The New Weather; UK Patterns 2007-2012 v5 by Mike Rigby, CEO, October 2012

Intro Since having children, I started to note a pattern in the weather. When your holidays begin to be set by the school calendar, it becomes easier to spot seasonal changes. My memory seemed to suggest that year after year, we were seeing warm, dry springs, particularly April and much wetter summers, particularly July, the first month of the school summer holidays. Of course, this experience is based largely on my normal location, Somerset, but nevertheless 2012 seemed to me to be the sixth cool, wet summer in a row. A search of Met Office data confirmed that this was largely the case across England, not just Somerset. Figure 1 shows the actual rainfall for April as a percentage of the long term average for that month. With the exception of 2012, which saw the wettest April in history spectacularly break the 5 year trend, 2008 was the only other occasion when rainfall exceeded the average (slightly). The period also saw two occasions when rainfall was just 20% of the longterm average.
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Longterm Average (April) Actual April Rainfall (% of longterm average)

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Figure 1 April Rainfall in England as a Percentage of the Longterm Average

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Now examine the data for July in the same time range and the picture is startling with every year above the long-term average and two years seeing more than twice the average rainfall.

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Longterm July Average

Actual July Rainfall (% of longterm average)'

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Figure 2 July Rainfall in England as a Percentage of the Longterm Average

The pattern of altered Spring rainfall is set against a background of rising temperatures. Mean temperatures in April have shown marked increases, of up to 4%, with July mean temperatures typically at or below the long term average.
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1 0 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

April Variation July Variation

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F Figure 3 Mean Temperatures Differences against Longterm Average (0) Conclusions What does all this mean? Well, 6 years straight of warm dry, springs, followed by cooler, wetter summers does seem indicative of a trend. Even in 2012, when the pattern of dry Aprils was smashed by the wettest April on record, March replaced it as the warm, dry Spring month. Statisticians and climatologists will take a longer view before stating that there has been a permanent shift in Englands climate. However, some of the normal variability does seem to have disappeared from our weather patterns. Before this 6-year period, you could count on pretty much any kind of weather at any time of year; there were huge fluctuations from year-to-year. One summer would be a heatwave, the next a washout. Now we seem to get the washout

every year; no more hot, dry summers but, as some recompense the spring is becoming generally warmer and drier. It is difficult, if not impossible, to pinpoint exactly what causes individual extreme weather events or patterns. It has been suggested that shrinking sea ice in the Arctic could be causing these effects. Others suggest that the location of the Jet Steam, fastmoving winds in the upper atmosphere, govern these changes. More recently, the finger has been pointed at a phenomenon called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, which is a scientific way of describing the varying temperature of the Atlantic Ocean. There appears to be a correlation between times when the Atlantic is warmer and periods of wetter weather in northern Europe. One things for sure, farmers and the population in general will be hoping for a drier summer in 2013.

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