CENTURY-OLD EQUIPMENT REVEALS HOW ELEMENTS CHANGE Climate station weathers well

A TRUSTY old weather station has confirmed the North East is getting hotter.

The station has been monitoring weather in Durham for more than a century and is still going strong.

And records show that we’re warmer than our great, great grannies.

But the data reveals it’s not all good news, because we’re also wetter than we were 100 years ago.

The station, which is unmanned, collects information automatically and sends it to the Met Office, where it is analysed.

It started recording data in 1880 and, although methods have changed, its historic information provides a glimpse into the lives of our forefathers.

Professor Tim Burt, of Durham University, has been responsible for looking at data from the station.

It is situated in Durham off the A167 not far from the Duke of Wellington in Potters Bank, and is one of the oldest in the country.

He said he was not surprised by the increase in temperature – and the rate of increase in getting bigger all the The weather station in Durham has been providing data since the 1880s. Inset, Professor Tim Burt from Durham University time. “There has been an average increase of one and a half degrees since the 1880s,” said Prof Burt.

“But the interesting thing is that we have gone up by one degree celsius in the last 50 years.

“If you go back to the 1960s, which is in living memory, you would have people who wished it was as warm as the south. Now it is and the rise shows the greenhouse effect.

“We might have grumbled about the weather back then but I would be pleased to see those temperatures again.”

So what do the records show for Durham? We’ve broken down the results to show how our ancestors had very different experiences of the weather.

Temperature

Average temperatures in the North East have been creeping up over the last 100 years.

Research into more than a century’s worth of Met Office figures shows that the region is now warmer than ever before.

The rise is most starkly revealed in winter temperatures.

Between 1887 and 1917, the lowest temperature in December, January and February was a chilly 0.3C on average.

It would have been a case of wearing layers of clothes to protect against the bitter cold.

In comparison, by 1987-2017 that had risen to 1.4C – more than four times higher, and the warmest on record.

There has also been a rise in average high temperatures in winter.

The hottest it got on average at that time of year 100 years ago was 6C.

But now maximum winter temperatures have reached an all-time high of 7.2C on average.

Frost and snow

It’s also now less frosty, with fewer days when the temperature drops below the freezing point of water.

The data from Durham reveals that our ancestors in 1887 to 1917 could expect frost, and possibly snow, for 39 days.

Now we’ve got it easy with just 30 days when the mercury in the North East plummets.

Whole villages would have been cut off for lengthy periods of time and you would assume that local authorities would not make snow ploughs a priority, meaning our ancestors would just have had to get on with things.

Rain

One area where our ancestors got the better deal is with rain.

Sorry to tell you this, but great, great granny did not have to use the umbrella nearly as much as we do today.

The North East was a drier place when the 19th century turned into the 20th.

Around 127mm of rain fell on average in the winters of 1887 to 1917.

Winter rainfall in the last 20 years has been an average of 156mm.

But our long lost ancestors would have recognised our rainy summers. It was 179mm then – and it is still 179mm today.

Autumn and spring

The North East has been faced with warmer temperatures than ever before across the whole year.

For example, while spring is now just as rainy as it ever was, minimum temperatures during the season have risen from 2.7C to 4.1C on average, and max temperatures from 11.1C to 12.3C.

The number of frosty days seen in spring have also fallen, from more