The summer index [JJAJJAMeteorological Summer comprising the months June, July & August] in the UKUKThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. for 2024 came in at 11, which was almost the same as last summer. June had the lowest combined monthly index for temperature, precipitation and sunshine of 6 [3,1,2], whilst August bolstered the summer up with an index of 9 [5,2,2].
Regionally East Anglia, the southeast and central southern England and eastern Scotland had the highest summer index of 24. The lowest index, which I can vouch for, was -23 in the north of Scotland.
A cold pool has developed in the last six weeks off the coast off the coast of northwest Ireland and western Scotland. It’s incongruous, because at the moment the SSTSSTSea Surface Temperatures of the North Atlantic are at the second highest level since 1981, and possibly many hundreds of years before this. It’s expanded & consolidated a little more during the last week, but what’s behind it? Answers on a postcard to the usual address.😉
I’ve been putting quite a lot of effort into a program I’ve developed that parses forecast data from the Met OfficeUKMOThe 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 weather app. I needed to do this because the UKMOUKMOThe 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 have just updated it to a new beta version, and in so doing have reworked all their HTML, which scuppered my old application which I developed some years ago. As far as I know there is no API that I call to access the raw forecast data with, so it’s all down to downloading and parsing a lot of HTML to extract the forecast data myself. It’s not been easy, and I’m not getting any younger, so at times it’s been a real struggle. Anyway I’ve completed most of the work now, and all that’s left is to update the numerous viewers that I use to display the forecast data in various tables, graphs and maps.
The only new feature I’ve seen that’s different in the beta version when compared to the old version is that as well as including a ‘likely’ maximum and minimum, the Met Office now also include a ‘possible’ maximum and minimum. Don’t ask me why, but it mimics what the BBCBBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is the national broadcaster of the United Kingdom, based at Broadcasting House in London. It is the world's oldest national broadcaster, and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees, employing over 22,000 staff in total, of whom approximately 19,000 are in public-sector broadcasting. do in their app.
The animated GIF is generated from a viewer that builds a bitmap image from all the available three hour forecast data for the coming week. I’ve also added maximum and minimum daily anomalies to it, as well as including an icon to show the phase of the moon and when it rises and sets.
I have a verification form which compares forecast values with SYNOPSYNOPSYNOP (surface synoptic observations) is a numerical code (called FM-12 by WMO) used for reporting weather observations made by manned and automated weather stations. SYNOP reports are typically mad hourly and consist of groups of numbers (and slashes where data is not available) describing general weather information, such as the temperature, barometric pressure and visibility at a weather station. observations. At the moment this only works for extreme temperatures, but there is no reason why this couldn’t work with wind speed, visibility and weather. So much to do, and so little time😢
Here are some random images, tables and animations that I posted regarding Storm Lilian to my Twitter account @xmetman. Nothing particularly devastating about the winds or the rain from the storm itself, which the Met OfficeUKMOThe 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 should really have never named. It was gone in a flash, and although there were gusts in excess of 70 mph on the Lancashire coast, only eight SYNOPSYNOPSYNOP (surface synoptic observations) is a numerical code (called FM-12 by WMO) used for reporting weather observations made by manned and automated weather stations. SYNOP reports are typically mad hourly and consist of groups of numbers (and slashes where data is not available) describing general weather information, such as the temperature, barometric pressure and visibility at a weather station. stations recorded a gale. Gale Index wise the storm didn’t register above the 200 mark because of its size, with the extratropical cyclone that had been Hurricane Ernesto scoring much higher earlier in the week. I should have written a piece about Ernesto, but when you have so few followers as I have, I thought what’s the point 😪
All Images courtesy of BBCBBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is the national broadcaster of the United Kingdom, based at Broadcasting House in London. It is the world's oldest national broadcaster, and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees, employing over 22,000 staff in total, of whom approximately 19,000 are in public-sector broadcasting. Weather Watchers
A lovely sunset across the northeast of Scotland this Monday, which I managed to completely miss despite having a camera with me at the time, so I deferred to these excellent images from the BBC Weather Watchers website.
The central Pacific continues to cool, if rather hesitatingly over the last month. Here’s the latest ENSOENSOEl 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. forecast from the IRI.
