Iceland

The reason why Iceland has been so cold this month

Iceland has been rather cold for much of this year. The reason I’ve put it down to was persistent NW’ly winds flowing down from off Greenland ice cap. This month however, a tongue of colder water SSTSST Sea Surface Temperatures has extended E’NENE North East from the coast of SE Greenland and wrapped itself around Iceland’s north and east coast. You can see the effects of this if you look at temperature anomalies so far this October for Iceland. The cold month we’ve seen across much 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., and which the media love to describe as ‘rather chilly’, may also be a symptom of the colder air across Iceland and those same NW’ly winds.

How long these low SST will continue around Iceland is anyone’s guess, and what if any effect this will have on the coming winter. One thing I have noticed for some time in the long-range 16 to 30 day text forecast 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, is the mention of higher pressure to the northwest of the UK which might be in somehow linked.

Towards mid-November, high pressure may become more focussed towards the northwest of the UK, allowing a gradual trend towards colder and perhaps more unsettled conditions, especially in more southern and eastern areas.
UKMO
16 Oct 2024

October 16, 2024

Global Temperatures, Iceland, SST

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The rather cold summer of 2023 in Iceland

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 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 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😉

Mild November in Iceland

#Iceland is experiencing one of its warmest #Novembers on record. #Europe

Temperatures last week were 7 to 8 degrees warmer than average in many parts of the country. pic.twitter.com/ojUKQ4tGxB
— 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 (@bbcweather) November 20, 2022

Undoubtedly the last couple of weeks in November have been very mild across Iceland, but don’t forget the cold weather back in October that brought the red warning for heavy snow from the IMOIMO Icelandic Meteorological Office (Icelandic: Veðurstofa Íslands) is Iceland's national weather service and as such a government agency under the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources. It is also active in volcano monitoring, volcano seismology, and together with other institutions, responsible for civil protection in Iceland. This is climate in action, some weeks are warmer than average and some are colder. I reckon the 7 to 8 degrees are the result of 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. winds at stations in the north of the island like we saw in Snowdonia in the last week. I would like to have produced a thermograph with anomalies for Reykjavik but they don’t publish daily extremes so this will have to do a town on the south coast.

November 20, 2022

Climate, Iceland, IMO, Temperature

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