> You won't get a record two month period without two high > months.
There's another method to generate more records, reduce the length of the data series: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6270346.stm "Last month was the wettest June the UK had seen since detailed records began in 1914." That's only a 93 year data series, rather than the 241 years available for England and Wales (where the June record of 1860 still stands). In Scotland the data series is much shorter (in the case of the Hadley Centre data the series only starts in 1931) and funnily enough the June record was set in 1938 and still stands (this year's total of 115 mm for Scotland is well short of the 167 mm in June 1938). > Now, add in the fact that the values are calculated from spot > measurements, and the second highest may well have been the highest in > reality. Yes, past records may have been overlooked due to poor spatial coverage missing the highest rainfall areas. > IMHO it partly (as well as variations from the average over time) > comes down to if we continue to get 50, 100, 200 etc. year events, in > the same spots, within the short spans of time (currently within the > same decade). I might start to ponder the reasons. ;) If 200 year events now regularly happen within 10 years, we've got a very strong signal in the data making detection and attribution an easier task. If we have thousands of data series, it's not that surprising to find a few where two 200 year events happen within 7 years of each other. I am happy enough with a well grounded theoretical prediction absent such a strong signal. I am also happy enough to accept that the average summer might get drier, but the number of wet outliers simultaneously might go up sufficiently to compensate. But is that actually predicted? And I fail to see it in the historical data. Maybe there's a strong signal for some measure of flooding. But I haven't seen anybody present such data, and a breathless statement in the Independent that the 1947 floods have now been exceeded in magnitude, and those were said to have been 200 year floods, so that we are now in unprecedented territory, doesn't quite cut it with me (exceeded by what measure? That one of hundreds of possible river flooding sites exceeded its previous high? That more homes got flooded? More area? That it just feels worse???) --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
