The mean temperature in January 2023 was 5.2°C in central England which was 1.4°C above the 1659-2020 LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO.. 18 of the 24 January’s this century have been warmer than average. The cold spell in the third week wasn’t able to make up for the very mild first half of the month.
Just as I found in the gridded UK data series 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 that 2022 wasn’t the warmest 12 months on record, I also find that it isn’t the warmest 365 day period in the CETCET Central England Temperature series either. That accolade belongs to the 365 days between the third of May 2006 and the second of May 2007, with a mean temperature of 11.71°C which is far higher than the 11.15°C temperature for the year 2022 in central England. It may not mean much to most people, but I think it makes a bit of a mockery of all the hoo-ha that we’ve had to endure recently from the media about 2022 being the warmest year, when in reality it occurred almost 15 years earlier both in the CET series and the gridded series.
2022 not the warmest 365 days in Central England either Read More »
Dear Diary,
2022 was the warmest year in Central England in a monthly series that started back in 1659, the mean of 11.1°C was +1.7°C above the 1659-2020 LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO.. It’s been on the cards for many months now that 2022 would be the warmest, and thankfully now that it’s finally been confirmed, we can move on to the next extreme. Seriously though Central England is warming at an incredible rate at the moment, the 50 year linear trend is running at +0.258°C per decade, and if it keeps going on like this people will begin to talk.
2022 – warmest year in Central England Read More »
Dear Diary
Believe it, or believe it not diary, the recent cold spell that has just come to an end was the joint sixth longest cold spell since 1772 in Central England. The Gannt chart lists all cold spells that lasted at least 10 days, with daily mean anomalies of -4.9°C or lower. The table on the left lists all cold spells ranked using the dense ranking method. That’s based on anomalies calculated against the 1878-2021 LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO.. It’s no wonder the Daily Mail was getting hot under the collar about the Met OfficeUKMO 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’s response to it and I think it’s longevity caught many people out. Cold spells of that length are not that common, it might not have been as severe as some in the past, but it lasted ten days from the 8th to the 17th of December.
Joint sixth longest cold spell since 1772 Read More »
Dear Diary
After a fiddly bit morning of programming, I can finally reveal that 2022 WILL be the warmest in the Central England daily series which started in 1772. That of course assumes that the rest of the month, from the 11th onward, has anomalies no higher than -3.5°C for each of the next 21 days. That’s not impossible of course, but even after a cold start such as we’ve seen this December, the mean temperature for the first ten days is still only 2.37°C below the December LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO., which would mean that the very low anomalies of the last few days would have to continue for the rest of the month.
If this finding is true for Central England, I think it’s more than likely it’ll be true of the gridded data for the whole 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. as well.
I found it easier to write that small program than to sit down and work it out with pen, paper and calculator, which must say something about how my brain works.
2022 will be the warmest year in Central England Read More »
Dear Diary,
Unsurprisingly, Autumn 2022 [SONSON Meteorological Autumn - September, October and November] ended up the third warmest since 1659 in Central England, with a mean temperature of 12.4°C, which was +2.4°C above the 1659-2020 LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO.. There were only a few colder than average spells with warm spells dominating for long periods.
Autumn 2022 [SON] – Third warmest since 1659 Read More »
Dear Diary,
November 2022 was the joint fifth warmest in Central England since 1659 with a mean temperature of 9.2°C which was 2.8°C higher that the 1659-2020 LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO.. November was the eighteenth month with above average mean temperature in Central England.
November 2022 – Fifth joint warmest since 1659 Read More »
With regard to global temperature the IPCCIPCC The 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. uses the reference period 1850 to 1900 to represent pre-industrial temperature to measure the degree of global warming that has occurred. They say about this reference period in their 2018 report:-
In principle, ‘pre-industrial levels’ could refer to any period of time before the start of the industrial revolution. But the number of direct temperature measurements decreases as we go back in time. Defining a ‘pre-industrial’ reference period is, therefore, a compromise between the reliability of the temperature information and how representative it is of truly pre-industrial conditions. Some pre-industrial periods are cooler than others for purely natural reasons. This could be because of spontaneous climate variability or the response of the climate to natural perturbations, such as volcanic eruptions and variations in the sun’s activity. This IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C uses the reference period 1850–1900 to represent pre-industrial temperature. This is the earliest period with near-global observations and is the reference period used as an approximation of pre-industrial temperatures in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report.
Global Warming of 1.5°C – IPCC Report
I thought I would look and see how the CETCET Central England Temperature series was doing and see if it was getting close to the magic +1.5°C. The daily mean maximum and minimum only began in 1878 so it’s not possible to calculate mean values using this data, but daily mean temperatures are available back to 1772, and so it’s possible to calculate a mean for 1850-1900. It’s also possible to go back further and calculate a mean from 1772-1900, or better still calculate a mean for the period 1772-1850, which in my opinion is a better start for the dawn of the industrial era or the industrial revolution.
The anomalies in the bar chart are larger than you would normally see because I’ve based them on a long-term average for the period 1851-2000. Annual mean anomalies nearly exceeded 1.5°C back n 1949, and in recent years the 1.5°C barrier has been breached at least six times including this year (2022) which looks likely to become the warmest year on record. So we’ve not quite reached the +1.5°C mark globally but we are not far off in central England. I wonder what Gordon Manley would make of it all?
What caused the cooling between 1950 and 1980 in global as well as temperatures in central England? Maybe it was the airborne testing of thermonuclear weapons that followed the second world war and which continued till around 1976 according to Wikipedia. Natural variability or man made? My money’s on the latter in this case.
Warming of 1.5°C in Central England Read More »
The year 2022 is still currently the warmest year in the CETCET Central England Temperature series that started back in 1659. I make the mean temperature up to the 13th of November 12.08°C a massive +1.97°C above the 1961-1990 LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO.. It’s closest rival is the year 2014 with a mean of 11.72°C. I can’t see 2022 being beaten now, the only thing that might stop it is if we get a repeat performance of December 2010, which to be honest looks highly unlikely.
I can count at least twelve new daily maximums that have occurred this year (red diamonds), and another seven new daily high minimums as well. If you like me like snowy winters this graph does make pretty bleak viewing, with few in the way of air frosts.
2022 still on track for warmest year in central England Read More »
