August 1986

[Greyhound81]

On 30/08/2023 at 22:22, damianslaw said:

August 86 was quite an exceptional month, not many to compare it to, but to then have an exceptionally cold September was very unusual. The exceptional cold in Jan 87 followed. Indeed Feb 86 - Jan 87 produced abundant extreme cold, not seen anything close since. 

Do you think the end of solar cycle 21 was one of the the reasons why 1986 was so cold?  The end of odd numbered solar cycles seems to coincide with cold weather.

Edited August 31, 2023 by Greyhound81

[reef]

11 hours ago, Greyhound81 said:

Do you think the end of solar cycle 21 was one of the the reasons why 1986 was so cold?  The end of odd numbered solar cycles seems to coincide with cold weather.

The climate was just colder in general back then. Although in the CET series 1986 had a mean of 8.7C, back then it was only 0.7C below the 1951-80 average.

1983 for example with a mean of 10.1C was the warmest year for 22 years. The same annual CET now would be below the 1991-2020 average.

[Sunny76]

13 hours ago, damianslaw said:

Yes probably need a major volcanic eruption to cause global cooling. Not had one since 1991. 

We really don’t need years like 85-87 again. 
 

They were horrible summers. 

[Greyhound81]

On 31/08/2023 at 19:45, reef said:

1985, 1986 and 1987 are the three coldest years I've got in my records. 1986 was the coldest of all at 8.80C.

A year like that now would be remarkable, especially if you compared it to the 1991-2020 averages:

Jan: 3.3C (-1.4C)
Feb: -0.5C (-5.6C)
Mar: 5.1C (-1.5C)
Apr: 5.8C (-2.9C)
May: 11.5C (0.0C)
Jun: 13.4C (-1.0C)
Jul: 16.1C (-0.6C)
Aug: 13.7C (-3.1C)
Sep: 11.8C (-2.5C)
Oct: 11.0C (0.0C)
Nov: 7.7C (+0.3C)
Dec: 5.9C (+1.0C)

The closest year recently for us was 2010 with a mean of 9.18C. I think that's probably the low limit now.

If the AMOC collapses (a very big if), the UK would get colder and years like 1986 would be new the normal.

Edited September 2, 2023 by Greyhound81
words missing

[cheese]

On 28/08/2023 at 17:08, reef said:

September 1986 was very much like April 2021 here. It was the coldest September on record with a mean of 11.8C but also the sunniest with 202 hours. It was also very dry here with just 21.0mm of rain.

The low average temperature was mainly due to cold nights as the average min was 7.5C, a degree below the next lowest (2015). 9 days had mins below 5C.

I suspect if we had a year like 1986 now people would hate it. Just 30 days hit 20C or above in the whole year. Only 8 of those days were above 22C. It feels like another world now.

Wow, what a shocking statistic. The 60s-80s was certainly a very cold period, even compared to the early 20th century it seems.

Edited September 2, 2023 by cheese

[North-Easterly Blast]

On 30/08/2023 at 23:22, damianslaw said:

August 86 was quite an exceptional month, not many to compare it to, but to then have an exceptionally cold September was very unusual. The exceptional cold in Jan 87 followed. Indeed Feb 86 - Jan 87 produced abundant extreme cold, not seen anything close since. 

I think that before 1986, the previous time that we had such a cool August was 30 years before it in 1956, which overall was a wetter month than in 1986.  There were similarly cool Augusts further back in 1920 and 1922, and of course, the coolest on record in 1912.

If you look at rainfall for August 1986, the overall EWP average is 118mm, which is similar to that of August 2020 which was 3.9*C warmer for the CET, so although August 1986 was very cool, it would have felt similar rainfall-wise to the warm August of 2020.  Another example is that August 2004's rainfall of 156mm combined with a CET of 17.6 was only 2mm drier than August 1956 that was over 4*C cooler for the CET.  

September 1986 was certainly very cool with a CET of 11.3, although this was a dry month dominated by high pressure to the north of the UK which allowed cool airstreams from the north to cover the country producing a large number of cool nights and even occasional frosts, but the average maximum CET in Sep 1986 was similar to that of Sep 1993, so it was the cool nights in Sep 1986 made the overall CET over a degree lower than that for 1993.

Just for the fun of it, it would be interesting to see an August like 1986 again, although the coolest August that we have had in recent times was in 2014 which had a CET of 14.9 on the legacy series, but slightly higher on the revised series.

[Don]

On 30/08/2023 at 23:22, damianslaw said:

August 86 was quite an exceptional month, not many to compare it to, but to then have an exceptionally cold September was very unusual. The exceptional cold in Jan 87 followed. Indeed Feb 86 - Jan 87 produced abundant extreme cold, not seen anything close since. 

And then soon after, GW kicked us all in the you know what!!

On 01/09/2023 at 12:10, Sunny76 said:

We really don’t need years like 85-87 again. 
 

They were horrible summers. 

But not as horrible as summer 2023, aye?! 

[Danjam]

Very interesting, how cold the period of 1986-87 was. Many months of below average temps, and poor spring and summer months. 
 

Looks like something changed between the late summer of 1987, and spring of 88. 
 

March 88 was the first warmer than average one for quite some time, and the start of a string of milder Marches. 
 

Also, May 88 was the first one without a frost since 1970?

Combined with the milder winter period in 87-88, indicates a change compared to the previous 20 or so years. Not sure the hurricane has anything to do with it.