Spring 2024 saw a very warm spell from approximately the 8th to the 20th of May with anomalies across northern Scotland of +7°C, followed quickly by a cold spell, from the 4th to 12th of June with anomalies of -5°C. 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 thought little of both spells, despite May ending up the warmest since records began in 1883. They argued that the cold spell wasn’t that unusual, or as cold as the temperatures in many recent years, despite the fact that snow fell on ground above 800 M in Scotland for at least five consecutive days. They didn’t seem to want to factor in that the cold spell had occurred at a time when global temperatures were 1.54°C above the pre-industrial age or that North Atlantic SSTSSTSea Surface Temperatures are at record levels. What a strange attitude to take. 😮
The first 20°C maximum in central England occurred on the 10th of May this year (2024), which is just about the average date for it to occur. In this ever warming world it’s gotten progressively earlier over the years. The linear trend (1878-2024) reveals that it occurred as late as the 20th of May back in 1878, but it’s now closer to happening three weeks earlier on the 28th of April. This is another new addition to my Daily CETCETCentral England Temperature application.
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 recent surge in temperatures across Europe in January can be seen in a sharp rise in estimated mean temperatures across the northern extratropics in the daily anomaly chart for the last year. The surge seems to have started shortly before Christmas in my DIYDIYDo It Yourself global series, and is still going on in around that zonal region, with anomalies now around 1.2°C higher than the 1991-2020 LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO.. The effects of the North American cold wave and the cold snap across Europe are also visible as a blue down spike at the very end of November.
Just as I found in the gridded UK data series 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 that 2022 wasn’t the warmest 12 months on record, I also find that it isn’t the warmest 365 day period in the CETCETCentral England Temperature series either. That accolade belongs to the 365 days between the third of May 2006 and the second of May 2007, with a mean temperature of 11.71°C which is far higher than the 11.15°C temperature for the year 2022 in central England. It may not mean much to most people, but I think it makes a bit of a mockery of all the hoo-ha that we’ve had to endure recently from the media about 2022 being the warmest year, when in reality it occurred almost 15 years earlier both in the CET series and the gridded series.
If you spend some time grubbing around 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. gridded temperature series 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 that extends back to the year 1884 as I do, you might find that the highest mean temperature for a 12 month period didn’t actually occur in the year 2022, but the 12 month period that ended in April 2007. The mean temperature of 10.41°C was considerably higher than that of 10.03°C for 2022 that has been bandied about so much in recents days by the media. There’s no reason to think that the UKMO weren’t aware of this fact, but they obviously kept shtum about it, not wanting to detract from making an even bigger splash with a headline “Warmest year on record” or the climate crisis version of it “Hottest year ever!“.
Dear Diary After a fiddly bit morning of programming, I can finally reveal that 2022 WILL be the warmest in the Central England daily series which started in 1772. That of course assumes that the rest of the month, from the 11th onward, has anomalies no higher than -3.5°C for each of the next 21 days. That’s not impossible of course, but even after a cold start such as we’ve seen this December, the mean temperature for the first ten days is still only 2.37°C below the December LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO., which would mean that the very low anomalies of the last few days would have to continue for the rest of the month. If this finding is true for Central England, I think it’s more than likely it’ll be true of the gridded data for the whole 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 well. I found it easier to write that small program than to sit down and work it out with pen, paper and calculator, which must say something about how my brain works.
