Missing – One Winter - as Christmas approached, temperatures in southern and central England more like March or April – a balmy
/ barmy, blowy Christmas - melting ice rinks – daffodils flowering for the
winter solstice / Christmas (my photo taken at East Meon, 23rd December).
Overall very disconcerting and disorientating. Seemingly Christmas has gone
totally crackers this year.
While in the
Worcestershire area, the weekend before Christmas (19-20 Dec), bats and buds. On the
Sunday, we took a very muddy walk on
Bredon Hill, then called into a café in Pershore. There we read the paper (The Observer,
22nd December, which had a double spread about all this sort of
stuff – All Calm on the Cam: highs of 17oC in eastern England as
crazy December weather continues (Cambridge) plus feature on p 12-13 about the
causes: human induced climate change (global heating) coupled with the
strongest El-Niño in the eastern Pacific (off Peru) since at least 1997. Where
were, the highs were around 15oC. A complete contrast to this time
during 2010 when it was particularly cold around Pershore, with night time lows
dropping to almost-19oC (BBC News, 21/12/2010 - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12034317?print=true).
White Christmas off
and UK ice rinks melt in mild December weather - The Guardian, 23/12/15
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/dec/23/white-christmas-is-off-as-ice-rinks-melt-in-mildest-uk-december-since-1960
Butterflies in church bats along-the-river - Guardian letters - online 24th December (paper copy, 26th December) .
One from Arundel Castle's head gardener who said some of their flowers seem to
think it’s spring already; bugs and pests not being killed off; and the risk
the fruit harvest if early fruit blossom was to be followed by frost. The bats
were along the River Aire, which subsequently reached a record level in Leeds
amid the Boxing Day deluge (next entry).
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/dec/24/butterflies-in-church-bats-along-the-river
In January, the Met. Office confirmed that, December was the warmest in records for the UK going back to 1910, along with the wettest recorded calendar month. After recent wet episodes such as winter 2013 / 14, that took some doing, going to show just how crazy the rainfall in the north was.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2016/december-records
The mean monthly temperature average for UK overall showed the highest anomaly recorded for any calendar month (just over 4oC), with the mean temperature for England over 9oC. Thanks to all the sog in northern England and Scotland throughout December, 2015 now ranks in the top ten wettest years in the UK record.
There was a distinctive all-or-nothing north-side in rainfall either side of the English Channel as the blocked weather pattern over Europe during November continued. The jet stream tended to track just NW of the British Isles bringing all the rain to northern and western Britain; and persistent high pressure over continental Europe making for warm, southerly / southwesterly airflows. This meant with very little or no snow over the Alps and Pyrenees, none over the Massif Central. Aside from spoiling the fun for skiers, this will have real hydrological implications on major European rivers such as the Rhine if it continues like this all through the winter.
Yet again northern parts of Britain was battered by storms and had to endure flooding during the week after Christmas (Difficult Confluences in the North - Storms Eva and Frank).
News from the Dry Zone (France), meanwhile, of the Loire stuck at its summer level (French media site, France 3, 30th December):
La Loire à son niveau estival : faut-il s'en inquiéter ?
In answer to this question, worrying though not at all surprising given the synoptic pattern: the Loire receives most of its flow from rain associated with Atlantic weather fronts its flow peaks during the winter. It goes to show how full-on / full-off the rainfall patterns over northern Europe have become; in rainfall amount and its geographical distribution. I hope things improve in January. During the hot spring of 2011 it ran virtually dry.
According to Eaufrance's hydrological summary for December. Averaged nationally, the total monthly precipitation 70% on what they’d usually expect (1981-2010 average) and the driest December in a record going back to 1959. River flows well below average for the time of year, especially the Loire southwards.
Météo France – in their monthly summary of the weather across France in December - http://www.meteofrance.fr/actualites/32167565-un-mois-de-decembre-printanier-pour-finir-l-annee-2015 - they said that December was spring like, with temperatures exceeding those in March. Nationally, the mean temperature anomaly was similar to that of the UK. Whereas the UK experienced lots of dull and wet weather, they had it very sunny, and also very dry, with rainfall nationally 15% below average (records back to 1900, again 1981-2010 average). Overall, 2015 was the third warmest year in France, after 2014 and 2011 and among the ten driest during the past fifty years, with rainfall 10% below average nationally. It was the second warmest year in Europe.
The worrying thing
about the dry weather across continental Europe (as noted recently) is it is
consistent with climate change predictions. Also very worrying is the marked
warming in the Arctic. According to climate scientists, this maybe why the jet
stream is getting stuck in one position on a seemingly increasingly regular
basis, invariably taking a loopy, meandering course as it has been lately. See also:
http://www.meteofrance.fr/actualites/32536533-2015-une-annee-chaude-bien-ensoleillee-et-peu-arrosee
The end of the year,
all the warmer with the added influence of the strong El Niño building in the
eastern Pacific since the summer. This
involves warming of the sea surface in the Pacific off the coast of South
America. It exerts its biggest influence, then around the Pacific – this year
forest fires in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, drought in eastern Africa,
drought and flood in Australia, wet in California (but until now they’ve had a
protracted drought), warm in Alaska and western Canada. Whereas the Atlantic
had a relatively quiet hurricane season, there were more typhoons than usual in
the northern Pacific, including one which hit the east coast of Mexico. Though
Europe is further away from the action, El Niño’s effects feed into global
weather patterns as the ocean-atmosphere is a planet-wide, interdependent
system. It has also been exceptionally warm in New York / US East coast.
El Niño brings Christmas chaos
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/28/from-paraguay-to-the-us-australia-to-spain-el-nino-brings-christmas-chaos?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Drive
El Niño brings Christmas chaos
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/28/from-paraguay-to-the-us-australia-to-spain-el-nino-brings-christmas-chaos?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Drive
El Niño means the
(Christ) child as it usually peaks around Christmas. It happens roughly every
seven years, buts its irregular.
The strongest events
during the past forty years were 1976 /77 – Recall a National Geographic Cover
/ Feature – The Year the Weather Went Wild – The Golden State Dries Up (drought
in California) – Snow in Miami, Slush in Alaska – bears coming out of
hibernation in Alaska early as icicles formed on Florida oranges.
1982 / 83 – National
Geographic - El Niño’s Ill Wind. News
reports of major flooding along the Mississippi River in the autumn; Christmas
crues in France – the track of the jet stream and low pressures must have been
further south that year – then in early 1983 drought, forest fires and flood in
Australia – flash floods and mudslides in California.
1997 / 98 – Forest fires
in Indonesia (2015’s even worse yet largely ignored by the UK / European media);
1998 the then warmest year globally on record. Wet again California. Notably
mild but wet at times in the UK. Spring early in Alaska, heatwave in western
Canada summer 1998.
Globally,
temperatures at the Earth’s surface are rising year on year, with 2015 topping
2014 as the warmest year on record globally and 2016 predicted to be even
hotter. El Niño is contributing to the current glut of warm years, but thanks
to global warming, it’s been almost year-on-year since the beginning of this
century and most of the warmest years have been during the past thirty years.
Guardian 27/12/15 - UK floods and extreme global weather linked
to El Niño and climate change
