Across the world 2015 was the hottest year on record. When compared with the long-term average between 1850 and 1900, the temperature was around 1C warmer. This increase is mostly the result of long-term warming linked to greenhouse gases, but temperatures in 2015 were also boosted by a very active El Niño – warmer-than-normal ocean temperatures in the Tropical East Pacific. Although one of the strongest El Niño events on record is now waning, it is expected to have a strong impact on the global average temperatures for 2016, which is likely to be another record year.
However, does it follow that if 2016 is another record year that the UK will experience record weather too? Jeff Knight is a climate scientist with the Met Office Hadley Centre. He said: “Global mean temperatures are not a good way of forecasting the year-to-year variations in UK climate, which depend much more on a range of local factors including pressure patterns, wind directions and sea temperatures around the UK.
“Furthermore, evidence from published research for links between the Tropical Pacific and UK summer weather is limited.”
The current El Niño event is expected to terminate before the northern hemisphere summer arrives in June, July and August. Jeff Knight added: “In some years, the El Niño transitions into its counterpart, the La Niña, which has many of the opposite characteristics to El Niño.”
The subsequent evolution of the Tropical Pacific is not yet clear with some long-range forecast systems suggesting a return to neutral conditions, while others suggest a transition to La Niña.
Jeff Knight added: “Many climate indicators, such as global mean temperature, lag El Niño by several months, implying that the record high levels seen recently will continue further into 2016. Conditions in the UK, however, will also be heavily influenced by factors affecting our weather closer to home.”
Official blog of the Met Office news team 
It is perfectly possible that all the warming over recent years is a result of stronger El Ninos arising due to high solar activity which reduced global cloudiness as per this explanation:
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/01/is-the-sun-driving-ozone-and-changing-the-climate/
Nope. Global temps in neutral and La Nina years are also increasing:
Solar activity is down. Yet it warms.
2015 was only the third warmest year on the more accurate NASA UAH satellite records.
This is still as incorrect as it is in all your previous posts.
UAH is less accurate.
The globe warms: surface, troposphere, oceans and melting ice.
The surface warms.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1996/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1996/trend
The troposphere warms.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1996/plot/uah/from:1996/trend
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996/plot/rss/from:1996/trend
The oceans warm…
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
…and rise 3.3 mm per year, up from 0.8 mm per year a century ago.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/content/global-mean-sea-level-time-series-seasonal-signals-removed
…and acidify by 30% since the industrial revolution.
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/What+is+Ocean+Acidification%3F
The earth is losing a trillion tons of ice per year:
– 159 Gt Antarctic land ice, McMillan el al, GRL (2014), http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL060111/abstract
+ 26 Gt Antarctic sea ice, Holland et al, J Climate (2014) , http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00301.1
– 261 Gt Arctic sea ice, PIOMAS, http://psc.apl.uw.edu/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/
– 378 Gt Greenland, Enderlin et al, GRL (2014), http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013GL059010/abstract
– 259 Gt other land based glaciers, Gardner et al. Science (2013), http://www.sciencemag.org/content/340/6134/852.abstract
= – 1,031 Gt, total
You baldly state “This increase (from the 1850 to 1900 average and the current value) is mostly the result of long-term warming linked to greenhouse gases”. Would you care to point to where and when this idea arose? Have you ever seen a paper that states this hypothesis as clearly as you seem to believe?
Just curious .
Hi Robin. I believe you are entirely correct in your skepticism of this sweeping statement made by the Met or by its representative(s) here. The notion that the Earth’s recent temperature variation is ‘mostly’ the result of ‘greenhouse gases’ is ridiculous when longer timescales are viewed. The Earth, as a component of a complex physical solar system exchanging momentum and energy can and does do this all by itself. The climate at all latitudes is constantly variable on many superimposed time frames. There is no long term stability. I believe the statement you have highlighted oversteps boundaries by removing the real and indisputable element of doubt, and thereby is not scientifically robust. It highlights a doctrine and agenda that is being pushed down all of our throats.
If you are right, then come up with something better than this woolly ‘its always changing’ mantra. Provide a physical explanation of the history of Earth’s climate since 1850 giving a quantitative description of where the energy in this ‘complex system’ came from and went to for each of the changes that subsequently occurred. That is what the mainstream climate scientists have done. If you are genuine about presenting an alternative then you must do the same.
Why is my response stuck in moderation ?
Ah, it has come up at last.
The man-made climate change deniers have come out to play?
I’ve yet to meet anyone who denies there’s a climate.
Is that the best Benton can come up with?
Nobody else is ‘confused I suspect.
oops
the wormentongue words imply this is the hotest it has ever been which is of course misleading. if you put current temps into the context of ice age cycles you will see the warmest on record is not the warmest ever. Temps can go up 4c and still be in normal ice age ranges. Unless you claim ice age cycles have stopped then in an inter glacial warming period one will expect temps to go up. Its quite normal for there to be no ice at the caps and the retreating ice shows old forests and settlement activity. The manufactured hysteria and black propganda by some not driven by science but green hysteria is an exercise in bearing false witness. Current climate science constant hyping of ‘records’ gives the smell that it is corrupted by greed for tax money?
There are glacial-interglacial cycles over tens and hundreds of thousands of years but so what? The discussion is about what will happen this century not in thousands of years time.
Moreover, its ignorant to suggest that continual warming is what usually happens in interglacial periods – we know that since the last ice age ended about 10000 years ago, climate has been relatively steady, and in fact has been cooling slightly over most of the last 6000 years.
No man-caused greenhouse gas emissions during either the ice ages or when the dinosaurs were alive. A fact you are evading.