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Last summer was utterly vile here - phenomenally bad and the worst on record by some way for being almost unrelentingly cold, dull and wet. June and July, in particular, were like a form of torture for me and only the prospect of a fortnight holiday in the Costa Brava managed to get me through it.
Nevertheless it should be pointed out that sunshine has been significantly under-recorded at Dyce since the method of recording sunshine was changed from Campbell Stokes to Kipp and Zonen in 2006. Unfortunately there was only a two month period - February and March 2006 - when both instruments were in use and, according to Philip Eden of www.climate-uk.com, the KZ recorded 20-25% fewer hours than the CS.
Due to finding the sunshine records from Dyce increasingly unsatisfactory I purchased my own Instromet Electronic Sunshine recorder in 2006 and find it gives more reasonable readings. It has given annual totals in the expected range of 1400-1500 hours whereas Dyce has been recording nonsense values of around 1200 hours. In 1993 the CS value was around 1200 hours and I can quite honestly say that, despite a dismal run of dull summers, no recent year has felt anywhere near as dull as 1993 due to winter and spring sunshine tending to be well above average.
The Met Office are clearly aware of the shortcomings of the KZ instrument and the monthly sunshine maps always show much more than has been recorded. For July the shading is in the range 80-120 hours whereas their instrument recorded 69.4 hours. My own personal reading for the month was 85.7 hours which fits in better with the map http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/...ine_Actual.gif
The differences seem to vary from instrument to instrument so there is no exact way of converting between the two recorders. As far as I can see certain sites seem to be under recording significantly e.g. Dyce, Eskdalemuir, Nottingham Watnall and Bournemouth Hurn but others such as Leuchars and Kinloss do not seem as bad.
The total I recorded for July was the second lowest monthly total of 2012. Only December, with 52.6 hours, recorded less sunshine. Overall my summer 2012 sunshine total was 311.4 hours which represents a deficiency of almost 200 hours. I have calculated this as being approximately 21% of the possible total and believe this may well have been the lowest for any season since winter 1971/72.
Last summer was utterly vile here - phenomenally bad and the worst on record by some way for being almost unrelentingly cold, dull and wet. June and July, in particular, were like a form of torture for me and only the prospect of a fortnight holiday in the Costa Brava managed to get me through it.
Nevertheless it should be pointed out that sunshine has been significantly under-recorded at Dyce since the method of recording sunshine was changed from Campbell Stokes to Kipp and Zonen in 2006. Unfortunately there was only a two month period - February and March 2006 - when both instruments were in use and, according to Philip Eden of www.climate-uk.com, the KZ recorded 20-25% fewer hours than the CS.
Due to finding the sunshine records from Dyce increasingly unsatisfactory I purchased my own Instromet Electronic Sunshine recorder in 2006 and find it gives more reasonable readings. It has given annual totals in the expected range of 1400-1500 hours whereas Dyce has been recording nonsense values of around 1200 hours. In 1993 the CS value was around 1200 hours and I can quite honestly say that, despite a dismal run of dull summers, no recent year has felt anywhere near as dull as 1993 due to winter and spring sunshine tending to be well above average.
The Met Office are clearly aware of the shortcomings of the KZ instrument and the monthly sunshine maps always show much more than has been recorded. For July the shading is in the range 80-120 hours whereas their instrument recorded 69.4 hours. My own personal reading for the month was 85.7 hours which fits in better with the map http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/...ine_Actual.gif
The differences seem to vary from instrument to instrument so there is no exact way of converting between the two recorders. As far as I can see certain sites seem to be under recording significantly e.g. Dyce, Eskdalemuir, Nottingham Watnall and Bournemouth Hurn but others such as Leuchars and Kinloss do not seem as bad.
The total I recorded for July was the second lowest monthly total of 2012. Only December, with 52.6 hours, recorded less sunshine. Overall my summer 2012 sunshine total was 311.4 hours which represents a deficiency of almost 200 hours. I have calculated this as being approximately 21% of the possible total and believe this may well have been the lowest for any season since winter 1971/72.
Interesting. We've had a lot of talk on here about how it's unfortunate that sunshine hour totals differ so much according to the way they are recorded which makes comparison so difficult. I looked up Eskdalemuir's site on the map and it appears to be close to a forest, which may explain why recently it seems to have regularly got implausibly low sun totals, though I have no personal experience of the local climate. Bala in North Wales only got 9.8 hours for the whole of last month, which considering nearby sites were nowhere near as bad immediately sets the alarm bells ringing re. reliability issues.
Even if those Dyce sunshine totals are not as bad as they sound the low temperatures and sheer number of rain days just looks unreal for midsummer for a decent-sized city and not some isolated microclimate. Even down here it got so bad in the first half of summer the only way not to be tearing my hair out by it was to try and trick myself into thinking it was actually October. I still can't get my head around Aboyne getting a higher average Tmax in March than in June never mind far more sun - when can that ever have happened before in any four-season climate?
