Last month there was a brief (very brief) flurry in the mainstream media regarding a huge programme, using citizen volunteers, to digitise UK rainfall records going much further back in time than had previously been the case. The BBC headlined it with “UK’s rainfall records rescued by volunteer army”i, while the Daily Telgraph’s headline was “Weather history books rewritten as Victorian archives push back records by close to 180 years”ii, with a tantalising subisidiary headline: “A project digitising the Met Office’s archive has found that several records were set much earlier than previously thought”.
The Daily Telegraph article is behind a paywall, but much of it can be seen via Paul Homewood’s website, where it is reproduced under Paul’s article headed “Weather Records Shattered–180 Years Ago”iii. It was all based on “Millions of historical monthly rainfall observations taken in the UK and Ireland rescued by citizen scientists”iv, whose lead author was Ed Hawkins, of the National Centre for Atmospheric Science at the University of Reading.
The Daily Telegraph article quotes Hawkins as saying things like:
A lot of the dry records that we’ve got have been rewritten, and that’s purely because our climate is getting wetter now.
Just like all the cold records are back in the past, it’s the same with the dry records, because the climate’s got wetter.
Most of the wet records are more recent – the exception to that was 1852 which was an extremely wet November, and I’m sure at the time they wondered what was going on.
That would be a stand-out month for that period. Now it wouldn’t look so unusual.”
The UK’s average temperature is thought to have risen by 1.5C since the pre-industrial period, he said, and the extra data “helps us better understand the long-term trends towards the dramatic changes we’re seeing today.
I found those comments to be rather odd, given the contents of the paper on the Royal Meteorological Society website, where the records were analysed. Having read it, I couldn’t see how those comments could be justified. Neither could Paul Homewood, who responded:
It is true that the UK is wetter on average
But this is largely due to Scotland. In England, the long term average has changed little since the 1870s
The major change is that drought years are very much a thing of the past, which in turn pushes up the average. This does not mean England’s climate is becoming more extreme, quite the contrary.
Now consider this Hawkins claim:
“Most of the wet records are more recent”
When we actually examine the data, we find it is not only baseless, but grossly misleading.
Since 2002, only one year, 2012, makes it into the ten wettest.
And in terms of wettest months, only two months occurred in the last decade, January 2014 and February 2020. Given that there have been 29 months over 150mm since 1836, this is close to average
There certainly have been much more extreme interludes. For instance the 1860s, when three months made the list. Unquestionably the most extreme decade though was the 1910s, with five such months – 1911, 1912, 1914, 1915 and 1918.
1929 was also a remarkable year, with November and December receiving 173mm and 163mm of rainfall respectively.
The wettest month in recent years was November 2009, with 170mm. But that was only the sixth wettest month on record. By far the wettest was October 1903, with 191mm.
By every measure Hawkins claims don’t stand up to scrutiny, for England at least.
The dataset
My hope is that the dataset will be made freely available for online research, so that we may all be better informed regarding rainfall trends in the UK. And as regards claims that more recent years set any sort of record (whether wetter or drier) it’s worth bearing in mind that the number of rainfall “stations” where data has been maintained are much more numerous in recent years than in earlier ones. That alone increases the chances of records being set increasingly often in the modern era – but it doesn’t mean that they represent a meaningful “record” if no data for the “record” location was available in earlier years.
Although the information retrieved and digitised is voluminous, and the work is potentially of great value, we should always bear in mind that the earlier the dataset, the more restrictive it is likely to be (in terms of number of locations at which it was recorded). Despite that limitation, I think it is therefore extremely illuminating to note the following (quotes taken variously from the four articles referenced here, all of which are worth a read):
There is now a new driest year on record. This is 1855, with just 786.5mm of rain. It takes over from 1887
There is now higher confidence that the wettest month on record was October 1903, with 220mm of rainfall
The driest month for the UK is February 1932 with 9.5mm. Again, this record now has higher confidence
The project has better mapped big drought periods in the 1880s and 1890s; and in the 1840s and 1850s
New records include England’s driest May, originally thought to be May 2020 but now believed to be May 1844, when the country saw just 8.3mm of rain.
