in the chair where i used to once sit is our forecaster today, alice summerfield. you were here on that day back injuly when we saw the temperature of 40.3 celsius recorded here in coningsby. what was it like to see that here? it was something that was never expected in the uk. and here at coningsby it was even more incredible and remarkable because our previous max temperature was nowhere near, i think we beat it by about 5.5 degrees on that day, so it was extreme for the uk as a whole and even more extreme for the local area. at what point did you realise that coningsby was going to be the hottest place ever recorded in the uk? it has to go through quite vigorous quality control before we actually officially get the record, so obviously by the evening, we were pretty sure no one was going to beat us, beat that 40.3 record, but we actually were not officially holding the uk record until a few days later when they came and did the quality control
so that contact between the forecaster and also the squadrons and pilots is crucial, isn t it? yes. so we add value to the forecast that they could get off the website or from anywhere else by briefing the pilots, so we show them the satellite images and the charts that are made elsewhere in hq and then we also make our own products and show them those as well. more to come from coningsby later when i will be talking to pilots of aircraft new and old about how heat and severe weather can affect operations here. that new record of 40.3 celsius at coningsby is a significant moment in weather history. but every temperature reading, every weather observation plays its part in our understanding of how our climate is changing and that is why i have come here to the met office s national meteorological archive in exeter. it is home to daily uk weather reports from 1860 to the present day, among a vast collection of data that make up one of the most
still to come on weather world, the science behind storm surge, as hurricane ian wreaks havoc in florida. welcome back to raf coningsby. this base has a special place in my heart, because it is where i started forecasting and it is of course the place where the highest uk temperature ever was recorded this summer, 40.3 celsius. behind me are some of the typhoon aircraft based at this station, but what sort of impact do the temperatures have on operations here? well, tojoin me to tell me more is the station commander group captain billy cooper. good to meet you, billy. let s first go back to that day injuly. record breaking temperatures above 40 degrees. what sort of impact does that have on operations here at coningsby? so any extremes of weather and particularly temperature can have an effect even on very modern aircraft. in particular the performance
so we have got all of those standardised and scientifically robust observations, just like the 40.3 from coningsby earlier this year. how has that fed into models to create a bigger picture on a wider scale of what is happening to our climate? we calculate values across the whole of the uk. if we calculate an average of all those points, that can provide us with a uk statistic. these maps show long term average, annual mean temperature for, on the left, 1961 1990, and on the right, 1991 to 2020. comparing these two averaging periods is how the darker reds, the warmer areas, the areas have expanded across a larger extent of the map. between these two periods, the uk has warmed by roughly one degree. 2022 will go down in the history books, not only because it was the first time we broke that 40 celsius barrier, but also its likely to be the hottest year on record in the uk. we shouldn t necessarily be too surprised by that, because it follows the pattern of what we might expect as our cl
the pilots, so we show them the satellite images and the charts that are made elsewhere in hq and then we also make our own products and show them those as well. more to come from coningsby later when i will be talking to pilots of aircraft new and old about how heat and severe weather can affect operations here. that new record of 40.3 celsius at coningsby is a significant moment in weather history. but every temperature reading, every weather observation plays its part in our understanding of how our climate is changing and that is why i have come here, to the met office s national meteorological archive in exeter. it is home to daily uk weather reports from 1860 to the present day, among a vast collection of data that make up one of the most comprehensive collections on meteorology anywhere in the world. i am joined now by mike kendon, a climate information scientist here at the met office, and mike, we are amongst this huge collection of historical weather data. looking at some of