A question about leap year Winters

[Walsall Wood Snow]

With this being a leap year Winter, meaning we get an extra day of meteorological Winter, I was wondering whether say the Winter CET includes the data of the 29th of February, or whether that particular day is ignored to make all records exactly equal in length? After all its an anomaly which only occurs once every 4 years whereas all other meteorological seasons are the same length every year. Although in fact not all the meteorological seasons are equal in length anyway due to the differing lengths of the months they coincide with. Spring and Summer are each 92 days long, Autumn has 91 days and Winters that end in a common year only have 90 days, whereas those that end in leap years such as this one have 91 days. Anyway I imagine the 29th of February is included in the records when they come about, but I'm not sure so if anybody does know please let me know. Though I have heard that it's already been confirmed as the mildest Winter in the CET zone so obviously it must be so much so that an extra day or two isn't going to effect that record.

[reef]

The extra day is included in the records and can sometimes have a large effect on the final figure.

I'm not entirely sure why Hadley have announced it is the warmest winter in the CET series as by my calculations we need February to finish on 5.1C exactly to achieve that. We're at 5.1C at the moment so I can only assume in the data they have so far that the adjustment at month end leads to a rare change upwards. Either that or they will be mistaken!

Edited February 28, 2016 by reef

[Walsall Wood Snow]

2 hours ago, reef said:

The extra day is included in the records and can sometimes have a large effect on the final figure.

I'm not entirely sure why Hadley have announced it is the warmest winter in the CET series as by my calculations we need February to finish on 5.1C exactly to achieve that. We're at 5.1C at the moment so I can only assume in the data they have so far that the adjustment at month end leads to a rare change upwards. Either that or they will be mistaken!

Thanks for the reply reef. So it does seem that not all Winters are equal then in terms of the recorded period. But then again it's only 1 extra day once every 4 years anyway, so it probably makes very little difference (unless of course that one day contains record breaking cold or warmth in a Winter that had a generally opposite nature, but even then I'm not sure it would effect the final figure too much?), but being as Winter is a bit of a runt in the litter of meteorological seasonal length it is probably the one to have that extra day once every 4 years to make it equal in length to Autumn, though both seasons even then are still 1 day shorter than Spring and Summer but I suppose you can't divide 365 days into 4 and have each season contain the exact same number of 24 hour periods within them.

[Roger J Smith]

I thought it had been confirmed as the wettest, not the mildest. And it would require 5.2 to tie 1868-69 as they just average the three monthly values. If they kept stats on the 90 or 91 day average then something like 5.0 might qualify. Perhaps they have looked into that and plan to announce it that way (1869 had a milder February so it skews the three-month average when months are considered equal weight).

[mushymanrob]

On 28/02/2016 at 2:34 PM, reef said:

The extra day is included in the records and can sometimes have a large effect on the final figure.

 

can it?... 1 day out of 91? surely the 29th would have to be majorly different to even tweek the winters figures.

[feb1991blizzard]

10 hours ago, mushymanrob said:

can it?... 1 day out of 91? surely the 29th would have to be majorly different to even tweek the winters figures.

I agree, I could understand the argument if it would be a July day, I can slightly (but only very slightly) understand the rainfall totals differential from non leap years because they are counted ad incremental totals but temperature definaltely not, it wont make the slightest bit of difference

Edited March 7, 2016 by feb1991blizzard