Nothing seems to have changed since I've been away for February half term. The UK is still in a battle ground with milder air trying to force its way northwards, bumping up against colder air, with more snow likely in places tonight. And the battle looks set to continue into the first week of March, with cold air persisting in the north of the UK, with milder air to the south - with areas in-between, particularly over the hills, prone to further snow.
A feature of this winter has been the unusual position of the jet stream. For the last week or so it has once again positioned itself through Spain and Portugal, North Africa and the Mediterranean and is the reason for the violent storms in Madeira that led to the incredible flash floods that most of you will have seen on TV.
Earlier this month I wrote about January being the warmest on satellite record. The picture below highlights beautifully that despite some areas of the world, including Europe and parts of the USA, experiencing much colder weather than normal, other parts, particularly more polar regions including Canada and Greenland, have experienced abnormal warmth, all part and parcel of the unusual weather patterns we have experienced globally this winter.
Also, I thought you might be interested in this; while I was away on holiday Roger Harrabin, the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's environment analyst interviewed Professor Phil Jones who is director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA). The article is in the form of a question and answers session . Some of the questions echo some of your comments when I wrote about the UEA on this blog recently.
Finally It's going to be a close run thing - but with only one week left of winter (winter being classified climatologically as Dec, Jan and Feb) - there's a chance that it will turn out to be the coldest winter based on the central England temperature range (CET) since 1978/79, although there is also a chance it may only be the coldest since 1981/82, depending on how far north milder air pushes this week. I'll be doing a review of this winter's statistics as soon as I have them to hand.
It may come as a surprise to many of you, shivering through the coldest British winter for decades, but data released this evening shows that global temperatures, as measured by satellites, rocketed in January to a new record.
The global-average lower tropospheric temperature anomaly rose to +0.72 deg. C in January 2010 on the UAH satellite measure. This is the warmest January in the 32-year satellite-based data record.
The global-average warmth is approaching the warmth reached during the 1997-98 El Nino, which peaked in February of 1998. 1998 on most measures was the hottest year on record.
This measure is important to sceptics who question the validity of land based measurements, which, they say, may be compromised to some extent by the urban heat island effect. The UAH satellite data has shown some warming since it began measurements in the late 1970's - but not as much as land based thermometers show. These satellite measurements are not calibrated to surface thermometer data in any way.
Of interest was the Northern hemisphere which rose sharply on this measure from December's levels - and gives a graphic illustration that despite many populated areas of the northern Hemisphere experiencing a cold winter - other areas were much warmer than average. The ongoing Pacific El Nino added warmth as expected to tropical areas, but it was the Northern Hemisphere which recorded the sharpest rise.
It's also an indication of the importance of the oceans - which were much warmer than average - far outweighing any land based cold.
Global temperatures as measured by the Met Office Hadley Centre, NOAA and NASA are also likely to have shown a large warm anomaly.
Details of the various forecasts for 2010 global temperatures can be found by clicking here.
It's early days but it's definately first blood to NASA, The Met Office Hadley Centre and others in forecasting 2010 to be the warmest year on record.
The most notable statistic for January comes from the Met Office at RAF Leeming in North Yorkshire, which has just had its coldest January since 1979 with a mean temperature of 0.7C - beating 1985 and 1987 by 0.1C but falling well short of January 1979, which had a mean of -0.7C. It wasn't quite as impressive at Bradford Lister Park, who recorded their coldest January since 1987.
It was also the coldest January based on the CET (Central England temperature) measure since 1987 - making Dec and Jan combined the coldest on this measure since the winter of 1981/1982
According to Met Office provisional figures published this afternoon January was equal 7th coldest across the UK in a temperature series that dates back to 1914. It is the 9th coldest for England, 9th coldest for Wales, equal 7th coldest for Scotland and equal 7th coldest for Northern Ireland.
So whats the long range forecast for February looking like? Well, since my last update on Thursday, there have been some big differences from run to run.
Take a look at the American ensemble chart for Manchester, based on the midnight run of the model which illusrates the point.
The different coloured lines represent the computer running with slightly different starting conditions. What this is showing is that up until next weekend, the lines are close together, indicating high confidence in the forecast evolution up to that point. But through the weekend, they diverge sharply. A clump of the solutions are milder, with another clump turning cold. This illustrates how very finely balanced the atmosphere is, with only a small change in the atmosphere turning the weather one way or the other.
Interestingly the red line is the control run which uses the same data as the operational model - i.e the actual observed data - which you would expect, on average, to give you the most reliable outcome. It is one of the coldest solutions. And the European operational model is also cold next week.
So it's a difficult call - but on balance the most likely outcome would be for conditions to turn colder again next week as air spreads in from the near continent.
Hello, I’m Paul Hudson, weather presenter and climate correspondent for Ö÷²¥´óÐã Look North in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. I've been interested in the weather and climate for as long as I can remember, and worked as a forecaster with the Met Office for more than ten years locally and at the international unit before joining the Ö÷²¥´óÐã in October 2007. Here I divide my time between forecasting and reporting on stories about climate change and its implications for people's everyday lives.
