Anomalies

January 2025 – Temperature anomalies

An exceptionally mild January across northern Quebec (+13°C), much colder further south across the southern United States (-4°C). Europe, particularly further east, was very mild with a large area of warm anomalies (+6°C) centred across eastern Russia. Anomalies across the Atlantic were generally closer to average, but it was slightly warmer than average to the east of Iberia, and slightly colder to the north of Iceland.

February 3, 2025

Anomalies, Global Temperatures, January

January 2025 – Temperature anomalies Read More »

December 2024 – MSLP anomalies

December 2024 was a month dominated by very much higher than average pressure in the central North Atlantic (+14 hPahPa A Hectopascal is the SI unit of pressure and identical to the Millibar). The resulting strong and broad, west southwesterly flow, stretched right from Canada in the west, across the North Atlantic and Baltic, and on into Siberia in the east. There’s little wonder that December turned out to be one of the mildest on record in IONAIONA Islands 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..

January 3, 2025

Anomalies, Circulation, MSLP

December 2024 – MSLP anomalies Read More »

December 2024 – Temperature Anomalies

A bridge between two large positive temperature anomalies, one in the west of in Hudson Bay (+11°C), the other in the east in the Kara Sea (+7°C), spanned the North Atlantic in December. Either side was generally cooler, Southern Greenland was anomalously cold (-5°C), as was much of the southern North Atlantic, Mediterranean and near East. Anomalies across IONAIONA Islands 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. in the bridge were a toasty +1.6°C above the LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO..

January 3, 2025

Anomalies, December, Global Temperatures

December 2024 – Temperature Anomalies Read More »

Temperature Anomalies – November 2024

A very bland kind of month temperature wise across much of NW Europe. In the UKUK The 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. a mild first half to November was cancelled out by a colder second half. The central Atlantic was above average, but both to the north and south it was a little colder than average.

December 3, 2024

Anomalies, November, Temperature

Temperature Anomalies – November 2024 Read More »

Sep 2024 – Temp Anomalies

A month at first glance dominated by colder than average temperatures. Yet another cold month across Iceland, with what’s fast becoming the normal NW-SE temperature gradient across the British Isles.

October 3, 2024

Anomalies, September, Temperature

Sep 2024 – Temp Anomalies Read More »

August 2024 – Temperature

A lot of strange goings on in mean temperature anomalies for August across this part of the northern hemisphere. One of them was a belt of colder than average temperatures that extended from the central Asia southwest across Pakistan, and then on westward across sub Saharan Africa. Another was the more intense pockets of cold air across British Columbia and Iceland. The North Atlantic was a little colder than average north of 55N, but much warmer than that to the south (+2C), the UKUK The 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. again ending up sandwiched again in a NW-SE temperature gradient.

September 4, 2024

Anomalies, August, Global Temperatures

August 2024 – Temperature Read More »

July 2024 – Temperature Anomalies

Mean temperatures across the British Isles were close to the LTALTA Long 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).

August 3, 2024

Anomalies, Global Temperatures, Temperature

July 2024 – Temperature Anomalies Read More »

July 2024 – MSLP

Pressure was lower (-3 hPahPa A 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.

August 3, 2024

Anomalies, July, MSLP

July 2024 – MSLP Read More »

June 2024 – Mean Pressure and anomalies

Much lower than average pressure to the north (-8 hPahPa A 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 IONAIONA Islands 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..

July 2, 2024

Anomalies, June, MSLP

June 2024 – Mean Pressure and anomalies Read More »

June 2024 – Mean Temperature anomalies

Mean temperatures were close to or a little below average across IONAIONA Islands 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.

July 2, 2024

Anomalies, Global Temperatures, June

June 2024 – Mean Temperature anomalies Read More »

April 2024 – MSLP

The resident Icelandic low for April was displaced southeastward again this month by higher than average pressure across Greenland, and lower than average pressure in the northern North Sea, leaving the British Isles in a slack cyclonic westerly flow on the mean pressure chart.

May 5, 2024

Anomalies, April, MSLP

April 2024 – MSLP Read More »

April 2024 – Mean temperature anomalies

Temperatures betwixt and between across the British Isles once again.

May 5, 2024

Anomalies, April, Temperature

April 2024 – Mean temperature anomalies Read More »

Spring 2024 – Abnormal warmth in central Europe

Is it possible to get a heatwave in Spring? I beleive it is, and it seems to have already happened at least once since the start of astronomical spring in central Europe. I reckon that maximum temperatures anomalies of 10°C above the LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO. constitute a heatwave day. The definition of a heatwave of course is that these high temperatures should occur for at least three consecutive days or more. So the charts I’ve constructed are just a simple count of days with anomalies higher than 10°C. I’ve not any deep research into this, but have just added a chart for 2023 for a comparison. I think, like a lot of others do, that with global surface temperatures and North Atlantic SSTSST Sea Surface Temperatures being at unprecedented high levels as they are at present this is portentous, and summer across mainland Europe could see a record number of severe heatwave events and the risks that this brings. Hopefully I’m proved wrong, and surges of warm air flooding up from the tropics won’t occur too frequently.

