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 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. 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.
Basically a wet and very mild February across the south and southeast of England, but colder and drier further north and west. Dull across England and Wales but brighter further north and east further north and west particularly the northeast of Scotland.
There’s been a steady decline in the number of air frosts occuring in Winter [DJFDJFMeteorological Winter comprising the months of December, January & February] 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. since 1960. In the southeast of England the decline in the last 64 years has been at the rate of 1.8 days per decade or 11.3 days. In the north of Scotland the decline has been somewhat slower at the rate of 1.4 days per decade or 8.6 days overall.
The climate record for air frosts only extends back to 1960 in the gridded form. I’m quite sure it could easily be extended back to at least 1884 by 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, but they obviously don’t seem to find the time or enthusiasm to get around to it. You would think that the work would be trivial, since they must already have gridded daily night time minimum data, perhaps they’re hoping for a crowd sourced group of volunteers to step in and do it for them.
The 365 day UKPUKPUKP is a gridded datasets of UK regional precipitation. total precipitation for Central England is still at record levels (149.9% of the LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO.) at the end of February 2024, as are the totals in the Northwest, Northeast & Southeast regions of England. Northern Scotland is the driest region and continues to run close to average as it’s done for the last year or more. We passed Loch Glascarnoch earlier this week on our way to Ullapool and I have never seen it as full as it is.
The 365 day UKPUKPUKP is a gridded datasets of UK regional precipitation. regional precipitation totals are running at record high levels at the moment. Never since the start of the gridded daily records in 1931 have 365 day totals been as high as they are on the 23 February 2024 for Central England, Eastern Scotland, Northern Ireland and England Wales. Anomalies for Central England for example are at 149.3% of the 1981-2010 LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO.. Hopefully I’ve got all my maths and my coding right 😉
The red ringed cells mark the highest 365 day totals for this region.Northern Scotland still has the lowest 365 day anomaly (105.2%).
I reworked an old application last week that I use to generate a simple six hourly North Atlantic Oscillation from NCEPNCEPThe United States National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) delivers national and global weather, water, climate and space weather guidance, forecasts, warnings and analyses to its Partners and External User Communities. reanalysis data that I download. It’s simple, nothing complicated using geopotential heights at 500 hPahPaA Hectopascal is the SI unit of pressure and identical to the Millibar or anything like that, just the pressure difference between 65N 25W and 37.5N 25W. A well as plotting the NAONAOThe 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. I also add charts of the daily mean anomaly from the CETCETCentral England Temperature series, along with the England Wales rainfall from the daily UKPUKPUKP is a gridded datasets of UK regional precipitation. series, both of which I download from 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. As you can see in winter at least there is a strong correlation between the NAO and CET & UKP. I’ll add more viewers to examine the correlation, so much to do, and so little time, as the Joker said.
Using gridded monthly climate data from 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 and a simple linear trend for over the last thirty year, it’s easy to see that annually 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. as a whole has become warmer by 0.29°C per decade, wetter by 26 mm per decade and sunnier by 30 hours per decade. These three charts are twelve month moving averages from 1970, with a thirty year linear trend from 1995 to gauge the change overlaid.
Courtesy 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 StrategyMean Temperature Anomaly I make January just slightly colder than average across the whole 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..Extreme maximum and minimum A month of sharp contrasts in extreme temperature.Number of Air Frosts and Ice Days A fairly even distribution of air frosts across the country.Close to average generally, but much wetter across the north of England and drier further west and far north. I’m skeptical of no returns in snow so take many of these values with a pinch of salt.
Sunday the 28th of January 2024 was an interesting day across the Northwest of Scotland. The manual maximum temperature reading of 19.9°C at Achfary in Sutherland caught 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 out completely, it was only yesterday that they were predicting the highest temperature today would be 16°C in the north of Wales, with a high of only 14°C forecast for the north of Scotland. It seems they have some serious problems forecasting temperatures in foehnFoehnA foehn, is a type of dry, relatively warm, downslope wind that occurs in the lee (downwind side) of a mountain range. It is a rain shadow wind that results from the subsequent adiabatic warming of air that has dropped most of its moisture on windward slopes (see orographic lift). As a consequence of the different adiabatic lapse rates of moist and dry air, the air on the leeward slopes becomes warmer than equivalent elevations on the windward slopes. conditions like these in their mesoscale model. Provisionally, the 19.9°C at Achfary exceeded the old record of 18.3°C by a whopping 1.6°C.