ENSO Forecast
July-2024-quick-look
Published: July 19, 2024
A monthly summary of the status of El NiñoEl NiñoEl Niño 'The Boy' is the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and is associated with a band of warm ocean water that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific, La NiñaLa NiñaLa Niña is an oceanic and atmospheric phenomenon that is the colder counterpart of El Niño, as part of the broader El Niño–Southern Oscillation climate pattern. The name La Niña originates from Spanish for "the girl", by analogy to El Niño, meaning "the boy". In the past, it was also called an anti-El Niño[1] and El Viejo, meaning "the old man.", and the Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, based on the NINO3.4 index (120-170W, 5S-5N)
As of mid-July 2024, ENSO-neutral conditions persist in the western equatorial Pacific, and oceanic and atmospheric indicators also align with ENSO-neutral state. The IRI ENSO prediction plume forecast ENSO-neutral for Jul-Sep, and Aug-Oct, 2024. La Niña becomes the most probable category in Sep-Nov, 2024 through Dec-Feb, 2025, while for Jan-Mar, 2025 ENSO-neutral conditions become dominant (50% chance), and remain so during Feb-Apr, and Mar-May, 2025. Similar to the most recent official CPCCPCThe Climate Prediction Center is a United States federal agency that is one of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, which are a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Weather Service. The CPC is where meteorologists and oceanographers review climate and weather observations and data along with model results; assess their meaning, significance, and current status; and likely future climate impacts. ENSO Outlook (issued on July 11, 2024), the objective IRI model-based ENSO outlook forecasts indicate ENSO-neutral conditions for Jul-Sep 2024. However, there is a notable difference between the probability numbers in the early-month CPC and mid-month IRI ENSO forecasts. The CPC ENSO forecasts predict a 70% chance of La Niña onset in Aug-Oct 2024, which then persists with increasing probabilities reaching into the range from 66% to 81% during the boreal fall and winter seasons. In contrast, the objective IRI ENSO forecasts show a late onset of La Niña conditions in the equatorial Pacific (49% chance in Sep-Nov 2024), with persistence into the fall and early winter, though with very low probabilities ranging from 52% to 48%. The forecasts then show a return to ENSO-neutral conditions in Jan-Mar 2025, and remain dominant for the rest of the forecasts period. The low probability numbers reflect a high level of uncertainty in the forecasts, due to the relatively low skill of seasonal forecast models at this time of year. Therefore, these ENSO forecasts should be interpreted with caution.
The 13 month consecutive record breaking streak in the ERA5ERAERA stands for 'ECMWF Re-Analysis' and refers to a series of research projects at ECMWF which produced various datasets (ERA-Interim, ERA-40, etcetera). global temperature series has come to an end. The July anomaly of +0.68°C, although high, was lower than the +0.724°C of July 2023. The 12 month moving averages are also starting to show a lessening in the steepness of the rapid increase since the start of 2023. I’ve seen little mention of this news in the media which doesn’t surprise me that much. 😉
Despite being knocked off the top spot for warmest month in July, the daily global temperature for the 7th of August is still setting new records. It’s vying with 2023 for warmest and currently stands at +1.597°C above the pre-industrial LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO..
Arctic sea ice extent was the third lowest for this date at 77.8% of the LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO., behind 2020 & 2019, and down 5.6% on the same date last year.
Antarctic sea ice extent was the second lowest since 1978 for this date at 89.2% of the LTA, just behind & tracking 2023, with ~8 weeks to go before maximum which was early last year.
July 2024 was a very zonal month, and cyclonic at times, with below average MSLPMSLPMean sea level pressure is the pressure at sea level, or, when measured at a given elevation on land, the station pressure reduced to sea level assuming an isothermal layer at the station temperature., but a little more anticyclonic towards the end. It looks like I’m going to have to search for missing charts on the 10th and 11th. Sunday the 28th looks a rare day when the UKMOUKMOThe 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 couldn’t find a single frontal structure or trough near IONAIONAIslands Of North Atlantic.
Yes I know there's an island called Iona, but this is so I don't have to use the term 'British Isles' when referring to the whole of Ireland and the UK..
Mean temperatures across the British Isles were close to the LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO.. Much of the North Atlantic was warm (+3C) south of 55N, but a band of colder temperatures extended from Baffin Island (-5C) in the west to southern Scandinavia (-1C) in the east. Meanwhile the north of Scandinavia was warm (+3C), likewise SE Europe around Bulgaria was also very warm (+4C).
