New UK January and Scotland winter temperature record

[Metwatch]

  @hillbilly

Here 2021 was similarily another funny one with the warmest day of the spring here and quite a few other places on the 31st March, with a new record of 23.0C, a fantastic day!

[WYorksWeather]

1 hour ago, Daniel* said:

I don’t completely agree while they are valid the unpredictable and sparse nature of these foehn records can be more easily blown away than low level sites. Perhaps in past we underachieved? 

Well, again, there is always that point. But it's hard to know except in hindsight how 'exceptional' a given record is. All we can say with confidence is that the chance of such a record being set has significantly increased.

The study of very rare events is notoriously a somewhat difficult problem in statistics. If an event breaks records all you can really say is 'unprecedented in the historical record'. The further back you go, the coarser the resolution, so for daily records, what we really mean is 'warmest January day in, at minimum, 100 years'. We can't go back further than that. But for monthly records, or annual records, it is possible to reconstruct temperatures further back, and for decadal or multi-decadal, further still. We can say with very high confidence that the last 30 year period is the warmest in the last 2000 years, fairly high confidence that it is the warmest in the last 12,000 years, and possibly getting close to the point where we can say warmest in the last 100,000 years.

[Derecho]

  @Metwatch Indeed but can we achieve that with an airmass as hot as the one we saw in July 2022?

I think yes but it'd require all the jigsaw pieces together. I think high summer will see more of these transient but intense plumes with the regularity of these reaching 40C somewhere increasing. One year though we will see something off the scale.

Edited January 28 by Derecho

[MattStoke]

Record may have been even higher according to professional meteorologist Dan Holley.

[Metwatch]

I suppose a broken clock is right twice a day, this from 10 days before yesterday:

 

And yes 19.9C on a climate station about 15 miles west of Altnaharra. Had February 2019 not seen such warmth, this would be the new highest large temperature in the UK.

 

To compare to nearby Altnaharra 15 miles away, it only reached or exceeded 20C 6 days last July!

Edited January 29 by Metwatch

[MattStoke]

Provisionally confirmed by the MO.

[sundog]

So it's likely that the uk Jan record was broken 3 times yesterday? 19.2c then 19.6c  and then 19.9c

[Frigid]

  @MattStoke We can pretty much say January has hit 20C. Reminds me of when Oct 2011 hit 29.9C.. 

[dryfie]

  @sundog The automatic equipment probably records every minute(?).  However, the station only reports hourly.  So the 19.2 was an hourly report (say 13.00).  The maximum temperature is likely to be between hours (say 13.30).  That’s the 19.6. Not all stations are automatic, many are manual.  Their readings are reported daily at 0900.  So the 19.9 was reported at a manual station the day after.  Hope that makes sense!

[Shaunado]

Worth watching today's Met Office Deep Dive for a good explanation of why it got so warm.