December 2024 was a very wet and a rather mild month in StrathpefferStrathpeffer Strathpeffer (Scottish Gaelic: Srath Pheofhair) is a village and spa town in Easter Ross, Highland, Scotland, with a population of 1,469. with almost 9 inches of rain.
Strathpeffer – December 2024 Read More »
Here are charts I generate from a program I have that calculates gridded temperature extremes for any region based on their WMOWMO The World Meteorological Organisation is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for promoting international cooperation on atmospheric science, climatology, hydrology and geophysics. location. At the moment that’s just Wales, Ireland, Scotland, England and 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.. It’s pretty crude, because it depends on a mix of available stations be it coastal or inland, but if they don’t change, and they don’t, and I ignore mountain stations, and there are no more than four of those, the results look pretty good, at least for comparison purposes.
Here are the results for the three months up to the 6th of January 2025. As you can see, there have already been at least two significant cold spells this Autumn and Winter, both were colder and longer in Scotland than they were in England, and that’s usually how things are, in a northerly.
But despite the ‘floodgates to an Arctic blarst’ being opened in the far north, it maybe a day, sometime even longer before the cold weather reaches the south, and 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. Weather and 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 finally take notice.
This has happened multiple times each winter since we’ve returned to Scotland, and bugs me every single time. There, I’ve got it off my chest now, my therapist will be delighted 😉
Scotland – England | Daily gridded temperatures | 6 Oct 2024 – 6 Jan 2025 Read More »
The climate across 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. during 2024 was :-
2024 – Weather Summary Read More »
December was a very mild month across 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., the fifth warmest in the UK to be exact since 1884, with a mean temperature of 6.2°C, that was +2.0°C above the 1991-2020 LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO.. Rainfall totals were closer to average though, at 110% of the POAPOA Percentage Of Average, the wetter weather in the north balancing out the drier weather across the south. It was a very dull month across the board, sunshine totals were the fourth lowest since 1910, at just 57% of the POA.
Weather Summary – December 2024 Read More »
Rather than look at climate data for a single station for month, season or year, I thought it might be useful if you could look at climate data for all available stations for a specific region. It’s easy enough to filter stations for a particular region using their WMOWMO The World Meteorological Organisation is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for promoting international cooperation on atmospheric science, climatology, hydrology and geophysics. number, that’s supposing there are enough stations in that region to calculate a meaningful value for. So for 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., I can now look at temperatures and anomalies for England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, or for the whole of them combined, for any given period. It’s crude, but more effective that you might think. The above charts are for the three months prior to Christmas Day 2024 for the whole of the UK and Ireland, in this case that’s data from an average 136 stations each day, which excludes all stations of 300M amslAMSL The height Above Mean Sea Level. and above. I’ll get back to you on accuracy of this simple method, when I’ve run some verification tests against regional 1.5 km gridded 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.
UK Regional Temperature Data Read More »
Using the objective 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. as a guide, the most anticyclonic December since 1871 across the British Isles occurred as recently as 1991.
Despite being so anticyclonic, 1991 only managed #41 driest December 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. since 1836, with a total of 83 mm of precipitation (65% of average). A much drier December occurred more recently in the cold December of 2010, when just 47 mm fell (37% of the 1991-2020 long-term average).
The most anticyclonic December Read More »
The long-running England & Wales Precipitation [EWPEWP The England Wales Precipitation series began in 1766 and is the longest instrumental series of this kind in the world.] series began in 1766, and is the longest instrumental series of this kind in the world. It’s part of the HadUKP series of datasets of 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. regional precipitation. Here are five charts of seasonal and annual totals from 1766 to 2024. To each of them I’ve added a 10 year centred moving average, along with a linear trend from 1766 to 2024. Data for Autumn 2024 isn’t in yet, but I’ll update it when it has. Basically in the last 258 years precipitation across England and Wales:-
England Wales Precipitation – Seasonal Trends since 1766 Read More »
Surprisingly, October ended up a rather average kind of month as far as sunshine, precipitation and temperature were concerned for 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. as whole. Regionally, the northwest was drier than average, and the northeast sunnier than average. Mean temperature anomalies across the nation, which were slightly above the LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO., were within 0.3°C of each other. As Greavies would remark, it’s a funny old game Saint😜
October 2024 – Weather Summary Read More »
This post is more of a reminder to myself about an application I wrote to display a grid of charts it downloads from Wetterzentrale. You can choose to display CFSCFS The Climate Forecast System or coupled forecast system (CFS) is a medium to long range numerical weather prediction and a climate model run by the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) to bridge weather and climate timescales. Version 2 became operational as CFSv2 in 2011., ERAERA ERA stands for 'ECMWF Re-Analysis' and refers to a series of research projects at ECMWF which produced various datasets (ERA-Interim, ERA-40, etcetera). or NOAANOAA NOAA is an agency in the Department of Commerce that maps the oceans and conserves their living resources; predicts changes to the earth's environment; provides weather reports and forecasts floods and hurricanes and other natural disasters related to weather. reanalysis charts either as charts of isobars overlaid over colour filled contours of 500 hPahPa A Hectopascal is the SI unit of pressure and identical to the Millibar heights, or as charts of isolines of 850 hPa geopotential heights, overlaid on colour filled contours of 850 hPa temperature. I think it produces a pretty useful grid of charts to view a month, or a season, but in truth I haven’t used it that much in the last 12 years. The example above displays surface pressure charts for Christmas day.
