Temperature

Scotland – England | Daily gridded temperatures | 6 Oct 2024 – 6 Jan 2025

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 😉

Climate, Temperature

Scotland – England | Daily gridded temperatures | 6 Oct 2024 – 6 Jan 2025 Read More »

2024 – Weather Summary

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 :-

  • Rather warm everywhere, but very warm across much of England.
  • Wet across central southern England, parts of the Midlands and northwest England, but less wet further north, particularly Northern Ireland, where totals were below average.
  • Rather dull, with below average sunshine in much of the west, but brighter further east, with above average sunshine totals across East Anglia and the far east.
Precipitation, Sunshine, Temperature, Weather Summary

2024 – Weather Summary Read More »

Weather Summary – December 2024

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.

December, Precipitation, Sunshine, Temperature, Weather Summary

Weather Summary – December 2024 Read More »

UK Regional Temperature Data

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.

Climate, Software, Temperature

UK Regional Temperature Data Read More »

October 2024 – Weather Summary

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, Precipitation, Temperature

October 2024 – Weather Summary Read More »

Winter 1963 – Daily MSLP and 500 hPa heights

Christmas Day 12 UTCUTC Coordinated 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).
1979-2023

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.

Winter [DJFDJF Meteorological Winter comprising the months of December, January & February]
1962-63

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.

Circulation, MSLP, Reanalysis, Software, Temperature

Winter 1963 – Daily MSLP and 500 hPa heights 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).

Anomalies, Global Temperatures, Temperature

July 2024 – Temperature Anomalies Read More »

Warm start to spring 2024 in Central England

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 😉

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CET, Software, Temperature

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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..

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Anomalies, BBC, Software, Temperature

A bar chart that shows both temperature and anomaly Read More »

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.

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Anomalies, Temperature

February 2024 – Temperature Read More »

The UK has got warmer, wetter and sunnier since 1995

Using gridded monthly 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 and a simple linear trend for over the last thirty year, it’s easy to see that annually 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 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.

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Precipitation, Sunshine, Temperature, UK

The UK has got warmer, wetter and sunnier since 1995 Read More »

January 2024 – Weather Summary

Courtesy 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
Mean Temperature Anomaly
I make January just slightly colder than average across the whole of 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..
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.
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January, Precipitation, Temperature

January 2024 – Weather Summary Read More »

Sunday, 28 January 2024 | Warmest January day in UK

28 January 2024
Max Temperatures [06-18]

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 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 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 foehnFoehn A 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 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. monthly records, one for December and now one for January
Tweets from the UKMO on the 28th & 29th January 2024
Thermograph 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 UTCUTC Coordinated 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 StrathpefferStrathpeffer Strathpeffer (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 CICSCICS A combination of Cirrus Cirrostratus cloud and some thin lenticular ACAC Altocumulus 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
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January, Scotland, Temperature, Warm

Sunday, 28 January 2024 | Warmest January day in UK Read More »

It’s no wonder northerlies don’t have the bite they once had

The waters around 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. are all still well above average for early January. In fact the southern North Sea is +1.7°C above the LTALTA Long 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 SSTSST Sea Surface Temperatures than they usually are.

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SST, Temperature

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UK 12 month moving averages | 1993-2023

A thirty year linear trend reveals that 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. 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 LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO..

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Precipitation, Sunshine, Temperature

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October 2023 – Weather Summary

Weather Summary

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 POAPOA Percentage 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 StrathpefferStrathpeffer Strathpeffer (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 Wattisham
The interpolation & smoothing used by 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 in producing its 1 x 1 km gridded data seems to have remove the wettest spots such as Wattisham completely
October 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 NENE North East Scotland, and that includes Baltasound in Shetland, mean anomalies were 1°C below the LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO.
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October, Precipitation, Temperature

October 2023 – Weather Summary Read More »

October 2023 – Mean temperature Anomalies

Another very warm month across the Arctic. Warm in S Europe & NENE North East America, but rather cold across Central N America and Scandinavia.
North-south temperature gradient very evident 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..

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Anomalies, Temperature

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