in november, during the night, mud surges towards the sea, taking everything with it after several days of intense downpours. in october, on the greek island of crete, cars were swept into the sea by a powerful flood that locals say caught them by surprise, also at night, after a day of rain. brazil endured rounds of severe storms that caused deadly flash flooding. this is the aftermath of a landslide that swept onto a motorway in early december and here in petropolis in february, over 200 people died in a catastrophic mudslide that followed several hours of torrential rain. 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 of the engines, either at very high altitude or very high temperature. we find also the density of the fuel will change, so the way in which the maintainers operate with the aircraft can also be quite different. at coningsby you have the quick reaction alert squadron who have to be up in the air at almost a moment s notice. what sort of weather impacts do they look out for? we have to be aware of what the weather conditions are, not only here at coningsby but across all of the uk and into europ
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 on the obs equipment outside. as a forecaster, i did not think i would see 40 celsius this soon here in the uk. do you think we will see that again anytime soon? we know it is possible to reach that, so it definitely can happen again and it is something that is going to be increasingly likely with the effects of clim
question, isn t it? when we look at these records here, these are from durham observatory back in 1890, and it can be quite difficult to read at times, but they were very systematic and careful. when we think about observations, we think about how they are used for weather forecasting, for the weather forecast we generate in the met office, there are observations coming in from a huge load of sources and of course observations are also very important to understand our climate and if we want to understand our climate of the future, the first step is we need to understand our climate now and we also need to understand our climate going back into the past. 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 and if we calculate an average of all those poi
in my heart, it is where i started forecasting and it is the place with the highest temperature in the uk ever recorded was the summer, 40.3 celsius. behind me are some typhoon aircraft based here but what impact does the temperatures have on operations? joining me is the station commander group captain, billy cooper. let s go back to that day injuly. what sort of impact do the temperatures have on coningsby? any extremes of weather and particularly temperature can have an effect even on modern aircraft. in particular the engine performance, either at very high altitude or temperature, we find the density of the fuel will change so the way in which the maintainers operate with the aircraft can be different.