In the year of a global pandemic and increasing concerns about climate change, the Met Office confirm that 2020 was a year of weather extremes, ‘with the wettest February on record, the sunniest spring, a heatwave in the summer and a day in October that broke rainfall records’. This supports the general trend of warming as a consequence of climate change and 2020 will be on record as one of the top five hottest, top ten wettest and top ten sunniest in the UK!
Suffolk has a temperate maritime climate with typically warm rather than hot summers and cool to cold winters. The county rarely experiences very extreme weather and on average the hottest month is July and the coldest is January. Data gathered by Waldringfield Sailing Club throughout 2020 is compared below with data from weather-atlas.com (https://www.weather-atlas.com/en/united-kingdom/waldringfield-climate) and climate insights from the Met Office. Let’s start with the wettest February on record! Waldringfield was no exception as Fig.2 shows with exceptionally higher rainfall than usual! Next came the sunniest spring!
Spring 2020 was the 8th warmest on record for the UK, with both England and Wales having their 5th warmest spring on record, according to the Met Office (https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/press-office/news/weather-and-climate/2020/2020-round-up). Looking at Fig.1, we can see the average high temperature in Waldringfield (blue line) exceeded its usual averages (green line) as reported by weather-atlas.com, illustrating that we did indeed experience a warmer than usual spring here in Waldringfield. The spring was also the 5th driest for the UK with North East England and Eastern Scotland seeing their driest spring since rainfall records began in 1862. The rainfall chart below (Fig.2) shows this trend for Waldringfield also with the blue line showing rainfall to be considerably lower than usual between March and May.
Fig. 1
Summer 2020 in the UK was warmer, wetter and duller than average and the highest recorded temperature of the summer was 37.8 degrees at Heathrow Airport on 31st July 2020, being the 3rd hottest day ever recorded in the UK. Waldringfield didn’t quite achieve this ‘high’ in summer temperatures but it is clear to see that its average high temperatures across the summer, and indeed the whole of 2020, were higher than normal and rainfall peaked slightly higher than normal in June (see Fig 2). A major summer heatwave was recorded in the first half of August for England and Wales and Fig 1 clearly shows this rise in temperature in Waldringfield too, continuing into the month of September. Met Office research explains that the chances of extreme high temperatures in parts of the UK are increasing and under a high CO2 emissions scenario, could reach 40 degrees every 3-4 years by the end of the century.
Fig.2
Autumn 2020 was marginally warmer than average across the UK, and you can this in Waldringfield too. The blue and green lines in Fig. 1 are very close together throughout October to December, illustrating how 2020 average high temperatures in Waldringfield remained close to normal. Whereas September was relatively sunny and dry across the UK, it gave way to a dull and wet October; Waldringfield followed suit with an increase in rainfall that peaked in December. This was seen across a number of Eastern areas where rainfall exceeded normal December rainfall by the middle of the month. Waldringfield was no exception, seeing considerably higher rainfall than usual, as shown in Fig 2.
All in all, an interesting year of extremes to mark the end of this decade, and the beginning of the next. I hope a future post by the WHG will draw some interesting comparisons with our climate experience in 2020!
