February 2023 is likely to be the fifth driest February since 1931 using gridded data for England and Wales from the UKMOUKMO The Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and in central England it could well be the second driest. It’s been drier than average thanks to persistent high pressure, which although not uncommon in February, is not usually as long lasting as its been this year.
I can see how the Guardian used Will Lang, head of situational awareness at the UKMO, to manipulate another climate extremes scare story back in November. Yes it was significant at the time that the three-month forecast had not reached February yet, but I think we read far too much into tele-connections such as the QBOQBO The quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) is a quasiperiodic oscillation of the equatorial zonal wind between easterlies and westerlies in the tropical stratosphere with a mean period of 28 to 29 months. The alternating wind regimes develop at the top of the lower stratosphere and propagate downwards at about 1 km per month until they are dissipated at the tropical tropopause. Downward motion of the easterlies is usually more irregular than that of the westerlies. The amplitude of the easterly phase is about twice as strong as that of the westerly phase. At the top of the vertical QBO domain, easterlies dominate, while at the bottom, westerlies are more likely to be found., NAONAO The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) is a weather phenomenon over the North Atlantic Ocean of fluctuations in the difference of atmospheric pressure at sea level (SLP) between the Icelandic Low and the Azores High. Through fluctuations in the strength of the Icelandic Low and the Azores High, it controls the strength and direction of westerly winds and location of storm tracks across the North Atlantic., AOAO The Arctic oscillation (AO) or Northern Annular Mode/Northern Hemisphere Annular Mode (NAM) is a weather phenomenon at the Arctic pole north of 20 degrees latitude. It is an important mode of climate variability for the Northern Hemisphere. The southern hemisphere analogue is called the Antarctic oscillation or Southern Annular Mode (SAM). The index varies over time with no particular periodicity, and is characterized by non-seasonal sea-level pressure anomalies of one sign in the Arctic, balanced by anomalies of opposite sign centered at about 37–45° N., ENSOENSO El Niño–Southern Oscillation is an irregular periodic variation in winds and sea surface temperatures over the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean, affecting the climate of much of the tropics and subtropics. The warming phase of the sea temperature is known as El Niño and the cooling phase as La Niña. and of course the SSWSSW A sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) is an event in which polar stratospheric temperatures rise by as much as 50 °C in the course of a few days. The warming is preceded by a slowing then reversal of the westerly winds in the stratospheric polar vortex. SSWs occur about six times per decade in the northern hemisphere, and about once every 20-30 years in the southern hemisphere., these days, thinking we are anywhere close to understanding the complexities of our global weather system, and this Guardian story illustrates this fact perfectly. The threat of flooding has not gone away, but it’s likely that it’ll be the lack of rainfall that will dominate the weather news across Europe this coming spring and summer.
