2019 record temperatures conclude a decade of records

Variability in our weather and climate mean that even as the average temperature increases cold extremes currently can and do still occur, for example the ’Beast from the East’ in 2018 resulted in the coldest March day on record with a maximum of -4.7 °C recorded at Tredegar in South Wales. Read about the Met Office report.

However, during the 2010’s these occurrences have been outnumbered by high-temperature extremes which include four new records in 2019 alone including the highest winter and summer temperatures, and pending verification a potential new December record maximum of 18.7 °C recorded on 28^th of last month.

These daily weather extremes are also reflected in monthly and seasonal statistics for the UK and a more comprehensive review of 2019 and associated records will be published in late July this year as part of our annual ‘State of the UK Climate’ publication.

The 2010s have been the second warmest and second wettest of the ‘cardinal’ decades (those spanning years ending 0-9) over the last 100 years of UK weather records, in both cases being slightly behind the 2000s. UK climate has relatively large year-to-year variability. Read about the Met Office report.