Currently, the highest officially recorded temperature in the UK is 38.7°C, recorded at Cambridge Botanic Garden on 25 July 2019. Prior to that, the record was 38.5°C (10 August 2003 in Faversham, Kent), which beat the record of 37.1°C set on 3 August 1990 in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. Before the 1990 heatwave, the record had stood …
Postdoc life: six months in
I received my PhD from the University of Reading on 29 October 2021, and on 14 November I moved to New York City to start a new job as a Postdoctoral Research Scientist at Columbia University. Somehow, six months have passed since then, and I've been reflecting this week on my time as a postdoc …
Simon’s Stratosphere Watch #3
Apologies for the long gap between blog updates. But since today's weather in NYC has descended into a snowy, sleety mess, I thought today would be a good day for a blog. Saturday 12 March 2022 Summary: It is increasingly likely that the final stratospheric warming will occur soon, but forecast uncertainty remains large. A …
Simon’s Stratosphere Watch #2
When I wrote the first SSW blog on the evening of Tuesday 22 February, I did not expect to be writing the next one so soon after with such increased uncertainty. But there are many aspects to the way the world evolved over the last week which I would not have expected! Thanks to everyone …
Simon’s Stratosphere Watch #1
Welcome to a new blog series! Yes, the title was indeed chosen to fit the SSW acronym. In these posts, I intend to give a brief summary of the state of the Arctic stratospheric polar vortex and the latest forecasts. I have yet to decide how regular these will be. Tuesday 22 February 2022 Summary: …
Some thoughts on summer 2021
Predicting mid-latitude weather in summer can be more of a challenge than in winter. This is generally because components of the atmosphere-ocean system which provide predictability during winter aren't present in summer: we don't have fully developed El Niño-Southern Oscillation episodes; there's no stratospheric polar vortex; the Madden-Julian Oscillation tends to be less active; and …
The many faces of the NAO
To describe the large-scale atmospheric circulation on a given day, we often use patterns. An example pattern is the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), which I'm going to focus on here. In general, the NAO is a measure of the pressure difference between the Azores high and Iceland low, and is thus intrinsically related to the …
CFSv2 ain’t that bad: tips on using long-range forecasts
I've recently added some additional products from the NCEP Climate Forecast System version 2 (CFSv2) to my site -- namely, forecasts of the weekly-average 500 hPa geopotential height anomalies for the next 4 weeks, and forecasts of the monthly-mean 700 hPa geopotential height anomalies over the next 6 months. These sit alongside the 44 day …
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Weather and climate records are not mutually exclusive
The atmosphere is a chaotic system with an infinite number of configurations - the weather pattern on any specific day has never before been exactly the same everywhere. Thus, it is extremely difficult to link a specific weather event to climate change. And yet, when significant weather occurs, discussion immediately jumps toward climate change - …
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The link between climate change and Britain’s winter storms
This article originally appeared in the February 16th 2020 edition of The Sunday Times, and was co-written with Shingi Mararike. Every winter Britain gets hit by a series of storms. Ciara and Dennis are just the latest — but with two key differences. The first is their strength. Our storms get their energy from temperature …
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Simon H. Lee 