al78

Summer 2023 felt worse than the stats suggest because monthly or seasonal stats completely smooths out temporal and spatial variation. If a summer month has 30 days of bone dry sunny weather and one day where a slow moving MCS drops six inches of rain, is that a wet month? The monthly stats would say yes but human perception and usability of the weather for enjoyable outdoor activities would say no. Down here in Sussex this year for me has mostly been a write off, and I say this from the perspective of someone who's hobbies largely consist of outdoor activities. When my allotment is wrecked by rampant perennial weed infestation and huge mollusc outbreaks from the persistent wet weather in July, because I made the stupid decision to go on holiday a couple of times, when I cannot work on my allotment properly in spring or most of summer because the year's weather has consisted of random wet and dry seasons, meaning the ground is either a claggy mess (March and July) or baked solid (late May-June), when I have a weekday job and I look forward to getting out on the weekend only to find it is a rain-fest AGAIN, when I have to dress like I am hiking up in the Cairngorms just so I can cycle to town or the station without getting soaked, when I visit family and hope to get out in the big hills of the Lakes or Snowdonia but it ends up being five days of unsettled weather and clag, I feel the summer and the year in general has been lousy. Trying to claim the summer has been fine because of CET stats is like saying no-one living in the UK has any business complaining about anything in the UK because the country ranks highly in global stats in terms of quality of life indices. It comes close to gaslighting.

Even in my part of SE England, July this year felt like car touring holidays in the Scottish highlands with my parents in the 1990's at around the same time of year, every year, where on a week's holiday, we'd be doing well to get two decent summer-like days.

Doesn't flaura and fauna respond to daylight hours as well as temperature in the middle latitudes?

I would be cautious in attributing too much to El Nino this year. Having observed the Atlantic and Pacific hurricane/typhoon seasons this year, it is apparent that the atmosphere has not responded in a classical way to the moderate El Nino SST conditions, with the normally higher than normal vertical wind shear over the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean Sea largely absent, and what would normally be expected to be a very active typhoon season during an El Nino year has just recorded the joint least active September on record with only two named storms in the month (normal is five names storms in what should be the second busiest month of the year).

There is some truth in the statement. Extreme temperatures are primarily caused by a very specific set of conditions which need to come together simultaneously. What anthropogenic climate change can do is load the dice to make some extremes more likely, or make comparable extremes equally likely with a lower requirement of precursors. An example would be if sea levels are rising, significant storm surge events should become more likely. It can also make such extremes more likely by making the synoptic conditions for those extremes more likely, e.g. if blocked weather patterns are becoming more common, extremes in monthly statistics become more likely. Due to the rarity of extreme events and the high noise to signal ratio it is not always possible to see trends now even if climate change is having an influence.

Hopefully not, it is a tedious fallacious argument, although when it comes to summer 2023 in W Sussex at least, it was only really July that was awful. June was warm and dry. August was poor for the first half and fairly decent for the second half, a month of two halves very much like the inverse of September.

For environmental reasons I minimise flying as much as possible but I did relent this year and went to Norway (Jotunheimen) where I experienced much better weather than I would normally expect. The Scottish highlands have always drawn me for their outstanding natural beauty, fantastic geological fingerprints, familiarity, no language barrier and ease of access to the remote and beautiful parts. One area the UK does excel is public rights of access to beautiful parts of the country. The risk of sustained poor weather is a price worth paying and the reason I take my holiday in May or June is firstly because climatologically that is the driest and sunniest time of year, and secondly, midge activity is normally very low. On the days I catch settled sunny weather I always have a fantastic time on the hills, and even if the hills are clagged over there are loads of low level scenic walks, and the larger waterfalls look great after a period of rain.

Didn't we have 21C recorded in February one year, I think it was the same year when moorland fires were breaking out around Saddleworth in the Pennines.

From my (distant) memory of family holidays in the Med I recall the heat was more of a dry heat whereas heatwaves in the UK tend to be accompanied by haze and energy sapping humidity that prevents overnight temperatures cooling down much, disrupting sleep and causing health conditions amongst the more vulnerable members of the population. The other huge difference between the UK and places where hot weather is part of the climate is that if you feel uncomfortable all you have to do is walk indoors because either the buildings are designed to be resilient to overheating and/or air conditioning is widespread. When I have been to Florida and it was a humid 28C, whenever I stepped indoors I needed to put a long sleeved sweatshirt on the air con was so powerful. The UK's resilience to even modest deviations from climatology is dreadful by comparison, e.g. the railway's have speed limits and disruption when the lines buckle in 30C temperatures which are experienced in all but the very worst summers in SE England. Not unusual to have wet and windy weather around peak hurricane season from recurving hurricanes which is what is happening this week.

I agree the temperatures in the first half of September were ridiculous and uncomfortable (for me at least) and were what we should have had in July, but low to mid 20's is pleasant after a summer that has pretty much been a continuation of randomised wet and dry seasons that have dominated this year. I'll take what warmth we can get at this time of year as we are very soon going to enter the six month grot peried of the year known as October and GMT. Already looking forward to my hiking holiday in NW Scotland next May even if it will probably be another five days of clag out of seven experience like last year..

It is possible to prefer a happy medium. It is not a choice between one extreme or the other. I don't like hot weather in this country but at the same time I don't like a summer month where it rains nearly every day with low sunshine levels. Both situations are undesirable for different reasons.

The problem with ear plugs is they are only a temporary fix. They do work but at the expense of ear pain with long term use.

No because of outside noise. One neighbour has a reverse alarm on his car so have to deal with BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG late in the evening and at 7am some mornings, plus other people's screechy sprogs first thing in the morning. I open the windows in the evening and close them before going to bed but that only cools the house to 24C which is still too warm for comfort when trying to sleep.

Must be autumn now, my French beans are dying, about six weeks earlier than normal.

I find 27C too warm. My house heats up quickly and doesn't cool down much at night so leads to sleep disruption and daytime fatigue.

LOL.

Averages smooth out temporal and spatial variance so can be extremely misleading for judging how good or bad a summer has been. If a summer month had 29 warm and dry days and on the 30th day a MCS dropped six inches of rain, would you call it a wet month?

It was seasonal if it had occurred in another country. The coldest December in a century can hardly be described as seasonal for the UK in the same way that 40C in summer is not seasonal for the UK. The UK does not have a continental climate.

A typical English summer does not encompoass a record breaking warm June and a record breaking wet July in places. Lets just stop deluding ourselves that this summer has been normal.

Changeable normally includes some settled weather. July had the same weather throughout, unsettled for the entire month. The same type of weather for the whole month is not what I would call changeable, it was more like a rainy season.

There is also a long term warming trend so a -0.3C anomaly would be greater in magnitude without the warming trend.

Climatologically July and August are the warmest months so I'd question how normal it is to have a hot June and a cooler July.

Time to look forward to Christmas and the snowmageddon 15 day GFS forecasts.

Two days of cold rain and sleet with temps +2C here in Horsham. Same as a day I remember in February 2011 (or maybe 2010) where it rained all day with temperatures between 1 and 2C I see the UK bank holiday parameterisation in the model is working properly.

More serious is if parts of the sub-tropics become uninhabitable where a lot of people currently live and where much of the world's food is grown.