Sunshine Level Watch 2024

[SunSean]

A new sunshine thread for 2024! Thought it would be best to start a new one since the last one was titled July 2023. Surely this year will be sunnier than the last one right??

For my sunshine tables, I now have 33 Official Met Office or university stations after gaining an official one in Bedfordshire this morning (Woburn) so that leaves me with just 15 hybrid stations (Values gained via averages of surrounding counties). I have sent emails to University/Met stations in West Sussex, Lancashire, Staffordshire & Durham also and so hopefully I may get at least another official station to add to the table. I removed all the amateur stations because every single one of them were getting some weird readings at one stage or another, for example, the one I was using for Leicestershire recorded about 16 hours in November and the one in Staffordshire had about 80 hours for December (Yeah right).

I do wonder why Isle of Wight, apparently the sunniest county in the UK, does not have an official weather station that records sunshine...Truly baffling!

Anyway, if anyone, on the off chance, knows of some university/Met stations I may be missing, please let me know.

Here's to a sunnier (Hopefully) year! 

[*Stormforce~beka*]

Thank you for your hard work!! Looking forward to more sun!

[TheOgre]

I’m hoping we get a mostly sunny and frosty January because I’m feeling really sun starved after December and the last few days!

[SunSean]

1 hour ago, TheOgre said:

I’m hoping we get a mostly sunny and frosty January because I’m feeling really sun starved after December and the last few days!

Yeah, that December was a trial and a half- No more months as dull as that again please! Lol. Hoping this year will creep over the 2000 hour mark for sunshine! Would be considered a dull year in most of the world but for England, it would be an incredible miracle!

[damianslaw]

2 hours ago, TheOgre said:

I’m hoping we get a mostly sunny and frosty January because I’m feeling really sun starved after December and the last few days!

Whilst January is rarely renowned for sunshine, it tends to be sunnier than December and a good chunk of November, and therefore should be welcomed.

High pressure and associated sunshine tends to have greater staying power in Jan than in Nov or Dec, but in recent years has been lacking in Jan. This Jan is looking to be very different.. 

[*Stormforce~beka*]

A good amount of sun here so far this month!

[TheOgre]

On 03/01/2024 at 23:18, damianslaw said:

Whilst January is rarely renowned for sunshine, it tends to be sunnier than December and a good chunk of November, and therefore should be welcomed.

High pressure and associated sunshine tends to have greater staying power in Jan than in Nov or Dec, but in recent years has been lacking in Jan. This Jan is looking to be very different.. 

January has been unusually sunny recently. I can’t recall a sunny January before 2022 and then we had 2 in a row. Hopefully it turns into three!

[SunSean]

1st- 10th January sunshine  

After hours of research, I have a new list, featuring all 48 counties as well as 12 more extra stations for better representation of differences between coastal and inland areas.

I have also looked into adjusting and whether it has any merit and found some interesting results. If you go into the data and observe the highest sunshine duration for a station (easiest in June) for days that are clear from sunrise to sunset, you can see how much each station is under reporting sunshine hours. Normally, (lets use Shoeburyness as an example) on a clear day at solstice, you would get 16.6 hours of daylight. However because of sunrise and sunset refraction, half hour roughly each side doesn't get recorded but you'd still expect about 15.6 hours for a fully clear day. However, even on the many clear days in June 2023, we could only reach 14.7 which is too low. I've worked out you need to do 106% of 14.7 to get to the correct amount. I've gone through every station, looking at their latitude, daylight etc and found that almost all the stations are short in various amounts so small adjustments will be applied to the table so all stations are not short changed.

Some did not need an adjustment and were reaching their max or about. These are- Tibenham, Manston, Pitsford, Wittering, Waddington, Weybourne, Shawbury, Leeming & Boulmer. 

Some were way off! Charlwood stands out here with only reaching 13.9 hours on a fully clear day in June!

Some stations are hybrids- the total is gained by taking many nearby stations and using the average of those totals. Other stations use a similar method but Met office annual 1991-2020 sunshine comparison to those nearby are factored in and adjustments applied. 

All in all, I don't claim 100% accuracy to these tables and always love to improve them and learn but I hope some of you will find these useful and I for some reason, enjoy doing them!

Here's to a hopefully sun filled year!

[SunSean]

Halfway through January and a lot of places have surpassed their December sunshine totals already (although not a hard feat).

A much better month so far in regards to sunshine  

[SunSean]

January 1st-20th sunshine  

Some decent totals all round so far.

Wonder if anywhere can breach the 100 hour mark!

[Metwatch]

Up to 73.3 hours following the sunny day yesterday in Coventry, which is 12 hours above 91-2020 January average.

