Ask an expert - what's happening with the weather?
Friday, 30 September 2011
staff enjoy the recent hot spell
ÔÇÿThe [current] temperature, although well above average, is still not excessively unusualÔÇÖ
We ask Dr Pete Inness, Senior Research Fellow in the University's Department of Meteorology, is this weather that unusual? What will our winter weather be like and is this warm spell an indication of climate change?
Is the current weather unusual?
Dr Inness: The temperature, although well above average, is still not excessively unusual and a spell of warm weather now isn't something we never expect to see. The fact that we even have a name for it (an Indian Summer) suggests that it must happen on a fairly regular basis.
Is the unusual weather related to climate change?
Dr Inness: No, the natural variability in the UK weather is large, and so one warm autumn or cold summer does not either prove or disprove climate change. Climate change is all about long term trends, which are hard to detect in a weather record which has very large natural variability.
Is the UK currently hotter than Southern Europe?
Dr Inness: The ridge of high pressure that's bringing us the warmer temperatures is set to build across much of Europe, bringing warm air up from the south. Thus most places in Europe will be pretty warm.
Does this weather give us an indication of the winter to come?
Dr Inness: Due to the variability of our weather, warm temperatures in late September/early October tell us nothing one way or the other about the forthcoming winter. The systems that are bringing us our current warm weather will be long gone by winter and our weather doesn't have any real memory - i.e. conditions this week will not have an effect on weather patterns more than a couple of weeks into the future.
Facts and figures
The UK record for September is 35.6 degrees C in 1906 (2 September 1906), although this figure is not without some reservations as it pre-dates modern observing practices.
The highest temperature anywhere in England in October was on the 1 October 1985, with 29.4 degrees C in Cambridgeshire.
The September record for Reading is 29.6 degrees C in 2006 which was an exceptionally warm September.