a winter warning from nhs bosses in wales they say health services are experiencing demand like never seen before, as they tackle rising flu cases and urge people to do what they can to help. now, weather world. this time on weather world we are at raf coningsby which hit the uk s highest temperature record this summer. and i will find out how severe weather effects operations here. i am here at the national meteorological archive and i will find out how that new record temperature and all weather observations are used to paint a picture of the uk and the world s changing climate. if we want to understand the climate of the future, the first step is we need to understand the climate now and the climate going back into the past.
collection of historical data. looking at the oldest weather observations, thinking about temperature, how is that used alongside new data to compare how the climate is changing? great question. when we look at the records, these are from durham 0bservatory in 1890 and it can be quite difficult to read but they were very systematic. when we think about observations, we think about how they are used for weather forecasting, but the forecast we generate in the met office, there is observations coming in from a huge array of sources and it s important to understanding the climate and if we want to understand the future climate, first we need to understand the climate now and we need to understand the climate in the past. we have all the standardised observations, just like the 40.3 from coningsby, but how is that feeding into the models to create a bigger picture? we calculate values across all of the uk and if we calculate an average, that provides us with a uk statistic.
the most haunting image from that hot summer is of spanish farmer angel, hailed as a hero when he dug a trench with his bulldozer to stop the fire from spreading he suffered severe burns and tragically died from his injuries in october. figures show the excess deaths reported across europe from the excessive heat waves numbered more than 20,000. raf coningsby is home to front line combat ready squadrons protecting uk airspace whatever the weather, so it s crucial we get accurate forecasts. here we are in the met office forecast office, 20 years since i ve been here. it has changed a little bit. in the chair where i used to sit is alice. you were on that day back injuly when we saw temperatures of 40.3 degrees celsius recorded, so what was it like? it was something we never
days of intense rain. in october on 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 severe storms that caused deadly flash flooding. this is the aftermath of a landslide that swept onto a motorway in early december and in patroclus in february, over 200 people died in a catastrophic mudslide that followed several hours of torrential rain. welcome back to raf coningsby. this base has a special place 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? station commander group captain billy cooper. let s go back to that day injuly. what sort of impact does 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, and 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. at coningsby you have the quick reaction alert squadron who have to be up in the air at a moments notice what sort of weather impacts do look at? if any areas were particularly cloudy, which might make it difficult for us