A year of weather extremes
2019 was a year of multiple records - concluding a record-breaking decade
LAST year was warmer, wetter, and sunnier than average, and included two alltime temperature records.
Data from the Met Office - the UK’s national weather service - shows that 2019 saw the hottest day on record.
Met Office has confirmed that 2019 concludes the warmest decade since record began, in 1850.
An unbelievable 38.7C was recorded at Cambridge University Botanic Gardens on July 25.
This figure exceeded the previous high of 38.5C recorded in Faversham, Kent, in August 2003.
Last year also saw the warmest winter day on record.
That was the 21.2C recorded at Kew Gardens on February 26. That day, temperatures exceeded 20C as far west as Wales and as far north as Rochdale in Greater Manchester.
It wasn’t just the heat that was unusual in 2019.
The year was also the 11th wettest on record overall. In some counties in central and eastern England - such as Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire and parts of South Yorkshire - it was one of the five wettest years.
And while some days were dramatically hot, others were dramatically cold.
The coldest January night for seven years was recorded on January 31 when temperatures dropped to -14.3C in Braemar, Scotland.
Overall 2019 was the seventh warmest, sixth sunniest, and twentythird driest winter in a time series stretching back to 1910.
Mark McCarthy, the head of the Met Office’s National Climate Information Centre, said: “It is notable how many extreme records have been set in the most recent decade and how many more of them are reflecting high- rather than low-temperature extremes: a consequence of our warming climate.
“The year 2019 will be remembered as an exceptional year for weather records, as it is unusual to get both the UK summer and winter high-temperature records within the same calendar year. But this continues a pattern of hightemperature records in the UK over the last few decades, again as a result of our warming climate.”