Interesting. We've had a lot of talk on here about how it's unfortunate that sunshine hour totals differ so much according to the way they are recorded which makes comparison so difficult. I looked up Eskdalemuir's site on the map and it appears to be close to a forest, which may explain why recently it seems to have regularly got implausibly low sun totals, though I have no personal experience of the local climate. Bala in North Wales only got 9.8 hours for the whole of last month, which considering nearby sites were nowhere near as bad immediately sets the alarm bells ringing re. reliability issues.
Even if those Dyce sunshine totals are not as bad as they sound the low temperatures and sheer number of rain days just looks unreal for midsummer for a decent-sized city and not some isolated microclimate. Even down here it got so bad in the first half of summer the only way not to be tearing my hair out by it was to try and trick myself into thinking it was actually October. I still can't get my head around Aboyne getting a higher average Tmax in March than in June never mind far more sun - when can that ever have happened before in any four-season climate?
It was indeed unreal. I never thought it was possible to get weather that bad in summer. It really felt like being in a subarctic wasteland. The mean max at Dyce for June and July of 15.0C was the lowest on record at Dyce (records began in 1941) with the previous lowest being 15.3C in 1987. I have records from other sites before that and have concluded it was probably the coldest for the Aberdeen area since 1903.
I can't imagine that there has ever been a June with a colder mean max than March before. The only other comparably warm March was in 1938 which had mean maxima of 13C but June was much warmer.
There has certainly been a number of these ridiculous statistics in recent years. June 2007 was duller than December 2006 here which Philip Eden said had never happened before at any site in the UK. Also 2012 was the first year ever that autumn was sunnier than summer. I recorded 371.5 hours of sunshine in autumn 2012 - 60.1 hours more than in the summer. Closest approach before was in 1954 and even then Dyce recorded 45 fewer hours of sunshine in autumn compared to summer.
Last summer was utterly vile here - phenomenally bad and the worst on record by some way for being almost unrelentingly cold, dull and wet. June and July, in particular, were like a form of torture for me and only the prospect of a fortnight holiday in the Costa Brava managed to get me through it.
Nevertheless it should be pointed out that sunshine has been significantly under-recorded at Dyce since the method of recording sunshine was changed from Campbell Stokes to Kipp and Zonen in 2006. Unfortunately there was only a two month period - February and March 2006 - when both instruments were in use and, according to Philip Eden of www.climate-uk.com, the KZ recorded 20-25% fewer hours than the CS.
Due to finding the sunshine records from Dyce increasingly unsatisfactory I purchased my own Instromet Electronic Sunshine recorder in 2006 and find it gives more reasonable readings. It has given annual totals in the expected range of 1400-1500 hours whereas Dyce has been recording nonsense values of around 1200 hours. In 1993 the CS value was around 1200 hours and I can quite honestly say that, despite a dismal run of dull summers, no recent year has felt anywhere near as dull as 1993 due to winter and spring sunshine tending to be well above average.
The Met Office are clearly aware of the shortcomings of the KZ instrument and the monthly sunshine maps always show much more than has been recorded. For July the shading is in the range 80-120 hours whereas their instrument recorded 69.4 hours. My own personal reading for the month was 85.7 hours which fits in better with the map http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/...ine_Actual.gif
The differences seem to vary from instrument to instrument so there is no exact way of converting between the two recorders. As far as I can see certain sites seem to be under recording significantly e.g. Dyce, Eskdalemuir, Nottingham Watnall and Bournemouth Hurn but others such as Leuchars and Kinloss do not seem as bad.
The total I recorded for July was the second lowest monthly total of 2012. Only December, with 52.6 hours, recorded less sunshine. Overall my summer 2012 sunshine total was 311.4 hours which represents a deficiency of almost 200 hours. I have calculated this as being approximately 21% of the possible total and believe this may well have been the lowest for any season since winter 1971/72.
Interesting, because the experience in NZ has been almost completely the opposite. Nearly all the KZ replacements are giving considerably higher readings than the old Campbell-Stokes ones. Mind you, the standard applied back then was probably fairly exacting, and for many years cards were centrally checked for consistency. But quite a few of the new KZ results are just plain daft - sometimes making places 200-300 hours sunnier than before.
It was indeed unreal. I never thought it was possible to get weather that bad in summer. It really felt like being in a subarctic wasteland. The mean max at Dyce for June and July of 15.0C was the lowest on record at Dyce (records began in 1941) with the previous lowest being 15.3C in 1987. I have records from other sites before that and have concluded it was probably the coldest for the Aberdeen area since 1903.
I can't imagine that there has ever been a June with a colder mean max than March before. The only other comparably warm March was in 1938 which had mean maxima of 13C but June was much warmer.