2 April 2024

The exceptional heatwave across Belarus, Ukraine & E Russia continued this lunchtime, with anomalies as high as +19°C, the highest I’ve seen. Juxtaposed with the very cold air across Finland, Sweden and northern Norway.

March 2024 – Temperature Anomalies

The curious thing in March was that although Atlantic SSTSST Sea Surface Temperatures were at record high levels, the air above it (in the central Atlantic at least) was 2 degrees colder than average.

March 2024 – MSLP anomalies

Look no further for a reason for all the depressing cloudy, mild & wet weather in March 2024. The anomalous Icelandic low that’s a resident feature of anomaly charts in any month of the year, decided to take a holiday.

A bar chart that shows both temperature and anomaly

For people who can’t get their heads around anomalies I’ve made a slight variation on just a simple bar chart of anomalies. The twist is that it now displays both daily temperatures and anomalies, temperatures on the left Y axis and anomalies on the right Y axis. My BBCBBC The 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. NWPNWP Numerical weather prediction uses mathematical models of the atmosphere and oceans to predict the weather based on current weather conditions. application downloads forecast data the BBC use in their own weather app, and parses the HTML and extracts hourly and daily forecast values for each site. I’ve kept the same scale for the extremes in each charts Y axis for each site I display in the grid to aid comparison. So you can now quickly see at a glance the forecast temperature and how it compares with the LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO..

February 2024 – Temperature

2024 saw an exceptionally mild February across much of Europe, the warmth centred across the eastern Alps (+7°C). It was a little colder than average across to the northwest of Iceland (-2°C), which help produce a tight SE-NW temperature gradient across the IONAIONA Islands 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. which and was evident for much of the month. It wasn’t just Europe that was very mild, much of North America, away from the extreme west, was also anomalously warm (+6°C) during February.

January 2024 | Circulation

Temperatures across IONAIONA Islands 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. were close to average in January. I suspect the mean MSLPMSLP Mean 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. chart is not telling us the full story, because with a mean flow like this, you might have expected temperatures to have been well above average.

If you turn up the granularity the pentad mean pressure charts reveals why January wasn’t much milder. The 7th to 11th was cold and anticyclonic, the 12th to 16th NW’ly and the 17th to 31st was a milder W or SW’ly.

3 January 2024 – Temperature anomalies

The cold air across Scandinavia still won’t relinquish its hold in early January, and we are left with a topsy-turvy anomaly chart, with a belt of warm anomalous air extending from the Atlantic, northeastward across Iceland and into the Arctic Ocean. Either side of this belt of very mild air, across northern Europe and Greenland, anomalies are as low as -17°C in Finland, and -22°C in western Russia. The paradox is that globally, temperatures are still at record high levels never seen before, well at least since 1850 when records started.

UK Precipitation – 2023

Using the UKPUKP UKP is a gridded datasets of UK regional precipitation. daily rainfall data 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 it looks like Northern Scotland has still the lowest POAPOA Percentage Of Average of all Regions In the UKUK The 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. at 103.7%. The line series in the graph for the other regions in the UK are more amplified and wetter, with the Central region of England having the highest 133.4% POA. This time last year Central region were ~87%. It looks like 2023 started close to average and just steadily got wetter.

Global Temperatures – December 2023

With large parts of the world anomalously warm, the cold belt stretching from Greenland, across Scandinavia and on eastward into Siberia and China persisted. In the UKUK The 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. this cold belt to the north enhanced the N-S thermal gradient, thanks in no small part to a warm tongue of positive anomalies extending NW from the Balkans, no doubt the result of the many warm sectors that affected southern areas of the UK during the month. Temperature anomalies of 9°C above the LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO. across North America were nothing short of extraordinary.

November 2023 – Mean Pressure

In November it looks like the semi-permanent Icelandic low decided to do some early Christmas shopping and head southeast towards Scotland. Thanks to blocking, from Greenland across to northern Scandinavia, for much of the month, anomalies were low from Denmark to eastern Russia (-12 hPahPa A Hectopascal is the SI unit of pressure and identical to the Millibar) and higher (+8 hPa) to the northeast of Iceland. Much of the cyclonic activity in the first half of the month took place at latitude 50° north, the North Atlantic’s answer to the roaring forties. 😉

Here’s a closer look at the daily charts and associated LWTLWT Lamb Weather Types are often used in UK-based analyses, with individual weather patterns based on the eight primary cardinal directions (N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW) plus cyclonic (C), anticyclonic (A) and unclassified (U) types. and GIGI Gale Index.