Not a day to be putting too much trust in what the weather radar is telling you. Most, if not all of the precipitation across the northwest of Scotland is obviously falling from medium level altostratus and not reaching the ground. We really do need better radar coverage across the north of Scotland which will certainly help with radar over shooting and picking up medium level rainfall across the northwest Highlands.
Misleading weather radar Read More »
I wrote code to display this graph that extrapolated a 30 year linear trend that predicted when global temperatures would reached the much vaunted value of +1.5°C above pre-industrial levels around 10 years ago now. That prediction of 2035 hasn’t seemed to change too much each time I run the code if my memory serves. I thought that I would post the results to just keep a record of how right or wrong I was. That does presuppose of course that this blog and I will still be around in 2035 of course, and if the month of July is correct, just celebrated my 81st birthday. I would have been much happier in my dotage if global warming and been global cooling but that’s life.
Global temperature +1.5°C prediction Read More »
The latest global temperatures from the world’s leading monthly estimates are mostly in for April 2023. I say mostly because as usual 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 the JMAJMA The Japan Meteorological Agency (気象庁, Kishō-chō), abbreviated JMA, is an agency of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. are trailing a month behind other series with their estimates as per usual. The graph above shows a 12 month moving average for the last 30 years up until April 2023, which was considered to be the fourth or fifth warmest as I had predicted back on the third of this month. All series continue to show the bounce back from the third mini-dip in anomalies of the last year.
April 2023: Global Temperatures Read More »
For the first time in three years, three monthly average SSTSST Sea Surface Temperatures in the ENSOENSO El Niño–Southern Oscillation is an irregular periodic variation in winds and sea surface temperatures over the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean, affecting the climate of much of the tropics and subtropics. The warming phase of the sea temperature is known as El Niño and the cooling phase as La Niña. 3.4 region are above average. Depending on whose rules you follow this may be the precursor to an El NiñoEl 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 later this year when SST get 0.5°C above the LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO.. It’s all rather complicated when they begin and end, the Americans have one method, so too do the BOMBOM The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM or BoM) is an executive agency of the Australian Government responsible for providing weather services to Australia and surrounding areas. in Australia and the JMAJMA The Japan Meteorological Agency (気象庁, Kishō-chō), abbreviated JMA, is an agency of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. in Japan. Isn’t sorting problems concerning climate and weather like this what the 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. exist for?
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..
April 2023 – Objective Lamb Weather Type analysis Read More »
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.
May extremes in Scotland Read More »
April 2023 was a little disappointing as far as global temperatures are concerned. I got the distinct impression that temperatures were starting to surge in March, but in the end April ended up just fifth warmest in my DIYDIY Do It Yourself series that started in 1948. That was slightly up on 2022 values, but along way short of 2016, the warmest in the record.
April 2023: Global temperatures Read More »
A band of higher than average pressure persisted across Greenland and northern Scandinavia for much of the month. Pressure was 12 hPahPa A Hectopascal is the SI unit of pressure and identical to the Millibar lower than average in the central Atlantic. The resulting pressure pattern left 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. in a col like area in the monthly mean pressure chart. The barograph for central Iceland show this is the second spell of significantly above average pressure so far this year there.
April 2023: Mean pressure and anomalies Read More »
Temperature anomalies show the effect of the early heatwave across Iberia from the pulse of hot air from northwest Africa in the last week. The central Atlantic remained colder than average again, but it was much warmer than average across the Ukraine and southwest of Russia.
April 2023: Mean temperature anomalies Read More »
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.
April 2023 – A new twist to scatter correlation graphs Read More »
There was a strange record drought that occurred in France this winter in which Meteo FranceMeteo France Météo-France is the official service of meteorology and climatology in France. claim that there was no rain in France from the 21st of January 2023 to the 20th of February. I say strange because although it was dry at some sites across France, notably in the south, many other places did record some rain during that period as you can see from the chart below.
Meteo France goes onto explain “we speak of a day without rain when the total aggregate precipitation over France is less than 1 mm”. All that you can assume from what they say, is that they like 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, they have some kind of gridded data series in which the average precipitation for the whole of France for that particular period was less than 1 mm. I’m not going to tot up all the rainfalls totals from 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. block #07, but I’d wager without allowing for extent the average would be higher than 1 mm.
The strange record drought in France this winter Read More »
It seems to me that even allowing for the rise in temperature due to global warming, there’s been an additional surge in temperatures across Iberia and northwest Africa in recent years. That’s particularly noticeable in summer, but can also be seen in the rest of the year too. The latest plume event is ongoing at the moment (27 April 2023), but has had a limited northward extent so far. I decided to look back at the last 40 years of daily maximum temperatures at Cordoba to see what I could find by plotting a scatter graph and adding a trend line.
