July CET

[Duncan McAlister]

It says it was 0.3c below the 1961-1990 average. Although it is talking about the England Mean Temperature Series rather than CET.

Where do the BBC show the CET on their site, WBSH?

[Optimus Prime]

They don't, they do their independent study I suspect allowing them to fiddle with the stats as much as they like...only joking but I find it all a bit strange, as if their out there to skew the 0.9c below average month...I wonder...

The one that really gets me is the December 2001 review. We can all agree December 2001 was pretty cold, yet the BBC don't agree (but the Metoffice do)

"Temperatures were close to average over Scotland and Northern Ireland, but nearly a degree below normal over England and Wales."

They call it the "Central England Temperature series" and they have this as the figure for that month;

The mean value for the month was 3.8°C.0.9°C below the 1961-90 normal of 4.7°C and is in the near normal category. Others:- 2000/5.8, 1999/5.0, 1998/5.5, 1996/2.9°C.

December 2001 wasn't 3.8c it was 3.6c for the CET area and it wasn't a close to average month, it was below average. Even the Metoffice site has it in the below average category. The actual average for the 61-90 December period is 4.6 not 4.7c. Yet they get all the other months correctly typed down, 1996 did have a CET as low as 2.9c.

So the basic concept is to completely ignore these monthly CETs (that seems more likely to be set up in the blue peter gardens) that they have down and just look at it for the review. Even that does seem warm biased.

[DR Hosking]

well July turned out to be a cool one here on the whole. Average 15.6 which is 1.7 degrees colder than average. The most remarkable thing about this July was the coolness of the Maximum temperature. The Max was reached on July 19th of 23.9 degrees. The records for my local station only go back 9 years but thi is by far the coolest July max for that period. Indeed the next coolest was 25.8 in 2000 and apart from that every July has reached over 28 degrees for the last 9 years, so the high of 23.9 is remarkably low in the current climate! By coincidence the same day last year was recorded at 35.5 degrees, so this years max was 11.6 degrees cooler than last years! That must be some kind of record in itself! Also the july average of 15.6 was 5 degrees cooler than last july's average of 20.6, again wouldn't be suprised if this was a record for this station.

Rainfall for July was 162.4 % of average. Thats 6 out of 7 months of the year well above average for rainfall and 9 of the past 12 months over 100% of the average rainfall. So its been a wet year!

[Optimus Prime]

Maxima wise 2007 was the 27th coldest on record out of 130 Julys since 1878. Even minima was 58th coldest.

[Thundery wintry showers]

I knew they'd done something like that before, and here it is!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/ukweather/yea...06_review.shtml

March 2006

"0.6 °C above the 1961-1990 average, which is in the below average category. Coldest since 1996."

Really is beyond a joke.

Yes- I reckon somebody must copy and paste a lot of the (usually reliable) stats on the Met Office website and commit some errors. I invariably go to a combination of the MetO, Philip Eden's and Trevor Harley's sites nowadays for monthly reviews.

[Lettucing Gutted]

Interestingly, July 2007 was sunnier than the Julys of 2002 to 2005 including July 2003.

Fascinating considering Philip says this July was the 5th most cyclonic, the last few days of July really raised the July sunshine total.

Mr Data can you post a list of Julys that had both below average C.E.Ts and above average sunshine levels in the same month? Thanks in advance.

[Optimus Prime]

tharley has released the review for July 2007. One statement is incorrect though, it was the coolest July with 1993 since 1988 but im sure itll be corrected;

"July. Very unsettled. Cold and wet with some truly exceptional flooding. It was very wet (with 129.5 mm, 219% of the England and Wales average, it was the wettest July since 1936), cool (the coolest since 1992), with close to average sunshine. Some very heavy rain on Thursday night and Friday 19-20th saw some exceptional flooding in the South and Midlands on the 20th and afterwards. 100 mm of rain (four inches) fell over a wide area from Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Warwickshire, Oxfordshire, to Wiltshire. Brize Norton had 127.6 mm, and Pershore (Warwickshire) had 145.4 mm. This leads to the worst flooding in living memory, particuarly in Gloucestershire. The last two days were more settled, reaching 24.7 in central London on the 31st."