Warmer, wetter weather of 2019 shows reality of climate change
Will Hayward looks back on a year of weather extremes
THE weather in 2019 has been a tale of extremes. There has been record-breaking heat and rain, along with significant spells of cold and windy weather.
This is something we need to get used to with climate change. It is now scientific fact that humans are making the world warmer.
The agreement of scientists is overwhelming.
People may say things like “the Earth has always changed temperature” but this woefully misses the point.
You can not point to a drought and say “that is caused by global warming”.
However, global heating is going to make volatile weather conditions happen more often, as well as issues like sea level rise.
You only have to look at the wildfires currently in Australia to realise how this problem is already affecting people.
The Met Office has been through 2019’s weather and picked up some quite unusual events.
These include two all-time temperature records:
■ Warmest winter day on record: 21.2°C (70F) recorded at Kew Gardens on February 26.
■ Hottest day on record: 38.7°C (102F) recorded at Cambridge University Botanic Gardens on July 25.
Dr Mark McCarthy is the head of the Met Office’s National Climate Information Centre. Commenting on 2019, he said: “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 high-temperature records in the UK over the last few decades, as a result of our warming climate.”
Winter
No-one could have missed the fact that February was record breaking.
Despite starting with snow and freezing temperatures, the warmest winter and February day on record was recorded at Kew Gardens with 21.2°C on February 26, with temperatures exceeding 20°C (68F) in west Wales.
It also went as far north as Rochdale, making this a more widespread event than the previous record, set in February 1998. The daily minimum temperatures were also well above average, but not record breaking.
Wales also broke a national record for warmest winter and February days with 20.8°C (69.4F) recorded in Porthmadog, on February 26.
In total, 21 locations in the Met Office observing network broke previous national (England, Scotland, Wales) records, some of these on multiple days.
Spring
With a UK temperature of 6.8°C (44F), 1.3°C above average, March 2019 provisionally came in as the 10th-warmest March on record.
A number of records were broken, including the hottest Easter Monday on record in Wales.
Even though Easter fell relatively late this year it was notably warm for the time of year, and over the Easter weekend many weather stations across the UK broke their local April temperature records.
Through April, England saw particularly low levels of rainfall, especially in the east. East Anglia received just 25% of its average monthly rainfall. Essex was the driest county, with just 9.2mm of rain through the whole of April.
Summer
July will be remembered for the hottest day on record ever recorded in the UK. A maximum temperature of 38.7°C was recorded at Cambridge University Botanic Garden on July 25. This figure exceeded the previous record of 38.5°C (101F) recorded in Faversham, Kent, in August 2003.
The exceptionally high temperatures gripped large parts of central and western Europe, with Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands breaking national temperature records.
Also during July, Cheshire received more than twice the average rainfall for the month (219%). Other counties in central and northern England, including Lancashire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire and Leicestershire, also received more than one and a half times the month’s typical rainfall for July. Storms and intense rainfall caused flooding across parts of northern England on July 30 and 31.
Overall, summer 2019 was the 12th warmest on record since 1910 across the UK, but unusually this summer was also relatively wet.
Previous hot summers have been largely dry, but this summer was seventh wettest overall in the UK in a series dating back to 1910. Scotland was very wet overall as it recorded its second wettest summer, only surpassed by summer 1985.
Autumn
Many people in England will remember autumn 2019 as a very wet season, with significant flooding in parts of the Midlands and days of prolonged rainfall. But this wasn’t the case across the whole of the UK.
There was a marked difference in rainfall amounts between eastern parts of England and north-western Scotland. Autumn rainfall records were broken for South Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, and Lincolnshire, with the previous records set in 2000. England as a whole has had its fifth-wettest autumn, with 348mm. These areas had also had a wet summer, so that the rain was falling on already wet ground.
South Yorkshire was the wettest county compared to the long-term average (1981-2010) with more than double its average rainfall for the season (425.4mm compared to an average of 208mm).
In comparison to the rainfall distribution in 2000 –when many autumn records were set – this season’s highest rainfall accumulations were focused in the East Midlands. In 2000, the highest totals affected much of England and Wales, with just parts of Scotland ending the season below average.