Months

August 2023 – Global temperatures

_{^{August
DIYDIY Do It Yourself Global temperature series
1948-2023}}

Not content with having the warmest July on record, 2023 has now produced the warmest August on record too. Although it’s not quite as warm a month as July was, it easily beat the August of 2016 into second place. The years 2016 and 2023 are neck and neck at the moment for the warmest year on record, but I think there can be little doubt that 2023 could end up being the warmest year even though there are still four months to go.😮
Of course global temperatures could slump in the next four month. At the moment in my DIY series, the global mean daily temperature for the 1st of September 2016 has just overtaken that of the 1st of September 2023 (see graph below) so it’s still going to be a close run thing.

I’ve based this story on reanalysis data that I use in my DIY Global temperature series. It tracks the other series quite faithfully and I have no doubt that in the coming week Copernicus will confirm what I’m guessing at. Well it’s all a bit of a guess anyway.

August 2023 – Temperature anomalies

To say that the estimated global temperature for July made it the warmest on record of any month since 1850, it seems that no one bothered to let August know, and August had no intention of following suit, at least in our corner of the world.

Iceland was noticeably colder than average again.
The record high SSTSST Sea Surface Temperatures kept the North Atlantic ~ 1°C above the LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO..
The intense heatwave in southern France seems to have been cancelled out by an equally cold start to August that no one seemed to notice.

August 2023 – Weather Summary

July 2023 – Mean Pressure & anomalies

As always the mean pressure chart can reveal a lot about the weather, and in July 2023 it showed why it was so wet and changeable, with near average temperatures across the British Isles. It’s also apparent from it why Iceland was so cold due to the squeeze in the pressure gradient between higher than average pressure across Greenland, and lower than average pressure across NW Europe, resulting in a persistent and strong N or NENE North East flow of air across the island. It’s not so revealing about the causes of the heatwave across North Africa, which happened in a very slack pressure field in a ridge of high pressure that extended eastward into the Mediterranean from the Azores high.

July 2023 – Global temperature

It’s official – July 2023 was not only the warmest July on record, but it was also the warmest month on record too, and it did it by a massive margin of 0.16°C (in global temperature terms) from the July of 2016😮. That’s according to mean temperature estimates from my DIYDIY Do It Yourself global temperature series that extend back to 1948, and which I derive from reanalysis 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..
Despite this I notice that the linear trend for July mean temperatures is still only 0.91°C per decade🤔.
The daily global mean temperature has been at unprecedented levels too for much of the summer and still is, but has now started to cool off as the globe cools down as we head to the boreal Autumn.

One of the main reasons why this summer 2023 is so warm is the sudden increase in temperatures across the tropics, no doubt brought about from the switch from La NinaLa Niña La Niña is an oceanic and atmospheric phenomenon that is the colder counterpart of El Niño, as part of the broader El Niño–Southern Oscillation climate pattern. The name La Niña originates from Spanish for "the girl", by analogy to El Niño, meaning "the boy". In the past, it was also called an anti-El Niño[1] and El Viejo, meaning "the old man." to El NinoEl Niño El Niño 'The Boy' is the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and is associated with a band of warm ocean water that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific conditions this spring. This graph shows the sharp rise quite dramatically.

July 2023 – Highest temperatures across southern Europe

July 2023
Highest maximum temperatures [06-18]

As you can see the colour scale I use for temperature is dynamic rather than using a fixed set of colours as preferred by 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 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 may not be transferable and directly comparable to any other month, but I find it much easier to find the hot and cold spots, and I can easily switch back to a fixed scale in software if necessary.

July 2023 – No 30°C maximum

As far as I can see in the SYNOPSYNOP SYNOP (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. observations that I’ve downloaded for July 2023, and in complete contrast to July 2022 when temperatures exceeded 40°C, there wasn’t one single day when the maximum temperature [06-18] exceeded or equalled 30°C. Not many people know that😉

July 2023

A wet and rather dull month with temperatures close to average.

June 2023 | Warmest on record globally

In my DIYDIY Do It Yourself global temperature series I make June 2023 the warmest on record, beating the mighty 2016 by 0.06 of a degree, which in global temperature terms is quite big.

June correlations

These two charts underline how warm June and sunny the June of 2023 was 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.. It set new extremes in most regions, but not everywhere.

June 2023 | Fifth warmest since 1659

It may have been the warmest June in the HadUK gridded data set, but it’s only fifth warmest in central England going right back to 1659. The other unusual thing is that a linear trend in June’s from 1659 to 2023 shows no warming during that time.

June 2023 – Weather Summary

It’s official, June 2023 was the warmest June since temperatures recorded started in 1884. Rather surprisingly it only came in as the fourth sunniest. Anomalies show that the north of Scotland was both the sunniest and warmest region 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. during June.

June 2023

The warmest June since at least 1846. A very sunny month, particularly in the north, and generally drier than average in most places, with the exception of more localised flash flooding from thunderstorms.

May 2023: Mean pressure and anomalies

An unusually anticyclonic 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. and the most anticyclonic since 1996 I later discovered

Zoomed in retrospective for the whole of spring. As you can see May didn’t start on an anticyclonic note.