The grid of images above, is for daily 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. and daily 500 hPa geopotential heights for each day of the infamous winter of 1962-63.
The other innovative thing that I added to the application, was a colour analyser (above image). This does a lookup on the colour of each pixel across the map of the British Isles in the downloaded image, and calculates an overall average which it uses to plot a graph and fill a table with the daily 850 hPa temperature or the 500 hPa geopotential height. A crude but quite effect way of gauging just how warm or cold it is on any given day.
There are problems with the app, but out of my control, in that Wetterzentrale for some years, use a slightly different resolution and size for their images. I could fix it but it’s fiddly. They also seem now not to load the ERA reanalysis images on their server. Who knows for how much longer they’ll maintain the CFS and NOAA images, it would be a real loss if this went.
Winter 1963 – Daily MSLP and 500 hPa heights Read More »
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.
Sep 2024 – Temp Anomalies Read More »
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).
July 2024 – Temperature Anomalies Read More »
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 StrathpefferStrathpeffer Strathpeffer (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!
State of the UK Climate 2023 Read More »
Anyone who is fortunate to have a Davis Vantage Pro2 AWSAWS Automatic Weather Station as I do, know only too well, that the software it comes with doesn’t present the climate data it collects at all well. I’ve made a new unit in my VP DelphiDelphi Delphi is a general-purpose programming language and a software product that uses the Delphi dialect of the Object Pascal programming language and provides an integrated development environment for rapid application development of desktop, mobile, web, and console software. application, to graph temperature data a little more clearly. I recently came across some LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO. data for StrathpefferStrathpeffer Strathpeffer (Scottish Gaelic: Srath Pheofhair) is a village and spa town in Easter Ross, Highland, Scotland, with a population of 1,469., I don’t think it’s been calculated from real weather data but probably derived from gridded monthly climate data 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 make available. I mention this LTA data because it enables me to calculate anomalies, something dear to my heart. Anomalies let you gauge how the climates been performing, whether a day has been hot or cold, or a month or season wet or dry, in your own back garden.
The lower chart shows mean anomalies for the last 90 days for Strathpeffer, and clearly shows why May 2024 was a record warm month in northern Scotland. The top chart shows temperatures for the last year, and by dragging the yellow coloured box you can replot the lower graph to show the anomalies for the period you are interested. The width of the yellow box can also be adjusted with the mouse as well.
Next unit precipitation.😉
Davis Vantage Pro2 Read More »
You may have noticed the media backlash to this weeks news that May 2024 was the warmest 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. since at least 1883. I think the ferocity of the backlash surprised most people at the 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. and 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.
For the first half of May, the warmest of the weather occurred across northern Scotland, and because 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 BBC have a seemingly inbuilt reluctance to report extremes for places other than in the south of England, news of +6°C anomalies didn’t get much of a mention, either on Twitter/X, in YouTube videos or in TV forecasts.
Here are just a few of my Tweets from the middle of May to try and highlight the exceptional early warmth across the Highlands:
I believe one of the main reasons for the backlash is the inability of the UKMO and BBC to monitor evolving climate stories across the UK. If the UKMO had incorporated climate news, similar to some of my Tweets, at the start of their ‘Deep Dives’, ’10 Day Trends’ or video forecasts, and the BBC had done the same in ‘Weather For The Week Ahead’, then news of a record warm May might not have come as such a big surprise!