As you can see I’m using the 1981-2010 LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO., which is courtesy of Wikipedia, and not the latest, but the linear trend at Cordoba does show a warming trend of well over a degree a decade. I can’t say if these results are just local to Cordoba, or if they’re occurring more widely across the rest of Iberia and Northwest Africa, but it does go a long way to explain the media hype about the present heatwave. I’m sure some more detailed research would find that there’s been an increase in Spanish plumes events in all seasons of the year, and that their effects aren’t just limited to the Iberian peninsula.
Surge in Iberian temperatures in recent years Read More »
Before I forget to review the 3-Month Outlook for spring 2023, I’ll just include a screenshot of the graphics from the PDFPDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992. to act as a reminder to me. It already looks like they didn’t foresee a wet March, even though the forecast was only published on the 27th of February. I never heard much in their Twitter feed about that. It’s a good job they feel obliged to archive them each month these days.
UKMO: 3-Month Outlook Spring 2023 Read More »
A bit slow to look back on this one, but in hindsight 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 did a reasonable job with the simple indices of temperature and rainfall, although for December, if I’ve got the hang of the three lower graphs they didn’t do quite as well. It’s a shame they can’t include sunshine in this outlook it’s an obvious omission. It’s also about time they published gridded, regional mean monthly wind speed as well, they obviously have the figures but like to hide them for some reason known only to themselves.
UKMO: 3-Month Outlook Winter 2022-23 Read More »
It’s been a beautiful sunny week of weather in StrathpefferStrathpeffer Strathpeffer (Scottish Gaelic: Srath Pheofhair) is a village and spa town in Easter Ross, Highland, Scotland, with a population of 1,469.. Mornings have been cold with a touch of frost in more sheltered spots in the Highlands, but days have been clear and sunny with sunshine from dawn till dusk, that sunshine giving warm afternoons. The easterly wind on Wednesday and Thursday did pick up to moderate occasionally fresh during the mornings to take the edge of things out of the sun. There was a short spell of haar on both Thursday and Friday but it quickly burnt off.
15-21 April 2023: A beautiful week of weather Read More »
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.
March 2023 – Lamb Weather Types Read More »
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.
March 2023 – Global Temperature Read More »
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.
March 2023 – Mean temperature Read More »
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.
March 2023 – Mean Pressure Read More »
Five out of the seven Met Services around the world have finally published their estimated global temperature anomalies for February 2023. I swear they get slower at updating their estimates each year. The Europeans are always first off the mark to report these days, but the slowest by far are 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, who have only just published their estimate for January. The comparison graph (above) shows that the weak third dip in anomalies that started in 2016 has now all but fizzled out. Now that 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." event has come to an abrupt end, and world ocean SSTSST Sea Surface Temperatures at record highs, you can only expect global anomalies start to rocket through the rest of 2023.
Global Temperatures – February 2023 Read More »
The double dip La NiñaLa 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." event that’s been going on since August of 2020 has come to an abrupt end. This means that global temperatures will probably start running riot without the cooling effect La Niña brought to the central Pacific. The 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. synopsis for the next few months reads: La Niña has ended and ENSOENSO El Niño–Southern Oscillation is an irregular periodic variation in winds and sea surface temperatures over the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean, affecting the climate of much of the tropics and subtropics. The warming phase of the sea temperature is known as El Niño and the cooling phase as La Niña.-neutral conditions are expected to continue through the Northern Hemisphere spring and early summer 2023.
La Niña comes to an abrupt end Read More »
The ECMWFECMWF The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts is an independent intergovernmental organisation supported by most of the nations of Europe. It is based at three sites: Shinfield Park, Reading, United Kingdom; Bologna, Italy; and Bonn, Germany. It operates one of the largest supercomputer complexes in Europe and the world's largest archive of numerical weather prediction data. are brave enough to let you turn the clock back on their 42 day forecasts and see how they performed. Not very well in the case of last week as it happens.
When this kind of thing happens, it always knocks your confidence as regards their promise of a milder than average April.
ECMWF didn’t see the recent cold snap coming Read More »
The fact the Antarctic Sea Ice extent was going to set a new record low minimum was never in doubt for much of this summer season. The sea ice extent dipped to 1.766 million square kilometres on the 19th of February to take the record from the previous lowest of last year.
Antarctic Sea Ice – record low minimum for 2022-23 Read More »
