Return time in years of the lowest air pressure. The low pressure near Scotland occurs less than once every 100 years.
KNMI today posted a news article in Dutch about the so far very mild and wet winter in The Netherlands and the UK. It’s good to see that they don’t blame global warming for it. Here is a translation of their article:
Mild winter due to deep depressions
The exceptional unstable, very mild and wet weather, which has been persistent throughout the entire winter, is caused by a doggedly persistent pattern in air pressure. Time and again deep depressions travel over the Atlantic Ocean to the British Isles. Remarkable is the very low pressure in the core of depressions over the ocean northwest of Scotland. Based on a statistical analysis by KNMI the low average daily pressure as observed this winter in this area occurs less than once every one hundred years.
The depressions lead to lots of rain and wind in western and southern Europe. In particular Ireland and England suffer from flooding. Large parts of England have never experienced such a wet January. In addition, coastal areas suffer from high waves.
In our country the mild southwesterlies also reign. There are areas in the southwest where the first frost of the winter still has to occur. Snow has only been observed in the far northeast. This winter is on track to become the mildest in three centuries thanks to the persistent mild weather.
KNMI expects that the rather mild and unstable weather with sometimes lots of rain and wind to continue to persist the coming ten days.
In a news article of the Dutch press agency ANP a spokesman of KNMI says: “We don’t know the exact cause. It has to do with natural variability.”
Last year it was to dry and there was panic. Now it is wet and guess what they don’t like that either.
The Met Office has a different opinion.
http://news.sky.com/story/1208850/weather-climate-change-to-blame-for-storms
I have a different explanation for the first level of understanding why. Weather was “stuck” over North American but also over the North Atlantic. As a consequence airflow across the mid-Atlantic from Africa to the Gulf of Mexico was picking up heat and forming storms which were swept as a train across the Atlantic to Western Europe bringing the repeated wind and rain storms, little cold air. I’ve even produce an animation using GCM output. More normally this flow is broken up by other movements. I expect this is appear in averaged conditions as Azores high and Icelandic low, NAO… Lees verder »
Climate Change Driven By The Oceans
http://youtu.be/oZVE8JHxRAc