There has certainly been a number of these ridiculous statistics in recent years. June 2007 was duller than December 2006 here which Philip Eden said had never happened before at any site in the UK. Also 2012 was the first year ever that autumn was sunnier than summer. I recorded 371.5 hours of sunshine in autumn 2012 - 60.1 hours more than in the summer. Closest approach before was in 1954 and even then Dyce recorded 45 fewer hours of sunshine in autumn compared to summer.
And this in one of the most northerly places in the country with the biggest difference in daylight hours between seasons!
Interesting, because the experience in NZ has been almost completely the opposite. Nearly all the KZ replacements are giving considerably higher readings than the old Campbell-Stokes ones. Mind you, the standard applied back then was probably fairly exacting, and for many years cards were centrally checked for consistency. But quite a few of the new KZ results are just plain daft - sometimes making places 200-300 hours sunnier than before.
It seems odd that the KZ instruments seem to be over recording in New Zealand. Just makes me doubt their reliability even more.
The step-change in 2006 is clear. We have gone from recording 1400-1500 hours annually (except for the unusually sunny year of 2003) to between 1200 and 1300 hours - a loss of at least 200 hours sunshine annually.
My own totals from 2007 to 2012 ranged from 1423.0 in 2010 to 1563.9 in 2009.
And this in one of the most northerly places in the country with the biggest difference in daylight hours between seasons!
For most of December we would struggle to even get 6 hours sun on a clear day yet in June over 17 hours would be possible so it really is incredulous.
What seems to be happening is we are increasingly getting stuck with the same synoptics that last weeks on end rather than the more changeable patterns of the past.
In December 2006 wind came almost exclusively from the south west quadrant which resulted in a very sunny dry month whereas the dreaded easterly winds blew almost throughout June 2007 bringing day after day of cloud and rain.
From my own records:
December 2006: 102.6 hours = 52% of possible
June 2007: 88.6 hours = 17% of possible
For most of December we would struggle to even get 6 hours sun on a clear day yet in June over 17 hours would be possible so it really is incredulous.
What seems to be happening is we are increasingly getting stuck with the same synoptics that last weeks on end rather than the more changeable patterns of the past.
In December 2006 wind came almost exclusively from the south west quadrant which resulted in a very sunny dry month whereas the dreaded easterly winds blew almost throughout June 2007 bringing day after day of cloud and rain.
From my own records:
December 2006: 102.6 hours = 52% of possible
June 2007: 88.6 hours = 17% of possible
The only more extreme "wrong" difference between a summer and winter month (for the same site in a temperate maritime zone) that I've encountered is one I've quoted before for Waimate, NZ: June 1959, 161 hours (69%) and December 1959, 60 hours (13%). A caution however is that this place (and some others in coastal and lowland areas not far away) has an inverted seasonal sunniness signature anyway - brightest in June, cloudiest in December (though the difference lessened somewhat in the later years of records).
Edit: Re over-recording in NZ, I suspect that when (or if) resources are available there will be some recalibration done at quite a number of KZ sites to give more sensible results. There are some cases (perhaps 25% of them) where the readings are already reasonable, and I suspect adjustments have been done, although some accidental countervailing factor could apply for one or two of them (e.g. poorer exposure)
For most of December we would struggle to even get 6 hours sun on a clear day yet in June over 17 hours would be possible so it really is incredulous.
What seems to be happening is we are increasingly getting stuck with the same synoptics that last weeks on end rather than the more changeable patterns of the past.
In December 2006 wind came almost exclusively from the south west quadrant which resulted in a very sunny dry month whereas the dreaded easterly winds blew almost throughout June 2007 bringing day after day of cloud and rain.
From my own records:
December 2006: 102.6 hours = 52% of possible
June 2007: 88.6 hours = 17% of possible
I'd never thought about how SW winds in Aberdeen give very different weather to here - we had 55.5 hours in December 2006 and slightly above-average rain - though I suppose it makes sense given Scottish geography. As it happens I remember a friend of mine was living in Glasgow at that time who when I saw her that Christmas mentioned how horribly wet and depressing it had been recently. For a December anywhere in this country to get 52% of the recordable is extremely impressive. The British record for December is 119.8 hours in Jersey in 2001, but that was only 50% of possible as far as I remember reading.
For a December anywhere in this country to get 52% of the recordable is extremely impressive. The British record for December is 119.8 hours in Jersey in 2001, but that was only 50% of possible as far as I remember reading.
It is. I read an article about November sunshine in Helsinki. Although the theoretical max is 224 hours, the practical max is 200 hours (take the sunniest days of every day of the month and sum them up). The sunniest November for the last 50 years had 79 hours of sunshine, only 40% of the max possible.
In December it's even lower: the sunniest month had 30% of the max possible.
When comparing these figures with your, knowing how cloudy it is on the British Isles as well in late autumn/early winter, 50% of the possible is truly impressive.
It would be interesting to know if it's even in summer possible to get the full 100%, when cherry-picking the sunniest days ever of every day in July.
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