Another year has passed and with it, more weather records have fallen. Recent reports from the UK Met Office and the Copernicus Climate Change Service show that 2020 was the UK’s third warmest year since 1884 as well as Europe’s warmest on record.
Prof Liz Bentley, Chief Executive of the Royal Meteorological Society, reflects on a busy summer when weather and climate featured heavily in the media.
Why is there another IPCC report?
The next-generation satellite system provides high-resolution observations of Earth's atmosphere, including the ionosphere - this video explains more:
(Credit: UCAR)
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Heatwaves do not only occur on land, but also inside the ocean. Marine heatwaves are defined as periods of prolonged anomalously high sea surface temperatures compared to the local 30-year long record. Although the occurrence of these events has been observed locally, researchers in recent years looked at this phenomenon at the global scale.
It is the middle of August in 2018 and I am in a small town in the Swiss Alps called Leysin. Beautifully situated in the mountains and not far from Lake Geneva, the temperatures here are in the mid-20s during the day, only to drop down to single digits at night. Leysin has a humid continental climate with annual precipitation averaging 1,481 mm, which equals more than twice that of London. Because the village is situated at an altitude of 1,565 m above sea level the average annual temperature is only 3.9°C.
Antibiotics are widely used in both animals and humans to treat bacterial infection. This use (and often overuse) has caused bacteria to evolve and develop resistances against the treatment, posing great risks for human health globally.
As we head closer to December, one of the questions we are often asked as meteorologists is “Will it be a white Christmas?” The first thing to clarify, is what exactly is being asked – do you want to know if anywhere in the UK will see a single snow flake or are you envisaging streets and roofs with a dusting of the white stuff when you wake up on 25 December.
Episode 2 - About our 'Weather' Journal Special Edition on Climate Change
In this, the second episode of our podcast, we talk about the upcoming Special Issue of our "Weather" Journal, which is focused on the subject of Climate Change.
We sit down for an interview with David Warrilow, who was guest editor for this issue and Nigel Arnell who is the author of one of the papers published in it.
The RMetS' FutureLearn course, developed with the University of Reading, ‘Come Rain or Shine: Understanding the weather’, is now in its second year, and continues to be run three times a year.
Developed from the course we offer to secondary geography teachers, 'Come Rain or Shine' helps people to further understand the physical processes behind the weather. The stand-alone course complements the ‘Learn About Weather’ course, but you do not need to have completed that course before signing up for ‘Come Rain or Shine’.
