On 10/01/2021 23:14, Julian Mayes wrote:
I stumbled across this programme by accident earlier this evening....a history of severe weather in the UK..........
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...xtreme-weather
I was actually quite impressed at how informative it was (it was BBC Four!) running from the Bristol Channel floods of 1606 through the well known disasters since then. It is available for nearly a month on the i-player and is worth watching. BUT there was one howler of an error and one odd explanation.
The odd explanation concerned the frost hollow status of Braemar - it would have been nice to have referred to and shown the confluence of the two valleys there and maybe to mention the altitude.
The howler was to attribute the Brogdale hi temp record in 2003 to the urban warmth of London. I am not making this up! It was also stated that this was the highest UK temp on record which of course is no longer true, but I do not know how old the programme was. The presenter, Lucie Green, was filmed at Brogdale in the met enclosure - now if only the camera had turned around we'd have seen the conifer hedge that some of us think sheltered the site. Turn to the pages of Weather for mid 2004 to get the details of the debate - that was certainly an interesting issue to put together. .
Question is - who advised the presenter? No met consultant was listed in the closing credits so maybe that's the answer. It's only the weather, we don't need accuracy! Apart from that, the presenter did a good job, I thought.
Julian
Recorded in 2015 and first shown about then, interview with Canvey
old-boy, flood 1953 + stated 62 years later, in his interview.
Some proper met is included in the Daniel Defoe Great Storm compilation
(Julien/Gregorian dates adjustment required).
I make the minimum to be a not remarkable 965mBar for Burnley,
Lancashire. The Toricelli barometer had been around for only a few
decades but even so Vernier scaled models being used in 1703, Halley
presumably Fellow of the RS, and of comet fame. Adding dots to the
transcription and
asssuming the inch record only recorded when it passed through integre
inches
TOWNELEY UPMINSTER.
Day. Hour. Height of Mercury. Day. Hour. Height of
Mercury.
Nov. 25 7 28.98 Nov 25 8 29.50
3 .64 12 .39
9½ .61 9 .14
26 7 .80 26 8 .33
3 .70 12 .28
9½ .47 9 .10
12½ 28.72
27 7 .50 27 7½ .82
3 .81 12 29.31
9½ .95 9 .42
28 7 29.34 28 8 .65
3 .62 12 .88
9 .84 9 30.07
29 7 .88 29 8 .25
(28.47 in of Hg = 964.0 mBar, presumably non sea-level adjusted value)
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Global sea level rise to 2100 from curve-fitted existing altimetry data
http://diverse.4mg.com/slr.htm