Weather, Summer | Bergen climate researcher against record warning: – Misleading

In both Dagbladet and VG we have been able to read that new forecasts from the European weather forecasting agency ECMWF are predicting a record hot summer.

– I was afraid you would ask about it.

With a sigh, climate researcher at Norce and Bjerknesenteret, Erik Kolstad, listens to BA’s request. If he can’t say a little about this fierce summer forecast?

– So, I disagree so much with those matters.

– Oh? What do you disagree with then?

– No, first of all, forecasts in April have no certainty at all. Secondly, I would never make that type of comparison of previous forecasts, says Kolstad and refers to the analysis made by the main source in the two newspapers, the Finnish meteorologist Mika Rantanen who has been interviewed by Aftonbladet.

Before BA can ask what is wrong with the analysis, Kolstad bursts out:

– You are not the first to call me about this either. No, I think I have to set up my own analysis, he says and asks BA to call back.

Blown out of propositions

A few hours later, on the website klimavarsling.no, Kolstad presents his assessment of the forecasts.

He writes that what Rantanen has done is to compare the April forecast for 2024 with the average of previous forecasts from 2017 to 2024, before he has then ranked these forecasts by temperature.

– But does this make sense? Why should it be interesting which place 2024 comes in compared to the previous forecasts, writes Kolstad on the page.

There is a lot of red on the right of this X post for Rantanen. Kolstad believes that this table is not very useful.

The climate scientist believes that one should rather look at how 2024 is ranked in relation to what actually happened in the years after 2017.

– Then it must be said that I suspect that the analysis that is shown has probably been blown a little out of proportion in the media, says Kolstad to BA.

So what does the Finnish meteorologist who has been re-quoted so often say?

– It seems that my post on X has been interpreted in a way that was not quite the intention, says Rantanen to BA.

– I tried to tell Aftonbladet’s journalist that the warning is only the warmest compared to previous warnings. I think it can only give a signal of a hot summer, but that does not mean that the summer will be record hot, he emphasizes.

Will be wrong

Kolstad emphasizes again that predicting summer weather all the way into April is completely hopeless.

– It cannot be used.

His Finnish colleague completely agrees with that.

– I agree with Erik, and this is what I told Aftonbladet. A long-term forecast in April is almost the same as looking at the statistics and determining the summer temperatures based on how other summers were, says Rantanen and adds:

– There is very little to no skill in seasonal forecasts. I find them more interesting for research purposes than for forecasting the weather.

Kolstad has created a figure where the forecast for 2024 is ranked in relation to the weather in the years from 2017 to now.

– Will that figure be correct then?

– No, it is also very unreliable. There are several reasons for that, says the climate scientist.

Kolstad points out that, among other things, the record year 2023 was characterized by the El Niño phenomenon, which is characterized by very warm seas in the Pacific Ocean.

– We are on our way out of El Niño now, for now 2024 is very high on all curves, but it will probably decrease over the course of the year. So globally, it is unlikely to be as warm this year as in 2023.

Mika Rantanen has looked at Kolstad’s analysis and likes what he sees.

– I think his analysis is very good, and he has taken it longer than me. So I have to agree with everything Kolstad says. What we have done are two different things. I believe that both what I have done and what Erik has done are interesting and worth studying further.

– We’re the ones who get shut up

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has stated in a report that 2023 was by a large margin the warmest year on record since it began measuring this.

At the same time, Kolstad points out that even in this record year it was not particularly warm here in the north.

– When you look at a map of where it was warm last year, Northern Europe stands out very much as a blue field in the middle of all the red. It was actually a bit strange that we were so out of step with the rest of the world.

He says the summer forecast for Norway last year was completely wrong.

– Both what came in May and June were wrong. Things happen that not all models are able to pick up, and then the weather quickly becomes completely different.

He warns people to plan their summer holidays with long-term notice several months in advance.

– We are very careful to specify that there is a high level of uncertainty in the warning. But people read them, and when it doesn’t turn out to be such a good summer after all, it’s us and the meteorologists who get slammed. We can tolerate that, but I’d rather not be silenced for a warning I didn’t give myself, laughs Kolstad.