Items culled from Weather

[johnholmes]

In the October edition of Weather (the monthly publication of the Royal Met Soc) there are some interesting bits culled from UK Met, and no doubt available somewhere in their own web site (not the most user friendly in my view!).

 

A summary of the summer

Summer 2013 was warmer and drier than average but not exceptionally so. The most notable was a prolonged heat wave in July. The summer ended a run of generally dull and wet summers from 2007-2012.

The UK mean temperature was15.2C so 0.8C above the 1981-2010 average, thus the warmest since 2006.

During the July heat wave somewhere in the UK exceeded 28C on 19 consecutive days

 

The summer was drier than average for the UK overall (76%) and the driest since 2003. Exceptions to this were parts of north west England and the Midlands. Some areas had less than 50% of their normal rainfall such as central Highlands, parts of southern and SW England and East Anglia. During July and August there were some notably wet days with localised heavy downpours.

 

It was the sunniest summer overall since 2006 with 116% of average for the UK; western and northern areas were sunniest relative to normal with 145%.

 

Looking at the UK map of sunshine. Those who live on the eastern edges of the UK will already know this! Parts of NE Scotland, eastern Scotland, Parts of east Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and north Norfolk and Kent showing values of 95-105% of normal, along with parts of nw Northern Ireland. Looking again also parts of the central southern Uplands of Scotland as well.

 

For those who like articles on climatology there is a very interesting and thought provoking article headed

 

Attribution of climatology-related events: understanding stakeholder needs.

Sadly I have never been able to get approval to copy and paste full articles so you will have to search/ask in your local library or contact RMetSoc/Wiley publications.

Another interesting article is

 

2012: from drought to floods in England and Wales  suggesting it showed the greatest change recorded, beating that which occurred in 1976.

 In 1976 from 356 mm deficit to 109mm surplus

In 2012 from 326 to 202

 

jh

Edited October 21, 2013 by johnholmes

[Interitus]

For those interested, all issues from 1997-2009 (inclusive) are available for free from the Wiley website, and they are well worth looking through-

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1477-8696/issues