Media backlash to warmest May on record Read More »
According to gridded climate 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, 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. was warmer and wetter than average, as well as being warmer and duller than average in Spring [MAMMAM Meteorological Spring comprising the months of March, April & May] of 2024.
Spring [MAM] 2024 – UK Correlations Read More »
Just a couple of hyetographs so far this year to compare precipitation totals at Loch Glascarnoch in Wester Ross with those at Gogarbank Edinburgh further south. The difference is very marked, with only 87.7% of the LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO. in the north and 169% of the LTA in the south during the first five months of 2024. That large Edinburgh total is probably due in part to a couple of thundery days that occurred in April and May. Having said that, I’m sure that the tracks of the numerous lows and their frontal systems has much more to do with it.
Jan-May 2024: Disparity in precipitation across Scotland Read More »
There’s been a lot of talk about how climate change is resulting in wetter seasonal rainfall across 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.. You’ve all heard the mantra “A warmer atmosphere is capable of holding more water vapour”, almost as cliched, but not quite as elegant as the definition of a jet stream being “A fast moving ribbon of air high up in the atmosphere”. Here are a few graphs of UK and regional 30 year moving averages that I’ve drawn 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 UKPUKP UKP is a gridded datasets of UK regional precipitation. gridded climate data to illustrate what’s been going on since 1836.
I’ve added two linear trends to the annual UK precipitation graph, one for the 1865-1993 period and the second for the last 30 years from 1994 to 2023. You’ll immediately notice a dramatic increase in UK annual precipitation since 1980. You could argue that we’ve seen upticks like this before (1860-1885 and 1915-1930), and this is one is just the result of the natural variability of the climate as they were. I don’t think so though because this increase has been going on for over 40 years and shows no sign of running out of energy and linked with increases in global temperatures during the same period can’t be coincidental. The size of the linear trend suggests that annually the UK is getting wetter at the rate of almost exactly 1″ per decade, not a lot, but it’s the change in the rate that’s more important.
Winter [DJFDJF Meteorological Winter comprising the months of December, January & February] precipitation shows a similar increase from around 1995.
Summer [JJAJJA Meteorological Summer comprising the months June, July & August] rainfall is more dramatic still, with a steady decline in rainfall suddenly being reversed in the last 20 years.
Finally here’s a grid of monthly averages and trends for the UK. As you can see not all months are getting dramatically wetter. Some regions are showing little sign of getting wetter than they have been in the years up until 1993, January, April, November and December for example, whilst March and September have become a little drier in the last 30 years. I’ll leave you to make your minds up about the underlying reason for it. 😉
Recent uptick in UK Precipitation Read More »
Temperatures betwixt and between across the British Isles once again.
April 2024 – Mean temperature anomalies Read More »
I’ve just refreshed the three graphs in an application I use to calculate a simple 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. index with from gridded reanalysis 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. data I download from NOAANOAA NOAA is an agency in the Department of Commerce that maps the oceans and conserves their living resources; predicts changes to the earth's environment; provides weather reports and forecasts floods and hurricanes and other natural disasters related to weather.. We still await a second major NAO event in 2024 that will hopefully break the prolonged spell of mobile and cyclonic weather we’ve been experiencing since the middle of January. Maybe this anticyclone over 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. forecast for this weekend will be the start of it. 🤨
Latest NAO-CET-UKP Read More »
I’ve redesigned how I visualise moving averages in my Daily CETCET Central England Temperature program to generate a user definable moving average graph of daily CET values since 1772, this ended up being something of a job because now I dynamically plot over 250 annual ‘silver’ coloured line series, one for each year, as a backdrop. Over this backdrop I plot a 30 day moving mean for the year (dashed black), along with its corresponding +1/-1 standard deviations (dashed red and blue lines). On top of that I plot the coldest (bold blue) and the warmest (bold red) 30 day period ending 13th of April. Finally, I plot the 30 day moving average for the last 365 days (bold black with yellow outline), and at the same time I list the latest values in a ranked table on the left.
With it, I make the latest 30 day mean temperature 10.57°C for the 13th of April, that’s the warmest 30 day period for that date in the series since 1772, and 3.53°C above the LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO. for 1772-2023. As you can see n the graph and the table this is significantly higher that the previous warmest of 9.79°C in 2017. Hopefully all this new code is producing accurate results 😉
Warm start to spring 2024 in Central England Read More »
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.
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 – Temperature Anomalies Read More »
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..
A bar chart that shows both temperature and anomaly Read More »
