Official news blog

New year begins with a sudden stratospheric warming

5 January 2021

Meteorologists are already able to note a significant atmospheric observation in their 2021 diaries with the beginning of a Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW), which started over the weekend – this was forecast last week.

Rainfall on UK’s wettest day on record could have more than filled Loch Ness

16 October 2020

Saturday 3 October 2020 is now the wettest day on record since 1891 for UK-wide rainfall. It received the greatest rainfall in any single day averaged out across the UK, beating the previous record on the 25 August 1986.

Global temperature: how does 2020 compare so far?

23 June 2020

The Earth’s average temperature has increased by about 1 degree C since pre-industrial times, which for the climate record is calculated as the period 1850-1900.

Spring 2020: the sunniest on record in the UK

29 May 2020

The UK has recorded the sunniest spring since records began in 1929. Since that time there have been only nine UK springs recording more than 500 hours of sunshine, with the previous sunniest being 555.3 hours in 1948.

Coronavirus will impact the atmospheric CO2 record – but not enough to slow global heating

7 May 2020

The drop in global carbon-dioxide emissions following the coronavirus pandemic could be large enough to noticeably slow the build-up of CO2 in the atmosphere this year, a team of scientists at the Met Office and Scripps Institution for Oceanography have predicted.

Summer temperature 2018 – the ‘new normal’?

27 July 2018

The Met Office Chief Scientist, Professor Stephen Belcher, appeared on BBC Newsnight on Tuesday evening to talk about current extreme temperatures and climate change.

An update on a record breaking June

5 July 2018

On Monday 2nd July we released our provisional climate statistics for June: an exceptional month resulting in a number of new climate records, including the warmest June on record for Wales and Northern Ireland.