Fifty years on from the infamous 1976 heatwave, the UK looks set to experience its hottest June day on record – exceeding the maximum of 35.6°C set on 28 June 1976. Extreme summertime heat has quickly become much more common in the UK in recent years. There are myriad ways of demonstrating this, which I …
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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10 FAQs on “Increased shear in the North Atlantic upper-level jet stream over the past four decades”
Lee, S. H., P. D. Williams, and T. H. A. Frame, 2019: Increased shear in the North Atlantic upper-level jet stream over the past four decades. Nature, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1465-z. What is the key result of the study? Our study shows that the annual-mean vertical west-to-east (zonal) wind shear over the North Atlantic at aircraft cruising altitudes (within the …
A “winter heatwave” in a warming world
The final week of February 2019 has been characterised by anomalously warm, record-setting conditions over NW Europe. The United Kingdom broke its all-time maximum record temperature for February on several occasions and at several stations - the previous record of 19.7C from 1998 was obliterated, replaced with a new record of 21.2C (a huge difference …
Going Viral: Some thoughts one week later
Sunday, July 22, 2018, 9:31 PM BST. I put out a relatively simple tweet comprising of two NASA GISS global temperature anomaly graphics - one for June 1976, and one for June 2018. After listening to the media and meteorologists alike comparing and contrasting the current UK heatwave with that of 1976 (something which I …
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