Interestingly, Achfary now holds two maximum 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. monthly records, one for December and now one for JanuaryTweets from the UKMO on the 28th & 29th January 2024Thermograph for Loch Glascarnoch A diurnal range of 19.8°C from a max of 17.4°C to a min of -2.4°C.Comparison of the maximum anomalies on Sunday [06-18] with the minimum ones on Sunday night [18-06]
There was also a strange area of moderate/heavy rain which developed across central Scotland on the radar during the early afternoon, well ahead of the cold front that was just coming into the Western Isles at 1455 UTCUTCCoordinated Universal Time or UTC is the primary time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time. It is within about 1 second of mean solar time (such as UT1) at 0° longitude (at the IERS Reference Meridian as the currently used prime meridian) and is not adjusted for daylight saving time. It is effectively a successor to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).. In StrathpefferStrathpefferStrathpeffer (Scottish Gaelic: Srath Pheofhair) is a village and spa town in Easter Ross, Highland, Scotland, with a population of 1,469. it produced large spots of rain from 1330 UTC, and a spell of moderate rain just before 15 UTC. The rain seemed to be falling out of blue sky at times, and even at 15 UTC there was only seven oktas of thin CICSCICSA combination of Cirrus Cirrostratus cloud and some thin lenticular ACACAltocumulus clouds are generally associated with settled weather and will normally appear white or grey with shading.
Height of base: 7,000 - 18,000 ft
Shape: Bands or areas of individual cells
Latin: altum - height; cumulus - heap
Altocumulus clouds are small mid-level layers or patches of clouds, called cloudlets, which most commonly exist in the shape of rounded clumps. There are many varieties of altocumulus, however, meaning they can appear in a range of shapes. Altocumulus are made up of a mix of ice and water, giving them a slightly more ethereal appearance than the big and fluffy lower level cumulus. in the sky. The wind in the tops of the trees must have been close to force six from 270° so all I can assume it was being blown a very long way. The only thing I can think that caused it was an upper cold front running ahead and parallel to the cold front.
Saharan dust producing this peachy coloured high level CICS Courtesy of @HighlandWeather
The waters around 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. are all still well above average for early January. In fact the southern North Sea is +1.7°C above the LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO., and has been for some considerable time. It’s no wonder when we do get a cold Arctic northerly or a continental easterly, why temperatures are even more attenuated by the SSTSSTSea Surface Temperatures than they usually are.
Using the UKPUKPUKP is a gridded datasets of UK regional precipitation. daily rainfall data from 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 it looks like Northern Scotland has still the lowest POAPOAPercentage Of Average of all Regions 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. 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.
A thirty year linear trend reveals that 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. has become steadily warmer, wetter and sunnier in the last 30 years. The latest 12 month average at the end of December shows that the UK is currently running close to average for sunshine at 102%, but 111% for precipitation, whilst temperatures for the last 12 months are +0.81°C above the 1991-2020 LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO..
Most regions in the last year have been between 10% and 25% wetter than average, all regions that is apart from northern Scotland which has been slightly drier. The whole series is tipped on its head with the northeast, central and southeast regions much wetter than average. All thanks are probably due to a south shifted jetstream for long spells since the end of June.
The curious thing is in a record warm world why has it been so cold in the last month in our bit of it? Answers on a postcard to the editor if you please.
A perfect example this month of how gridded climate data, even when interpolated onto a 1 km x 1 km fine grid, can make some places drier and warmer that they really where.
Wettest Octobers 1836-2023 Rather Surprisingly, only E Scotland had a record wet month in the gridded regional data.Oct 2023 Rainfall POAPOAPercentage Of Average I’m not convinced with the contouring. I’ve never looked at it in detail before It’s neither caught the 228% in StrathpefferStrathpefferStrathpeffer (Scottish Gaelic: Srath Pheofhair) is a village and spa town in Easter Ross, Highland, Scotland, with a population of 1,469. (dark blue) or the 219% at Tain, and seems to have completely missed the 408% at WattishamThe interpolation & smoothing used by 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 in producing its 1 x 1 km gridded data seems to have remove the wettest spots such as Wattisham completelyOctober 2023 Mean temperature anomalies Strange, several stations with anomalies of -0.5°C or lower across the Scotland not registering as a blue contour fill including Baltasound“though areas further north were generally closer to average”. Not quite accurate statement for some places across NENENorth East Scotland, and that includes Baltasound in Shetland, mean anomalies were 1°C below the LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO.
Another very warm month across the Arctic. Warm in S Europe & NENENorth East America, but rather cold across Central N America and Scandinavia. North-south temperature gradient very evident 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..
The Oxford Radcliffe Observatory have finally decided to release their daily climate readings they’ve been making since 1815, you can download the CSVCSVA data file using Comma Separated Variable format. file for it from here. I tried emailing them for many years urging them to do this, but I never got a reply. It seems bizarre to me that in a warming world like ours why they would be so protective of what is one of the longest temperature series in the world. They’re not giving that much away just 75,726 days of maximum, minimum, grass minimum, rainfall and sunshine values, but if you like me love climate data, then it’s like you’ve stumbled on the mother lode. They could have included snow days, even perhaps days of thunder, gale or fog. I see that Ed Hawkins has now got a load of volunteers to digitise and add daily pressure readings from 1828 and 1856. It will be interesting to see whether that spurs the observatory on to updating the latest CSV file beyond the 30th of April 2022 to include 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., I know my recent email has fell on deaf ears once again. I’ve kind of worked up with the coding because it’s very disappointing that the data is not updated on a regular basis. Here are some screenshots from some of the other viewers in my Oxford Climate Viewer windows application, it’s amazing what you can do with such little data.😉
Daily Precipitation Viewer and the wet Winter [DJFDJFMeteorological Winter comprising the months of December, January & February] of 2020-21Daily Sunshine and the Summer [JJAJJAMeteorological Summer comprising the months June, July & August] of 1976Daily Temperature viewer and the cold Winter [DJF] of 1962-63January frost frequency 1815-2022365 day average mean temperatures 1991-2022 Showing a warming of 0.12°C per decade in that time *must fix that titleAutumn [SONSONMeteorological Autumn - September, October and November] precipitation 1826-2022 Wetter by 2.7 mm/decade in that timeAnnual mean temperatures 1815-2022 A rise of 0.09°C/decade in the last 207 years Finally an Annual, Seasonal and Monthly Grid viewer.