November and December 1852 were also exceptionally wet months, with the year seeing the wettest November on record for many regions in southern England.
1852 was also the wettest year overall for parts of the UK including Oxfordshire, where there was significant flooding.
A look at the graphs of annual seasonal rainfall in the UK from 1836 to date doesn’t appear to show any discernible trends. The same is true of the graphs showing England & Wales average seasonal rainfall from 1800.
On a lighter note
The problems of relying on some of the earlier data is set out in less serious language. A few examples:
Woolwich Eltham High Street, 1944: “Gauge destroyed by enemy action”.
West Ayton (North Riding) readings stopped in September 1949: “too old to bother now”.
Harter Fell, Middleton-in-Teesdale, November 1876: “no readings as gauge stolen”.
The Hall, Sunderland, 1866: “Rev Iliff (the observer) thinks his observations hopelessly wrong”, followed by a comment in 1869: “Rev Iliff had his right arm broken in June so was prevented from taking his observations regularly and a few weeks afterwards a road was made through his garden and his instrument meddled with”.
Saffron Walden Audley End (Essex) by J. Bryan (the observer), 1876: “I am afraid, there is not much dependence on this gauge… I find the funnel often unlevered (by) curious persons taking it off to see the inside”.
Sevenoaks Chevening Gardens, September 1892: “Gauge emptied by child”.
Stourmouth Rectory Kent, 1863: “Gauge found choked with a bird’s nest”.
Walden Head near Aysgarth, 1875: “Gauge destroyed by tourists”.
Dartmoor Chagford White Ridge, 1928: “Gauge disturbed by ponies”.
Perth (The Academy), 1936: “G. somewhat out of shape having been struck by lawn-mower”.
Banstead Mental Hospital, Dec 1951: “Gauge hidden by inmates.” (The record did not resume until July 1954.)
Leeds, Allerton Hall “site unsatisfactory. Obs refuses to consider new site. Blacklisted”.
Shotley Bridge, Durham “1894 Mr Coulson died in September & the record for the remainder of the year is unsatisfactory”.
Ingbirchworth, Brown’s Gauge, 1870s “From the record kept by the observer at the Reservoir. The observations are carelessly entered & the arithmetic is very faulty. In a few cases there is doubt whether small quantities were left in the gauge at the end of the month. Nevertheless the record is substantially correct”.
Conclusions
Thanks should be given to those who devoted time and energy during the first covid lockdown to transcribing and digitising the data. It promises to be a veritable treasure trove.
Endnotes
i https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60860397
ii https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/24/weather-history-books-rewritten-victorian-archives-push-back/
iii https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2022/03/26/weather-records-shattered-180-years-ago/
iv https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/gdj3.157
Climate Scepticism 
Wasn’t Ed Hawkins the guy who found fame amongst the doomsters for creating a stripey chart composed only of blues & reds, but forgot to use shades of greens for the past few centuries to signify the benign effect of current global temperatures on humankind?
LikeLike
the BEEB did a short (very short) piece on this a few weeks ago without giving away the results.
it focused on “how to prepare for more flooding – as I recall”
LikeLike
Joe Public, yes Ed Hawkins is the man behind the stripes, so his comments don’t come as a surprise. I saw an excellent piece of work by him (and others) on the academic article surrounding the digitisation exercise. Then he goes and spoils it with his comments for the media.
dfhunter, the BBC piece to which I linked isn’t actually TOO bad. It says things like “The project will help put modern floods and droughts in their proper context” and “This digitisation effort has given the UK Met Office a much clearer idea of when our islands were sodden or parched going back almost 200 years.” The more contentious quotes it used were those from Ed Hawkins, e.g.:
“”But almost more important is what we learn about extremes. We want to know about the big floods, the big droughts – how likely they are, how frequently they might happen. This will allow us to put modern extremes in their proper context,” he told BBC News.” Even that talks about context, which is fine – a recurring theme of mine here is the importance of context.
