Summer 2016 – best in East Anglia worst in Scotland

[xmetman]

I have just downloaded the gridded 1910 data series from the Met Office for August so that I can have a look at the 2016 summer index across the country. I require that sunshine, rainfall and temperature gridded data so I can calculate the monthly terciles and quintiles values that are used to calculate the summer index. The summer is of course the meteorological summer and consists of the months June, July and August. The table below is the summer index for the whole of the UK, and as you can see summer 2016 index was +10 which is above average and much better than last year, but comes only joint 19th best since 1929.

The picture is much better when you look at the regional summer indices that I've also calculated and ranked. East Anglia comes top with an index of +25 just ahead of southern England with +20. Incidentally, in East Anglia summer 2016 was also the best summer index since 1995. No region in Scotland fared particularly well this summer with summer indices of around average (remember the best summer scores 48 and the worst summer -48 using the summer index formulae). You can find more details about the summer index in an earlier article I wrote earlier this year.

[Dave C]

I would pretty much agree with that Bruce but what about the record June rainfall. I would have thought thaat would have brought it down a bit. My perception here in essex was best since 2003 and probably better than that if you ignore June, which was dire here.

Dave

[xmetman]

Dave

As you say June marred what would nave been higher indices, nearly all regions had tercile 3 for rain and 1 for sunshine in June.

Bruce.

[Scott Whitehead]

Thanks, Bruce - that puts an interesting perspective on summer in terms of how it deteriorated the further away you were from the south and east. Wondering aloud I cannot see any consistent connection with the JJA index and the severity of the following winter, only to say that I wonder if the coming winter will be anything like 2009/10, as it has the same index of +10 :)

[Dave C]

Well  it would be good!