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 …
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 …
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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Simon H. Lee 