Still another 20 hours to reach the record from 2001 which is very unlikely. Next few days look quite dull.

[SunSean]

January 2024 sunshine [Complete]

After receiving latest Met Office figures, a few totals have changed, most notably Eastbourne dropping quite a few places so Bournemouth sit at the top for January.

For January, quite an enjoyable month overall

On to February!

[B87]

@SunSean

CS0044355 Heathrow Monthly Sun Hours 2006-2020 (002).xlsx

[Metwatch]

20 hours ago, SunSean said:

Thought i'll post the Coventry value in here for each month as your one seems to be off by several hours each update, and i'd rather post in here what steve (who runs the met station and has access to the data) posts. Also interesting to look back at them at the end of each year

Last month there was 82.7 hours, which is the 8th sunniest since records began in 1895. That is 134.6% of the January 91-20 mean.

 

Edited February 2 by Metwatch

[reef]

 Metwatch Most of the figures in that list are wrong unfortunately. If its from an automatic sunshine recorder rather than a manual then it will record up to 10% too low. Leconfield near here is another example: 64 hrs on the list, 69 hours in reality.

[SunSean]

 Metwatch Where do you get yours from? I have been using this- Daily data summary (bablakeweather.co.uk)

[Metwatch]

http://starlingsroost.ddns.net/weather/ukobs/sun_month_summary_map.php?month=01&year=2024

This has a lot of stations and updates quite nice.

 

3 minutes ago, SunSean said:

Where do you get yours from?

From twitter, he posts on there @bablakewx.

I can private message you the sunshine updates say every 10 days to not clog up this thread instead!

Edited February 2 by Metwatch

[SunSean]

 reef I don't deny some stations need a boost. Heathrow & Charlwood under report by quite a bit and Herstmonceux is unbelievably under reporting, so much so that they can only muster an 11.5 in the height of Summer! I don't fully believe every station needs a 10% boost, looking in depth at latitudes, total daylight hours and highest values obtained. Shoeburyness, my closest station, has 16.6 daylight hours on the June solstice and discounting sunrise/sunset low light levels (about 30 mins either side of the day), the highest I have seen them get on a completely clear day is 15.6 hours (which seems about right), although back in June 2020- we haven't got that high since oddly. Leconfield for example, has 17.1 hours of daylight on the June solstice, taking off 30 mins each side during sunrise & sunset which don't get recorded, would mean that the highest Leconfield should see would be about 16.1 hours on Meteociel. I have seen a 15.9 recorded on 10th July 2022, which is over 2 weeks after the solstice so I would imagine 16.1 is possible in June. Unfortunately, getting a whole 16 hours of not one single cloud is pretty difficult in this country. However, I am happy to be proven wrong and if you have any more info on your station regarding this, let me know. Always open to improving my sun tables so it's not a problem,

Cheers, Sean

 Metwatch Thanks. I wonder why the website and the Twitter posts are a few hours off, how strange! But yes, you can do that if it's not a problem to you, Thanks

[reef]

 SunSean It wasn't a criticism. The issue is more with the MetOffice. I can understand them giving only the readings for the automatic recorders on a day to day basis, but it's a shame they don't show the corrected figures at month end. Unfortunately the only way to see them correctly as it stands is to wait for the actual and anomaly maps a few days later. 

[Mapantz]

 SunSean

The Dorset figure goes well with mine

91.6 hours for here. 

[SunSean]

 reef Yeah I know, that's cool. Only problem about the anomaly maps is that the percentages & figures cover a wide bracket so it's still kind of a guess as to what the actual number is. Like you say though, shame they don't correct the figures themselves.

[SunSean]

February 1st- 10th sunshine  

This does not include the 11th & today.

Figures reminiscent to December 2023 so far unfortunately and after a lovely day today on the 12th, not yet included in this table, the forecast suggests these figures will not increase too much at all in the next week at least!

*disclaimer- Although great care goes in to creating these tables as accurate as possible, accuracy can not be 100% guaranteed due to many factors including different sunshine recorders, device locations and lack of stations recording sunshine. 

 

[reef]

Top 10 dullest Februaries here since 1980:

1980: 36 hrs
1993: 51 hrs
1991: 52 hrs
2010: 55 hrs
2011: 56 hrs
2009: 57 hrs
1984: 58 hrs
2006: 58 hrs
1982: 59 hrs
1994: 65 hrs

2024 so far up to the 11th: 17 hours! Today will add a few hours, but it looks poor for the next few days.

[Terminal Moraine]

8.5 hrs here up to today. It will still take some doing to beat 2011 as the dullest February on record ( since 2000 ) with 27.9 hrs, or even 2017 with 34.5 hrs.

[*Stormforce~beka*]

 SunSean Wow I'm well down the list!