Just In Case You're Thinking

Damn there's alot of snow outside. Sure looks like those Climate Science types have fucked up grandly. Well, no. Check out this August 2007 10-year forecast from Hadley Centre in Exeter

"The forecast...reveals that natural shifts in climate will cancel out warming produced by greenhouse gas emissions and other human activity until 2009, but from then on, temperatures will rise steadily. Temperatures are set to rise over the 10-year period by 0.3C. Beyond 2014, the odds of breaking the temperature record rise even further, the scientists added.

[...]

Climate scientists say the new high-precision forecast predicts temperatures will stall because of natural climate effects that have seen the Southern Ocean and tropical Pacific cool over the past couple of years."

What the folks at the Hadley Center are attempting with this forecast and the new forecasting method that gave rise to it is to be able to predict:

...droughts and other extreme conditions a year or two ahead. Previously, the models have been used to show that global temperatures may rise 6C above pre-industrial levels by 2100.

"If you look ahead on a 50- to 100 year time frame, then global warming is the big thing for the climate, but if you're working on a project that is only designed to last for the next few years, that information doesn't make much difference to you," said Doug Smith, a climate scientist at the Hadley Centre.

And one of the ways they are trying to make their decade-scale forecasts more useful is by working in the effects of relatively mid-term ocean-atmosphere phenomenon like the current La Niña episode (that Pacific cooling noted above), which began mid-way through last year and has been fingered as the likely culprit behind the shitty weather we've been having lately.

So in fact what we've experienced is more or less what was predicted. And it is notable that even with a gathering La Niña, 2007 turned out to be, depending on the source you use, the 2nd hottest year recorded.