The observatory Site
These three images from Google show how the enclosure at the observatory looks these days. It appears that they may have been hosting the Great British Bake Off in that marquee when Google came snooping around for these picture. It’s no wonder the temperatures that day were so high, especially when Prue Leith thought she would demonstrate how to flambe one of her deserts. Seriously though the observatory has been surrounded by houses and streets from early Victorian times, so I acn’t see that urbanisation of the immediate site has ever been that big a problem because it’s also been urbanised.
Just a quick note to make a note about how late an Autumn it’s been in 2023. Its now past mid October, and many trees here in StrathpefferStrathpefferStrathpeffer (Scottish Gaelic: Srath Pheofhair) is a village and spa town in Easter Ross, Highland, Scotland, with a population of 1,469. are still have more green leaves than they do brown, and although the Service and Birch tree have lost most of their leaves, others have not. I witnessed late, even very late Autumns in Devon over the years, but not here in Scotland since we returned five years ago. Why is Autumn late? Simple enough, summer was pushed into September and early October by a rather cold mid-summer as these anomaly charts show. The numbers in the pink boxes by the way are the mean anomalies for the gridded temperatures for the whole map, the graph is for temperatures at the grid point 57.5N 5W, the closest to home. It does make you wonder if meteorological summer should now be a four month period rather than a three which also includes September, whilst Autumn should now include December. By the way the title of that graph should read Mean Temperatures and not anomalies and another thing to put right.
One country in Europe that’s bucked the trend of a warm summer in 2023 was Iceland. I’ve noticed this in the monthly anomaly charts for mean temperature that I produce, so I decided to spruce up my chart grid viewer to see if I was right in my assumption, and as you can see in this chart of weekly mean anomalies I was. What caused it is may have been persistent high pressure across the Greenland ice cap to the northwest of Iceland, and a shift southward of the Icelandic low, which in turn allowed more days of northerly or north-westerly flows and hence the lower than average temperatures.
It’s not easy to verify these findings because even the Icelandic 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 site offers no real clues to how they categorised this summer’s temperatures. If you’re by any chance reading this in Iceland, please let me know how you found it😉
I was watching the Deep Dive video produced by 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, and presented so well by Alex Deakin about the weather in September 2023 on Youtube as you do. He showed two anomaly charts for 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., one for the first half of September and the other for the second half that showed how anomaly charts for the whole month can sometimes be misleading. In this case it was how the remarkable warm spell in the first half of the month contrasted with the more mobile second half. The resulting anomaly chart for the whole of the September cancelled out the anticyclonic SE’ly in the first half that brought all the high temperatures.
The mean temperature for 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 September 2023 in the gridded series was 15.2°C which equalled that of 2006.
I have added a new viewer to my 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. climate application to display estimated daily temperatures for the whole 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.. I use as many daily reported maximum and minimum temperatures from WMOWMOThe World Meteorological Organisation is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for promoting international cooperation on atmospheric science, climatology, hydrology and geophysics. stations 03001 to 03950 as I can to calculate a UK mean for all stations below 250 M amslAMSLThe height Above Mean Sea Level.. That equates to around 120 observations each day. Nowhere near as accurate as the 1 km x 1 km gridded estimates from 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, but good enough for me. As you can see it picks out the two heatwaves that have occurred this year. It does look like my estimates maybe just two high though, because mean temperatures in both July and August were much close to average than this. That’s not really that surprising because its totally dependent on an even spread of site location, but they tend to be further south and coastal sites. I suppose that I could use all available sites, even those on mountains, and adjust their temperatures down to sea level.
Autumn 1959 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. & 500 hPahPaA Hectopascal is the SI unit of pressure and identical to the Millibar gph
I can already see a few similarities in the first week of September with the memorable September of 1959. September 1959 had the third longest anticyclonic spell in the whole objective LWTLWTLamb 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. series that began in 1871. The heatwave in the first week of September 2023 looks poised to break a number of CETCETCentral England Temperature record maximum temperatures that were set in 1959. In 1959 as well as possible heatwave conditions occurring between the 7th and 12th of September in central England, a second warm spell occurred between the 3rd and 7th of October. It will be interesting to see just how anticyclonic September 2023 proves to be, and if November turns out to be as cyclonic as that of 1959.
Autumn 1959 [SONSONMeteorological Autumn - September, October and November] Daily Central England TemperaturesAutumn 1959 [SON] Objective LWTSeptember 1884-2022 Ranked Highest Mean Maximum Temperature
