Whats with the UK weather in July 2007?
From BBC News: The UK’s weather has partly been attributed to the La Nina system, which has lead to areas of warm water developing in the western Pacific, making the ocean surrounding Australia warmer than usual. Matt Taylor, from the BBC Weather Centre, explained: “This has a different impact on weather systems across the world. It is helping to change patterns for us by driving the Atlantic jetstream a bit lower than normal. “This means that instead of low pressure being driven towards Iceland, it is coming towards the UK which has become the focus for areas of rain.” Of course, it’s probably a symptom of global warming too.
Re: the global warming thing. Freak weather is, well, freak weather. It’s only when the freak weather becomes normal and predictable that we can say it’s global warming. Last July we had a heatwave that meant the UK was warmer than most European resorts. So this isn’t typical. It’s just Britain. One other thing that gets on my nerves is the phrase “since records began”. It’s just a useless phrase. It means nothing at all, other than to tell us the time that’s occurred since when this last happened. I also hate phrases like, “This is the wettest June since 1990”. That’s equally meaningless. So what?
Yes, it was lovely back around Easter. Today I wore a jacket and scarf on the way to work and I wasn’t the only one. In Newcastle! In July! You don’t even see scarves in midwinter around here. The jet streams are very far south this year, meaning the country is getting the weather they normally have in the Shetlands or thereabouts. Hence, more rain. My onions all died in the ground waterlogged but the beans and peas are having a ball 🙂 It’s still a bit early in modelling terms to definitively say what the cause of this is, if it’s not normal variation. In the bigger picture the El Nino/Southern Oscillation originating in the Pacific (considered the engine for global weather) has knock-on effects for the North Atlantic oscillation. How this is affected by CO2 output, and why it appears to be speeding up, is a complex matter but I thought
