Worryingly Wet & Worryingly Sunless

[Scorcher]

 B87 What was your annual total in 2003?

[B87]

 Scorcher Interestingly, 2003.5 hours!

2021 had a pathetic 1369.6 hours. Apart from late March and April it felt like the grey was unrelenting for 11 months.

The average of those 2 years is 1686 hours, pretty much exactly the long term average, so those 2 years seem to represent the best and worst possible.

Edited March 17 by B87

[CryoraptorA303]

 Summer8906 It seems that the summers are more or less the same as they always were (plus climate change making them more extreme), but the winters are missing, making the summers seem worse in milder years. In a milder and wetter year like 2017 when we would have historically seen a decently cold winter, we now see a never-ending autumn instead (minus BFTE). I was compiling a post with all the rainfall and sunshine stats since 2015 but unfortunately Netweather lost it. It generally looks like average variation with climate change exaggerating the extremes. 2017, 2020 and 2023 are the only three that can really be said to have been truly wet and dull summers, and even then the latter two were mixed bags.

I wish the Met Office had graphs going back to 1991, or even further, to compare to much older years.

7 minutes ago, B87 said:

2003.5 hours

Edited March 17 by CryoraptorA303

[CryoraptorA303]

7 minutes ago, B87 said:

Apart from late March and April it felt like the grey was unrelenting for 11 months.

Wasn't the autumn a lot sunnier though? I clearly remember quite a lot of sunny days that autumn. 'Twas quite dry too aside from some storms in October.

[Summer8906]

 CryoraptorA303 Perhaps. But I've also highlighted local variations for this area in the past, for example someone posted a temp map for August 2019 which clearly showed the central south coast as being disproportionately cool compared to much of the country, with a constant nagging and unpleasant onshore SW-ly breeze for two weeks 5th-18th.  Fine weather here in Aug 2019 was restricted to the first three days and 19th-26th. So I'd class 2019 in the dull and damp category overall (only July was decent).

Then summer 2021 which was notably dull and wet here, though other parts of the country fared better.

Also 2015 which was persistently dull and unsettled from around July 12th.

So of the past few years, in this part of the country 2015, 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2023 belong firmly in that dull, unsettled camp. Only 2018 and 2022, plus 2016 (very dry July and fine August) are exceptions.

Edited March 17 by Summer8906

[B87]

 CryoraptorA303 November had near average sunshine, but was very dry with only 3 wet days and 10mm rainfall.

January, May, August and December were close to record levels of dull. April was the only month to actually reach or surpass it's average (a sunny month with 224 hours here).

Edited March 17 by B87

[Summer8906]

 CryoraptorA303 Re autumn 2021 I think it depends on location. October had three very wet spells, early month, mid-month and late month separated by dry, mild and cloudy conditions.

Nov 2021 was very dry but, aside from the first week, very dull.

[CryoraptorA303]

 Summer8906 Interestingly I noticed Hampshire in particular seemed to keep having the dull or wet anomalies. Whereas Kent seems to keep having sunnier and drier conditions than everyone else. 2021 is really the only summer we truly did see the worst conditions, although even then we missed out on the absolute worst which seemed to hit London.

This would explain why I don't really agree with a lot of the sentiments here about the last decade of summers

 B87 Interesting, the sunny days may have just been standing out vs the previous six months at that point.

 Summer8906

November was only very dull in parts of NI and northern Scotland. In Hampshire it looks to have been slightly above average.

[John S2]

There appear to be regional differences in summer trends. In the NW England rainfall series [POR=151 years] 9 of the 24 summers this century feature amongst the top 25 wettest, but this trend is not present in the SE England series.

[kold weather]

 CryoraptorA303 I wonder whether we need to adjust for temperature inflation to get a better steer? 

Given the Atlantic is running way beyond even last years record (in itself a huge anomaly) I think perhaps looking at Febs/Mar combos a good 1c cooler may yield something to draw upon?

Have to say the summers where we will a fast transition to La Nina have tended to be on the poorer side of things, SB did a list on another thread and it was not a great list overall. 

[Summer8906]

 CryoraptorA303 Interesting that you've noticed Hampshire often being anomalously dull/wet. As said before my theory is we've had more SW-lies and less NW-lies of late, hence more direct hits by damp maritime air. More SW-lies would also explain eastern England maintaining relatively dry and warm-by-day summers.

As for Nov 2021 it seemed dull, perhaps it was just psychology though - the fact that it was dry meant I was "expecting" more sun. I do remember the first 7 days being very sunny though which would doubtless influence things. Main memory of that month is having to self isolate for 10 days and looking out at the constant dry but dull conditions (so it didn't feel like I was missing anything...)

