"Pete L" wrote:
On 1 Jan, 19:31, "Philip Eden" philipATweatherHYPHENukDOTcom wrote:

CET (after Manley) 3.60°C (- 1.5 degC wrt 1971-2000)
CET (after Hadley) prob 3.7°C
E&W Rain (provisional): 63.5mm ( 63% of 1971-2000 mean)
E&W Sunshine (prov): 74.9hr (157% of 1971-2000 mean)

It was the coldest December since 2001, averaged nationally,
and since 1996 locally in southern England

: Just looking at England and Wales - colder than normal but drier and
: sunnier (which is not surprising) can you look in your records to find
: similar rain and sun figures and see how the mean temperature
: compares? In itself, coldest since 2001 isn't that meaningful in the
: sense that given the synopic setup we've had it would be remarkable if
: it wasn't. What is interesting is, if given this setup, it wasn't as
: cold as one would expect, say, 20 years ago.

Pete ... I do try to do something similar from time to time, but
relating the temperature anomaly to a component of the mean
monthly airflow. It works best when a given month has a single
dominant character rather than the dog's breakfast we had last
month.

For instance, I showed that August 2006 (the most
'northerly' August in 130 years, but with a CET fractionally
above the long-term mean) should have been about a degree
colder than it actually was, and that the probability that that had
happened by chance was exceedingly small (sorry, can't
remember the exact figures ... it's probably googlable).

It is necessary, of course, that the parameters being tested
are actually correlated, preferably reasonably strongly, and
a northerly component to the flow in August is strongly
correlated to mean temperature.

November 2008 was similar (strong northerly component,
CET marginally above the long-term mean).

Philip