Pressure was lower (-3 hPahPaA Hectopascal is the SI unit of pressure and identical to the Millibar) close to the Azores during July, with higher than average pressure to the west this displaced the usual Azores high further west in the North Atlantic. This, combined with much lower than average across Greenland and Iceland, resulted in a fairly strong mean zonal W’SW flow across the Atlantic for the time of year, running from Canada to the Baltic across the British Isles.
Despite central England temperature series being a composite temperature from three separate sites, it’s still possible to use the UKMOUKMOThe 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 25°C heatwave temperature as the threshold to calculate a heatwave day in Central England, and thereby calculate the number of three day consecutive days that have occurred there since 1878. I added this functionality to my Daily CETCETCentral England Temperature application a number of years ago, and have recently added a second method of using the maximum anomaly to do it, rather than by using a fixed temperature. At the same time I gave it all a bit of a spring clean, hopefully it’s still accurate. 🤞 The program allows you to adjust the threshold from 25°C to 30°C, and the anomaly from +6°C to +10°C, it also allows you to change the number of consecutive days from 3 to 7.
If you plot a bar chart for the number of heatwave days since 1878, as I’ve done with an accompanying 5 year centred average and linear trend, you’ll see that the number of days >=25°C has increased from 4.6 days to 10.8 days in the intervening 146 years.
The most number of distinct heatwaves (using the 25°C and three consecutive days or more rule) in a single year was six and occurred in both 1911 and 1995. The most number of heatwave days in any one year was 33, and occurred in 1976 and 1995.
The longest heatwave I found, using the 25°C and three consecutive days or more rule, was 16 days which occurred in the golden summer of 1976, between the 23rd of June and the 8th of July 1976 this was closely followed by the 15 day heatwave covering an almost identical period in 2018.
The results using anomalies are a horse of a different colour and a story for another day. Suffice it to say I used the 1878-2023 LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO. as a level playing field to produce the results in the table below. The year 1995 still ends up with most heatwave days of 32, and 1976 the longest run of anomalies of 6°C and higher of 16 days.
Winchester High Street – 1 August 2024 (courtesy BBCBBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is the national broadcaster of the United Kingdom, based at Broadcasting House in London. It is the world's oldest national broadcaster, and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees, employing over 22,000 staff in total, of whom approximately 19,000 are in public-sector broadcasting.)
Below are some of the images that I posted on Twitter concerning the heavy rain and flooding from thunderstorms across parts of southern England on Thursday. Although the UKMOUKMOThe 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 scored nul points with a yellow warning for thunderstorms on the previous day, the warning they issued for Thursday was fully justified 👍.
The first half of July was rather cold, but thanks to two warm spells in the second half of the month, the mean temperature for July ended up being 16.3°C, thats -0.5°C below the 1991-2020 LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO.. That makes two consecutive colder than average months, which happened as recently as 2023, when both July and August were colder than average.
The Grimness Index in July 2024 (50.7) was not quite as high as i#that in July 2023 (69.7) across the UKUKThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland., but it still made for a mediocre month.
July 2024 was rather cool and dull, wet in places in the south, but drier in central and Western Scotland.
Despite the 1,221 M difference in height AMSLAMSLThe height Above Mean Sea Level. between them, temperatures at Heathrow (+0.2°C) and at CairngormCairn GormCairn Gorm (Scottish Gaelic: An Càrn Gorm) is a mountain in the Scottish Highlands. It is part of the Cairngorms range and wider Grampian Mountains. With a summit elevation of 1,245 m (4,085 ft) above sea level, Cairn Gorm is classed as a Munro and is the seventh-highest mountain in the British Isles. (-0.1°C) were both very close to the LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO. for July.
The daily global temperature record was broken three times in the last week, each time by a relatively minute amount. According to the ERAERAERA stands for 'ECMWF Re-Analysis' and refers to a series of research projects at ECMWF which produced various datasets (ERA-Interim, ERA-40, etcetera). 5 data the warmest day occurred on the 22nd of July 2024, and stands at 17.16°C, which is +1.713 above the pre-industrial LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO., and well in excess of the +1.5°C threshold often quoted by the IPCCIPCCThe Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations responsible for advancing knowledge on human-induced climate change.
It was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme, and later endorsed by United Nations General Assembly..