May 2023: Global Temperatures

I make May the 4th warmest May in my DIYDIY Do It Yourself series that started in 1948. Its tight at the top, but May 2016 is still fractionally higher.

Global mean temperatures have started to show a bit more consistency in their rate of warming over the last month or so.

The current global increases are due in a large part to a sharp rise in temperatures in the subtropical northern hemisphere and not from the tropics. Having said that, increases in the north seemed to have peaked in early May.

May 2023: Weather summary

April 2023 – Weather Summary

April 2023 – Objective Lamb Weather Type analysis

The six-hourly 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. for April 2023 show a fairly anticyclonic 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.. There were two cyclonic interludes, the one on the 12th produced a gale index close to storm force, but once again 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 didn’t bother to name the offending low, leaving it to Meteo FranceMeteo France Météo-France is the official service of meteorology and climatology in France. to come up with the name ‘Noa’. The meridional index picked up two cold spells towards the end of the month across the north that gave a couple of days with light snow showers here in StrathpefferStrathpeffer Strathpeffer (Scottish Gaelic: Srath Pheofhair) is a village and spa town in Easter Ross, Highland, Scotland, with a population of 1,469..

May extremes in Scotland

Courtesy of anomaly charts 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. 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, here are the warmest and coldest May’s since 1910 across Scotland. Not a huge variation in temperature, ranging from the warmest in 2018 of 2.32°C above to 2.18°C below the 1961-1990 LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO. in 1923. The yellow box at the bottom right-hand corner is the predominant Lamb Weather type for the month. The wettest May in Scotland since 1910 was in 2011 when over 223% of the average rain for the month fell. The driest May was in 1984 when just over 27% of the average fell.

April 2023 – A new twist to scatter correlation graphs

I’ve been producing scatter correlation graphs for 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. gridded data for a number of years now, but recently I tried the same idea with climate data drawn from SYNOPSYNOP SYNOP (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. data for many stations for a single time period. I’ve now developed a viewer that displays a scatter chart of monthly rainfall POAPOA Percentage Of Average along the X axis, with temperature anomalies along the Y axis. To differentiate between each country I’ve coloured coded each point with one of five different colours. As you can see for April 2023 it works quite well, and you can quickly see that Scotland (blue) had a cold but reasonable dry month, whereas England (yellow) were much wetter.

The above scatter graph shows the correlation between rainfall POA (Y axis) and sunshine POA (X axis), and again it’s easy to see at a glance how much more sunnier and drier Scotland were when compared to England. I’m sure it will be only a matter of time before someone else uses this idea of mine.

May 2, 2023

April, Software

April 2023 – A new twist to scatter correlation graphs Read More »

March 2023 – Lamb Weather Types

Another month in which the weather type changed dramatically from an anticyclonic easterly, to a cyclonic westerly, in the space of a day or so around the 11th of the month. Up until then the weather had been remarkably cold and wintery across the north of Scotland, with severe overnight frosts. Further south the weather after that remained cyclonic and very wet at times.

April 5, 2023

LWT, March

March 2023 – Lamb Weather Types Read More »

March 2023 – Global Temperature

April 5, 2023

In my DIYDIY Do It Yourself Global temperature series based on reanalysis gridded data which I maintain, I make March 2023 the second warmest in my series, which started in 1948, a little behind March in the record warm year of 2016. The odd thing is that the largest increases zonally at the moment, are coming from the northern subtropics, and not the tropics, where the double dip La NinaLa Niña La Niña is an oceanic and atmospheric phenomenon that is the colder counterpart of El Niño, as part of the broader El Niño–Southern Oscillation climate pattern. The name La Niña originates from Spanish for "the girl", by analogy to El Niño, meaning "the boy". In the past, it was also called an anti-El Niño[1] and El Viejo, meaning "the old man." has just come to an abrupt end.

April 4, 2023

Global Temperatures, March

March 2023 – Global Temperature Read More »

March 2023 – Mean temperature

The north-south temperature gradient in anomalies continued into March 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.. It’s slightly ominous that +4°C anomalies are evident again across Morocco and a number of times the SSWSSW A sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) is an event in which polar stratospheric temperatures rise by as much as 50 °C in the course of a few days. The warming is preceded by a slowing then reversal of the westerly winds in the stratospheric polar vortex. SSWs occur about six times per decade in the northern hemisphere, and about once every 20-30 years in the southern hemisphere.’ly flow during the month pumped warm air across Iberia and into the south of France. This seems to have been a recurring theme in recent years and could provide the method of delivery for hot air in what could be another record breaking hot summer across central Europe.

April 4, 2023

Anomalies, March, Temperature

March 2023 – Mean temperature Read More »

March 2023 – Mean Pressure

No need to look very far for reasons why March was so wet across the south 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.. Anomalies of -19 hPahPa A Hectopascal is the SI unit of pressure and identical to the Millibar in the southern mid-Atlantic and +18 hPa over Greenland pushed the omnipresent Icelandic low much further south than usual and with it the SW’ly conveyor. That kept much of the colder air north of 60° north and the very mild air south of 50° north, leaving the UK in a kind of mish mash between them.

April 4, 2023

Anomalies, March, Pressure

March 2023 – Mean Pressure Read More »