Cool summer
Media reports this week suggest Britain has just experienced its coolest summer in almost two decades. Here’s what the headlines say:
- UK’s summer ‘coolest since 1993’ says Met Office (BBC)
- Summer coolest in nearly 20 years (UK Press Association)
- UK summer the coolest for 18 years (Guardian)
- ‘ Pitiful’ British summer is coldest since 1998, say weather experts (Metro)
- Summer 2011 Coolest In Almost Two Decades (Sky News)
The Met Office, however, is sounding a strong note of caution on the news coverage. They say those reports (published 30th and 31st Aug) were based on temperature records for a small area of central England and therefore could not be meaningfully extrapolated to the whole of the UK.
The figures do provisionally, though, support the news reports’ claims. For now the Met Office stress they will not be in a position to produce a definitive report – or to compare the temperature to prior years – until the summer is over and the full set of figures are in.
As for the question of how this relates to climate change, Brian Merchant’s article How Do You Explain Global Warming When the Summer Was So Cold?, provides a clear and helpful summary.
“If eight out of the last ten years showed increasingly warm temperatures, and the two that didn’t were a bit cooler, it seems obvious what kind of a conclusion you’d still make about the general trend.
“Also, it’s worth noting that climate change will have different affects on temperatures in different parts of the world–hence the shift from ‘global warming’ to the more palatable ‘global climate change.’ While the first term is still correct, since the planet is on average seeing warmer and warmer temps, some regions may see wetter, and sometimes, colder weather. The basic explanation for this is that as heat increases, more water evaporates around the world, putting more vapor into the atmosphere–which can cause heavier rainfalls and worse storms, and create cooler weather patterns.”
Whether the media commentary reflects such basic scientific observations, however, remains to be seen.