A related point to that touched on in this article (which is about rainfall only) is that there must be a mass of records that are relevant to temperature and other aspects of the weather (e.g. storms, wind etc), such as data about plant growth in greenhouses at mansions, with notes on early and late frosts and so on, and much more. A book I found fascinating is the Diary of Isaac Fletcher of Underwood, Cumberland, 1756-81. These are the notes of a Cumbrian gentleman, and in those days people like Isaac Fletcher were so much more “connected” to nature, just by dint of the very lives they led (these days we are much more cocooned from nature). There must have been dozens, probably hundreds, possibly thousands of Isaac Fletchers recording their observations on the doings of nature day by day. If their notes and records were all collated and digitised, they would significantly improve our knowledge of past weather conditions, and could offer a wonderful research tool.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You may recall Mark that dear GolfCharlie, over at Bishop Hill, periodically used to remind us that much climate/weather lore must reside in preserved sports records (early Cricket marches delayed by late frosts and the like).
LikeLike
Yes indeed Alan, GC and his wisdom and humour are greatly missed.
LikeLike
I seem to recall Barry Woods (I think) doing a lot digging into old weather/climate records in the UK ?
LikeLike
I have long said that claiming lots of new records and new extremes related to modern-day “climate change” involves ignoring or re-writing the past. Perhaps others are cottoning on:
“1903 Ulysses Storm among windiest ever in British Isles”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-65365106
Of course, the BBC tags the article “climate change”, and to be honest I’m not sure why they’ve made it front page news on their website. This section seems to me to be key:
My view, FWIW, is that far from enabling us to “understand how our climate is changing”, if all this information was used and properly understood, it would enable us to understand that many of the new “extremes” are no such thing, and we’ve seen it all before (many times).
LikeLiked by 1 person
Their reanalysis of 1903 marked it as the strongest wind storm in some areas reference the period 1950-2015. 2015 was when the Met Office named their first storm, so obviously, after that, all nasty cyclonic depressions were the most feroocious evah due to climate change! Now they should do the same for 1703. It will blow itself completely off the charts I suspect. I also suspect that Hawkins was hoping for a different outcome, i.e. that 1903 proved to be nothing spectacular.
LikeLiked by 1 person
BBC weather for this area – cloudy 7c , 26% precipitation. Guess what……. it’s 3c and just been snowing. Going by old farmer McLarens’ records we have had snow 8 months (Oct to May) in a row more often than the BBC would admit. Can’t stay got logs to chop for the next few weeks !!
LikeLike
Tea and scone time, hard work chopping logs you know. Sun’s out prob about 10c in the shelter from the wind. Very normal April for as long as I can remember, bright with a cold NE wind, rubbish for trout fishing.
LikeLike
JamesS,
I am just back from Scotland, hill-walking in Glencoe and Assynt. The weather was pleasant, but far from unusually warm for the time of year. However, that was a brief warmish interlude, and it feels as though it has been a cold start to the year. Back home in Cumbria today it feels bitterly cold.
LikeLike
We’re still burning logs here in Cumbria to keep warm. 9C today, 8C tomorrow. Only ‘warming’ up to 13C by the end of April. We were promised a ‘heatwave’ in the northwest by the end of April. 20C they said. That’s two cold months of spring now and winter was dreadful. It’s looking like this will be the coldest April in central England so far in the 21st century. You have to go back to the 20th century to find colder April months. Nowhere in Britain has seen temperatures surpass 20C since November last year. The ‘climate crisis’ is obviously starting to bite. I guarantee, the first sign of warm or hot weather, the press will be claiming it’s a ‘heatwave’, and if somewhere a record is broken for a few seconds on a rapid response digital thermometer, that will make it a climate changed heatwave and the government will no doubt ping everyone’s phone to tell them to run for the hills.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Paul Homewood has the Storm Ulysses story now:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2023/04/24/1903-ulysses-storm-among-windiest-ever-in-british-isles/
And yes, Jaime, in our part of Cumbria, we too have the log burner on. We have burned more logs this winter than for many years.
LikeLiked by 1 person