get grant money if that's a salable theory?
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday September 11 2014, @07:50PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by khallow on Friday September 12 2014, @12:45AM
Here's the global warming "conspiracy" in action. There's funding in tying your research to global warming and "climate change". There's substantial publicity in merely hinting to the media that climate change may be responsible. It doesn't take Bilderberg Group level scheming, just a bunch of people figuring out which side their bread is buttered on.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday September 12 2014, @01:13AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by khallow on Friday September 12 2014, @01:58AM
It's there in black and white. First, this is far from the first time I've seen gratuitous inclusion of "climate change". Keep in mind that this sort of thing is expected to happen a lot more frequently than 1 in 5,000 because the assumption of lack of correlation (I was able to repeat their calculation of 0.02%, but only by including an assumption that there is no correlation between years) is not warranted and they picked the most extreme of twelve months.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday September 12 2014, @03:01AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by khallow on Friday September 12 2014, @03:33AM
How would that assumption make any difference? The article above presents the research in the most alarming manner possible, making "anyone's first question" topical. And how did "anyone's first question" become that?
And there's the last sentence of the summary "Further research is needed to show whether or not this increased volatility is linked to global warming. " Already has the next funding pitch figured out and it happens to involve finding linkage to global warming.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday September 12 2014, @04:20AM
How would that assumption make any difference?
You did use the word 'conspiracy'.
The article above presents the research in the most alarming manner possible, making "anyone's first question" topical. And how did "anyone's first question" become that?
Why is research done in the first place?
Already has the next funding pitch figured out and it happens to involve finding linkage to global warming.
Coincidentally it also succinctly and preemptively answers the question: "It seems like you should have been able to find a link to a question this data raises, why didn't you?" The first part of that plea for funding, just before the bit you quoted, basically says: "We don't know if it's linked or not, that's not the data we gathered." These guys are terrible salesmen.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 3, Funny) by Blackmoore on Thursday September 11 2014, @08:08PM
.
.
and that's fine and all but who's going to clean that up?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday September 11 2014, @08:50PM
Well, the major antagonist that was built up over many seasons can be conveniently defeated in under ten minutes when the heroes seem defeated.
The question is "Can we magically sneak a few thousand horsemen up on Global Warming"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 11 2014, @08:53PM
That answer has been accurate for a while now, and it's a hell of a lot cheaper.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday September 11 2014, @09:30PM
Really? You you so sure there isn't a causal relation between the global warming and weather variation between wider extremes?
Here's an experiment for you [youtube.com]: call the grren ice cube "arctic ice" and imagine Britain as a point halfway the bottom of the glass under the cube - wouldn't it experience quite a wide variation in temperature?
Some other plausible theories about ice ages [wikipedia.org] - except that with that much CO2, it is improbable that we'll have an ice age anytime soon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford