Worryingly Wet & Worryingly Sunless

[In Absence of True Seasons]

31 minutes ago, Summer8906 said:

What's particularly concerning about the current spell is a combination of dullness, wetness and extreme mildness, going on for weeks and weeks

This is the issue. It's the consistent combination of these three things. It's just the most boring, uninteresting and useless pattern. It's like being in an eternal loop of November time. 

The weather for most of Feb and now March is more-or-less exactly the same as what we had throughout December (and November and much of October too). 10-13/14c, overcast and some degree of rain. There's no distinction between the months outside of length of daylight (vital extra hours to enjoy more wet, cloudy and mild weather). 

The only period in the last 4/5 months that has been a genuine break from this pattern was the wintry spell in Jan, which actually brought some reliably clear, sunny and cold weather for about a week. 

Imagine having the opposite...4/5 months of sunny, settled weather with just one week of cloud and rain in Jan, and the odd hour or so of rain here and there (akin to the odd hour or so of sun we have been getting in this pattern). A different world entirely, one can but dream...

[kold weather]

One look at the CET tells the story. We've been more or less around the 7c mark on that metric for the last four months, bar a spell in Mid Jan.

There really has been an amazing lack if variation recently.

I really do think it's fair to say we've just had a very long extended autumn this year.

Still patterns don't go on forever and they usually abruptly shift for better or worse so gotta keep an open mind.

Last spring for example, terrible March, totally meh April, may started off very wet but pattern shifted around the 10th and we ended up having a pretty sustained and decent spell. Shame it fell apart again in July.

Edited March 15 by kold weather

[In Absence of True Seasons]

 kold weather I don't think 2023 is the best example of the "patterns not lasting forever". The 3 weeks in June and September heatwave were really the only spells where dross was not dominant. August had some decent days here and there. 

2022 vs 2023 (and now 2024) is a far better example of pattern disparity. 2022 was predominantly sunny, dry and mild, whereas 2023 was predominantly cloudy, wet and mild. 

I am hoping the pattern will flip-flop back to drier and sunnier at some point this Spring. 

[B87]

What would it take to have another 2003 style year, where almost every month was sunnier than average (and those that weren't - May and July - were still average).

We had the opposite in 2021, where every month except April was duller than average.

[reef]

Just 17.2 hours here in the first 14 days of the month. Today has been a bit better, but it'll be a bit short of the 6.2 hours a day now required to just reach the 1991-2020 average of 123 hours.

Tomorrow was supposed to finally be a sunny day until the evening, but yet again the forecasts have gradually shifted so it looks like it'll be cloudy just after midday now.

Just what will it take to get a clear day from dawn until dusk?

[sundog]

 In Absence of True Seasons maybe it's a case of waiting for El Niño to completely fade? Then hopefully  a shift to dryer conditions will occur.  The warmer ssts of recent times I'm sure won't help though. 

[Weather-history]

 reef How bad has it been since the start of February, sunshine wise?

 

[reef]

 Weather-history We had 65.2 hours in February, so just 82.4 hours since 1st February.

The last 10 days of January only had 17.3 hours aswell, so its just 99.7 hours in the last 43 days!

The 1991-2020 average for that period is about 162 hours, so just under 62% of normal.

[LetItSnow!]

We think it's bad now but I just read a Met Office Monthly Weather Report for June 1964 that claimed it was the fifteenth successive month that was duller than normal!

[Greyhound81]

 kold weather  The long and extended autumn started at the end of summer 2022, and has continued since then, apart from a 10 day period of cold weather in December 2022, and the 2 very hot months last year (June and September).

Edited March 16 by Greyhound81

[CryoraptorA303]

 Greyhound81 I wouldn't say August 2023 was autumnal, just very nondescript. Otherwise it has certainly felt that way.

[CryoraptorA303]

 John S2 Really? I've read that the melting Arctic would further weaken it.

The problem here is what in palaeontology we would call indeterminate findings. We only really have about 30 years of data and climate change is an ongoing phenomenon. It's close to impossible to try and predict exactly what's going to happen over the next century.

The other end to it is as climate change begins to accelerate even further, the warming may be so fast that present climates undergo total collapse and are replaced by something that has no analogue today. This would be impossible to predict and would only become evident once it happens.

And to top it all off, none of this has considered significant AMOC slowdown or collapse, although the chances of seeing this in our lifetimes is currently agreed to be extremely low, even despite a few recent studies suggesting it could reasonably happen. Assuming by the time this happens the world has already warmed by 3+°C, it would be frankly impossible to try and predict the consequences. The consequences of it happening right this second wouldn't be applicable as we'd already live in a vastly different climate than today.

The long and the short of it is a big question mark.

[CryoraptorA303]

 LetItSnow! Indeed, we have seen overall worse times in the past, but a combination of rose-tinted glasses and the whiplash from the oscillating extremes we see today will make recent undesirable periods feel much worse. In particular this miserable spell will be compounded by the socially, economically and politically miserable times we find ourselves in and will likely be remembered as overall one of the worst times of our lives.

It'd be interesting for someone to do a study of the nation's happiness over the years. I would be willing to bet 2003 and 2006 will have the highest levels of happiness in some time due to the "good" summers coinciding with generally optimistic times. 2018 and 2022 will be rated somewhat less well due to things getting worse over that time and a growing pessimism sweeping through the population. 2023 I feel would have the lowest happiness since the late 80s or perhaps even lower. The pandemic years of 2020 and 2021 should probably be ignored seeing as they will have anomalously low happiness due to, well, the pandemic. That I feel is reflected here in the attitudes towards summer 2020 - It wasn't that "good", especially July and later in August but it's nothing on July 2009 or 2023, yet it sees similar levels of derision when brought up. Spring being very dry, sunny and hot does not help its case. While 2021 gets a disproportionately good rap as the pandemic was, erm... "ending" around that time, even though in the south 2021 was clearly the "worse" summer.

Edited March 16 by CryoraptorA303

[Terminal Moraine]

With half the month gone the sunshine total now stands at 13.2 hrs, that's  29% of the average for the first half of March and 8.7 hrs less than the first half of last March which ended up being the second dullest on record.

Edited March 16 by Terminal Moraine

[WYorksWeather]

As I've noted on multiple threads and in a few posts, what at one stage looked like a sustained dry spell for about five days for the whole of the UK, starting towards the back end of next week, has now been downgraded to a couple of drier days around Thursday through Saturday, and that only in the south, before we get yet more low pressure.

The wait for a sustained dry spell goes on...

[danm]

England drenched after the wettest 18 months since records began in 1836

WWW.FT.COM

---

Warmer atmosphere will continue to hold more moisture and contribute to rainfall, scientists say

[*Stormforce~beka*]

 Terminal Moraine March is starting to get to be a month to forget!

 WYorksWeather Sun is as rare as snow

[johncam]

Bright morning here , sun now dissappearing

[Scorcher]

So depressing to be back in the gloom this afternoon after a glorious sunny morning.

We actually had a much better first week than many areas for sunshine with 33.2 hours. Since then we've only had 3.6 hours in total before today.

Is anyone else concerned we could turn into a warmer version of the Faroe Islands?

It's really been a remarkably prolonged dull period with no end in sight it seems.

Edited March 16 by Scorcher

[Arctic Hare]

 WYorksWeather Quite frankly, and I'm sure those with more knowledge will point out I'm being unreasonable but still, I currently wouldn't trust the models as far as I could throw them. They feel like they've failed again and again in the last few months. Unless, of course, they were predicting weeks of gloom and damp, in which case they'll suddenly turn out to have the highest verification stats on record...

[raz.org.rain]

 CryoraptorA303 as far as I'm aware, the predicted trend for the jet stream is for it to be pushed northwards in response to climate change, there's a study for it that I've posted before.

The AMOC factor is an odd subject also. I've studied it somewhat extensively. The biggest shortfall of the theory is the over dependence on computing models and data sampling, as far as I'm concerned. Although I have noticed that the cooling trope has become muted over the past few years, with the more recent hypotheses conceding that a cooling trend would only be observed in winter and would be contending with anthropogenic warming. Of course, that depends on who you ask... Seager would likely still dismiss its relevance whereas others such as Chen & Tung would demonstrate that a collapse would actually cause accelerated warming in the NH.

Edited March 16 by raz.org.rain

[Weather-history]

For NW region, July 2023-February 2024 sunshine totals is 649.4hrs, 15 hours more than was recorded than during the spring of 2020.  

[Scorcher]

 Weather-history There aren't many other heavily populated areas of the world that could possibly record such poor sunshine stats. I certainly can't think of any.

There aren't too many densely populated areas globally that average less than 1500 hours annually. Yet we must be well below that for the last 12 months.

[markyo]

1 minute ago, Scorcher said:

There aren't many other heavily populated areas of the world that could possibly record such poor sunshine stats. I certainly can't think of any.

There aren't too many densely populated areas globally that average less than 1500 hours annually. Yet we must be well below that for the last 12 months.

how many densely populated areas in the world are on a island subject to to the Atlantic and one of the biggest weather streams on the planet??.....climate change is only going to reduce the sunshine stats, more heat, more energy on the body of water we sit in, more cloud. It will happen. We are not going to end up with a Mediterranean climate weather wise, that is certain.

[Metwatch]

27 minutes ago, markyo said:

We are not going to end up with a Mediterranean climate weather wise, that is certain

Something I agree on. A bit of a hot take but it's more likely we will move closer to humid subtropical instead, Bordeaux is pretty much there now, so just a few more degrees to go for central / southern England. No way we are losing the rain any time soon. June 2023 was a good example of a humid subtropical style month, warm but not that dry with quite a few thunderstorms about, stopping it from being a dry month for central and northwestern areas. 2023 was overall a warm year but very wet too.

Edited March 16 by Metwatch