The August 2003 heatwave in the United Kingdom: Part 1 –Maximum temperatures and historical precedents

Burt, Stephen

doi:10.1256/wea.10.04a

Cited by 43 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Following Burt (2004), we are now able to plot the atmospheric circulation conditions associated with the extreme U.K. heat waves of July 1868, July 1881, August-September 1906, August 1911, July 1923, and August 2003 using EMSLP. In Fig.…”

Section: E Extreme Eventsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Daily Mean Sea Level Pressure Reconstructions for the European–North Atlantic Region for the Period 1850–2003

et al. 2006

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The development of a daily historical European-North Atlantic mean sea level pressure dataset (EMSLP) for 1850-2003 on a 5°latitude by longitude grid is described. This product was produced using 86 continental and island stations distributed over the region 25°-70°N, 70°W-50°E blended with marine data from the International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS). The EMSLP fields for 1850-80 are based purely on the land station data and ship observations. From 1881, the blended land and marine fields are combined with already available daily Northern Hemisphere fields. Complete coverage is obtained by employing reduced space optimal interpolation. Squared correlations (r 2 ) indicate that EMSLP generally captures 80%-90% of daily variability represented in an existing historical mean sea level pressure product and over 90% in modern 40-yr European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Re-Analyses (ERA-40) over most of the region. A lack of sufficient observations over Greenland and the Middle East, however, has resulted in poorer reconstructions there. Error estimates, produced as part of the reconstruction technique, flag these as regions of low confidence. It is shown that the EMSLP daily fields and associated error estimates provide a unique opportunity to examine the circulation patterns associated with extreme events across the European-North Atlantic region, such as the 2003 heat wave, in the context of historical events.

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Section: E Extreme Eventsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Daily Mean Sea Level Pressure Reconstructions for the European–North Atlantic Region for the Period 1850–2003

et al. 2006

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“…Extreme events related to heating or cooling have significant effects on health, natural hazards and socioeconomic activities in Europe, such as the exceptional summer 2003 heat wave (INVS 2003, Beniston 2004, Burt 2004, Schär et al 2004, Díaz et al 2006, including Portugal, where the heat wave induced the largest value (450, 000 ha) of summer burned area ever ) and > 2300 excess deaths (Trigo et al 2009). Therefore, this event is particularly relevant for evaluating the evolution of extreme events in the past century, but also for computing the likelihood of their future occurrence under different climate change scenarios.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of extreme temperatures over Portugal: recent changes and future scenarios

Ramos¹,

Trigo²,

Santo³

2011

Clim. Res.

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Changes in surface air temperature extremes over mainland Portugal since the early 1940s were investigated on the basis of daily maximum and minimum temperatures available from time series from 23 weather stations. The maximum (minimum) temperature decreased by 0. At the seasonal level, we detected statistically significant increments of extreme heat events for spring and summer, and a decrease of cold extremes in winter. We then used the HadRM3 output to study changes in the maximum and minimum temperature distributions and associated changes in the likelihood of extreme events in the future (2071-2100) under 2 change scenarios. Changes obtained for the future are consistent with those found since the mid1970s in Portugal with an increase in maximum temperature of 3.2°C (4.7°C) for the B2 (A2) scenario in summer and ~3.4°C in both scenarios for spring. For minimum temperature, the results were similar, with increases for summer (spring) ranging from 2.7°C (2.5°C) in the B2 scenario to 4.1°C (2.9°C) in the A2 scenario.

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“…This extreme event is now raising the question whether there was a greenhouse contribution to this warming (Stott et al, 2004). An alternative view is whether this was just a climatic extreme generated exclusively by naturally occurring climatic variability (see Burt, 2004). A further example of outliers is the devastating droughts in the USA discussed by Fye et al (2003).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climatic outliers

Hunt¹

2006

Intl Journal of Climatology

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Abstract:A 10 000-year simulation for 'present' climate has been generated with the CSIRO Mark 2 coupled climatic model. In this paper the model output has been analysed to produce a climatology of climatic outliers and to assess the role of such outliers in climatic variability. An assessment of the frequency of occurrence of outliers, compared with the statistical expectation from a Gaussian distribution, indicates that over most of the globe the surface temperature conforms to this distribution, but this is not the case for rainfall. Among the issues considered are the spatial occurrence rates over the globe of normalised climatic anomalies of various magnitudes, the temporal variability of outliers, the seasonal variability for a given outlier year, the spatial characteristics of outliers and the question of precursors to outliers. The relationship of outliers to the El Niño/Southern Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the North Atlantic Oscillation is also considered. A case study examining the relative severities of an outlier drought to a severe drought is also undertaken. Finally, the role of outliers and the greenhouse effect is considered. It is concluded that outliers are a manifestation of stochastic forcing.

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The August 2003 heatwave in the United Kingdom: Part 1 –Maximum temperatures and historical precedents

Cited by 43 publications

References 6 publications

Daily Mean Sea Level Pressure Reconstructions for the European–North Atlantic Region for the Period 1850–2003

Daily Mean Sea Level Pressure Reconstructions for the European–North Atlantic Region for the Period 1850–2003

Evolution of extreme temperatures over Portugal: recent changes and future scenarios

Climatic outliers

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