I notice that the report State of the UK Climate 2023 that has just issued by the UKMO says that ‘Climate change may be causing dramatic changes’, but eight to twelve days with temperatures >=28°C across Ross-shire in 2023 is NOT one of them. I recorded one such day here in 2023 in StrathpefferStrathpefferStrathpeffer (Scottish Gaelic: Srath Pheofhair) is a village and spa town in Easter Ross, Highland, Scotland, with a population of 1,469., Easter Ross. I realise that the statistics are from a number of stations across the whole county, but there’s absolutely no way that there were as many as eight of them in 2023, even if you include results from Kinlochewe in Wester Ross. Back to the printers!
16-30 day UKMOUKMOThe 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 text forecast
Was the cold and unsettled start to July in anyway expected by the UKMO in their long range (16-30 day) forecast? As far as colder than average temperatures are concerned that’s a definite no, with mean anomalies for the period from 29 June to the 12th of July between one and three degrees below the LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO.. There was no mention of such a dull start to the month either, with sunshine widely only 60% or less of the LTA. Sunshine may have been in short supply but rainfall totals were widely above average in the 14 day period, with large areas seeing totals 200% or more of the LTA. So the short answer to the question, as measured by mean temperature, total sunshine and rainfall, is a most definite no, the cool, dull and wet start to July was not anticipated.😜
In Central England, May 2024 ended up being warmer than it was in June. The mean temperature for May was 14.1°C, whilst the mean for June was just 14.0°C. This is only the third time this has occurred since the series began in 1659. In Stornoway, June 2024 was an unprecedented -1.4°C colder than May 2024. The climatological records there go back 151 years. June itself was the second coldest on record, and just 0.3°C warmer than the record cold June of 1952. June was also the dullest on record in a 95 year long series. In StrathpefferStrathpefferStrathpeffer (Scottish Gaelic: Srath Pheofhair) is a village and spa town in Easter Ross, Highland, Scotland, with a population of 1,469. the mean temperatures in June was -1.1ºC lower than May, but my record only started in 2022. So much for the UKMOUKMOThe 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 saying that temperatures in the first part of the month were nothing unusual. 🤨
June 2024 was the 13th consecutive record warm month globally, in the ERA5ERAERA stands for 'ECMWF Re-Analysis' and refers to a series of research projects at ECMWF which produced various datasets (ERA-Interim, ERA-40, etcetera). series that started in 1979. It was well above the record anomaly that it set in June 2023, but having said that global temperatures are now starting to slide as El NinoEl NiñoEl Niño 'The Boy' is the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and is associated with a band of warm ocean water that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific starts to kick in in the central Pacific. Daily anomalies have already fallen below the magic +1.5°C mark, and 2024 might have well have a job keeping up with records set up only last summer. I would like to confidently predict that June 2024 will be the last record breaking month, but I’ve done that before, and have already lost any street cred that I may have had. 😉
Daily Anomalies
A rolling 365 day moving average of anomalies since pre-industrial times have been above 1.5ºC for all of this year. It’s currently at +1.64ºC and in its third peak since 2015. A 30 year linear trend shows that the average could reach the 1.5°C mark by late 2030.
A mobile, and at times a quite cyclonic month for June across IONAIONAIslands Of North Atlantic.
Yes I know there's an island called Iona, but this is so I don't have to use the term 'British Isles' when referring to the whole of Ireland and the UK. started anticyclonic enough, but the flow steadily veered more northwesterly up until the 11th, when a low tracked slowly eastward from the 14th to the 18th leaving a northerly behind it. The circulation gradually became more southwesterly until the 24th, when a brief anticyclonic couple of days gave way to a low that tracked northeastward across the northwest of the UKUKThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. on 27th & 28th, with winds veering more northwesterly, as high pressure built in from the southwest.
Much lower than average pressure to the north (-8 hPahPaA Hectopascal is the SI unit of pressure and identical to the Millibar), and higher than average pressure in the central Atlantic (+5 hPa), produced a W’NW flow and lower than average temperatures across IONAIONAIslands Of North Atlantic.
Yes I know there's an island called Iona, but this is so I don't have to use the term 'British Isles' when referring to the whole of Ireland and the UK..
Mean temperatures were close to or a little below average across IONAIONAIslands Of North Atlantic.
Yes I know there's an island called Iona, but this is so I don't have to use the term 'British Isles' when referring to the whole of Ireland and the UK.. A cold trough extended SSE from central Greenland, through Iceland and on into Iberia and southern France. Warmer than average air dominated the central Atlantic, and in a band running from northern Scandinavia, down into eastern Russia, Turkey and on into north Africa.