Edited March 17 by Summer8906

[Summer8906]

 kold weather Wasn't 1998 the key one? Perhaps that's behind my gut feeling for May being good and June less so - as May 1998 was notably hot and sunny.

Is the general pattern something like: El Nino=mild wet winters and warm summers; La Nina=cooler drier winters and cooler wetter summers?

So perhaps autumn and winter 2024/5 might deliver the long drier spell many of us are looking for?

[CryoraptorA303]

11 minutes ago, Summer8906 said:

La Nina=cooler drier winters and cooler wetter summers

Coningsby: I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that

In all seriousness, linking ENSO to European weather is very complex and hardly a straightforward thing.

The main thing I noticed in Nino-Nina flips is it seemed to disrupt the ongoing pattern of weather. In 1998, 2007 and 2010 it disrupted the ongoing dry spell. Conversely in 1995 and 2016 it disrupted the wet spell.

By that logic, seeing as we're in an intense wet spell, the flip to Nina should disrupt it and lead to a dry spell.

Even without this logic, I would argue that flipping ENSO is something worth trying, as nothing else seems to be sending the wet spell on its way. We might as well take our chances with a global regime flip at this point.

 kold weather I have thought about that, however despite this problem the vast majority of months are still showing obvious clustering with pre-21st century months. I haven't really seen something like this March before in the time I've been studying inter-annual relations.

On the topic of the warm Atlantic, perhaps the upcoming northerly spell could help to cool it somewhat. It is in desperate need of cooling if we want the Atlantic forcing to weaken.

11 minutes ago, Summer8906 said:

So perhaps autumn and winter 2024/5 might deliver the long drier spell many of us are looking for?

The last notably dry autumn (and second half of the year in general) was 2016, so eight years ago now. We are highly overdue one and I would bet on a high likelihood of a notably dry autumn this year.

Edited March 17 by CryoraptorA303

[reef]

 B87 I find that 2021 figure astounding, as we had 1612 hours here that year. It probably explains why people in the south-east region hated 2021 so much.

Our dullest years were 1993 and 1998 with 1328 and 1334 hours.

We haven't had a year with less than 1541 hours since 2002 now, so it shows how we're definitely getting sunnier over time up here.

[In Absence of True Seasons]

18 hours ago, Scorcher said:

Is anyone else concerned we could turn into a warmer version of the Faroe Islands?

I said this before, that this is my prediction of what the UK will basically become as a result of climate change - the Southern Faroe Islands - milder, wetter and cloudier, just with the odd hot dry burst here and there in summer (which admittedly the Faroe Islands don't really have...but thats just a result of our closer proximity to mainland Europe). 

I was told I was being dramatic / extreme  

We'll have to wait and see...

[richie3846]

 Summer8906 Maybe parts of the UK will warrant a new classification in its own right

[CryoraptorA303]

 reef
 

It was very much a north vs south summer. In fact I think it's central Scotland's hottest summer on record.

It also saw NI set it's all-time record in July. Were it not for Heathrow getting to 32.2°C one day, it would've been the first ever annual maximum held by NI.

[CryoraptorA303]

 richie3846 I actually mentioned this last night, perhaps the UK will end up seeing a climate that doesn't have an extant analogue (perhaps some sort of dry spring-humid summer classification?). There are inferred extinct climate regimes from the LGM (is this what would be considered climate palaeontology? ) that have no extant representatives, so it's possible that new climate regimes that don't currently exist will appear after a certain point, and by the same token, some regimes that currently exist could go extinct. I couldn't tell you which ones though.

[Arctic Hare]

8 minutes ago, CryoraptorA303 said:

is this what would be considered climate palaeontology?

Palaeoclimatology, I believe, but essentially yes! But yes, fascinating to imagine that CC may bring the need for novel classifications. My hunch is that that's quite likely.

[danm]

 Summer8906 2020 seems to have been very localised to coastal Hampshire in terms of below average sunshine, look at the rest of the south where it was above average, significantly so in some areas:

[Weather-history]

Sunshine hours for Morecambe in 1895

Jan: 102

Feb: 135

Mar: 114

Apr: 220

May: 301

Jun: 346

Jul: 290

Aug: 231

Sep: 249

Oct: 137

Nov: 93

Dec: 59

[CryoraptorA303]

 danm Looks like it's present in all three months of 2020:

The weather gods must hate Summer8906!

[danm]

53 minutes ago, In Absence of True Seasons said:

I was told I was being dramatic / extreme

You definitely are!

[Scorcher]

 Weather-history Incredibly impressive if accurate. I think June and September stand out as a bit suspect though.

[Daniel*]

Quite sure we will see a decline in sunshine hours with 2001-2030 averages… we’ll lose the sunny 90s summers.