The bitter winter of 1962/63

Transcription

1 The bitter winter of 1962/63 Stephen Burt FRMet S Imperial College, London 16 March 2013

2 The bitter winter of 1962/ / C 'Central England' winter mean temperatures (DJF, C) / C 1962/ C

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5 The bitter winter of 1962/63 Frequent heavy snowfalls, blowing snow/deep drifts, persistent snow cover Notable for persistence of cold rather than absolute severity Timeline of the winter Chronology of the main events Why was the winter of 1962/63 so cold? Assessment of rarity Could such a winter ever happen again?

6 Weather in Reading, winter 1962/ Maximum and minimum air temperatures ( C) Source: UoR historical climatological database , Roger Brugge Dec Dec Dec Jan Jan Feb Feb Mar December January February March 0900 snow depth (cm) Dec Dec Dec Jan Jan Feb Feb Mar 1963

7 Reading, winter 1962/63 Source: UoR historical climatological database Anomalies wrt current Whiteknights site means, adjusted for 1963 Town Centre site Parameter Dec 1962 Jan 1963 Feb 1963 Winter 62/63 Dec 2010 Mean temperature C Anomaly Mean max temp C Anomaly Mean min temp C Anomaly Lowest max C Date January 6 Lowest min C Date January 20 Air frosts Ice days Snow or sleet Snow lying Max depth cm Date , 3 3 January 21

8 December 1962 Very cold and foggy first week Last of the old style London smogs 4-6 December Dense fog in Reading 3-8 December: visibility 15 m at 0900 on 3 rd Milder, unsettled mid-month, colder from 21 st /22 nd Snow in north from 25 th, south 26 th

9 The winter begins Surface charts 0600 GMT December 1962 (From Clarke, 1964) 22 23

10 Late December to end-january Coldest Christmas London area since 1897 Blizzards SW England and Channel coast 29 Dec and 3 Jan Tredegar, S Wales (313 m) 81 cm snow depth 1 Jan, drifts 5-8 m Many places SE England 30 cm snow depth around New Year Reading 31 cm 3 Jan, highest on record 1950 to date Coldest period January Maximum temperatures widely < 0 C January Coldest day below -5 C in many places 12 January Braemar maximum C, Balmoral C 23 January Hempsted (Glos) maximum -9.4 C, Ross-on-Wye -8.4 C Coldest nights 18 January Braemar min C, the winter s lowest 23 January Stanstead Abbotts (Herts) C, lowest in England/Wales

11 23 January 1963 at 0600z Source: Met Office Daily Weather Report from the late Mike Tullett s site maps/december/index1.htm Crown Copyright

12 Earth temperatures at Reading, 1962/63 15 C 10 5 Mean air temperature Earth 5 cm depth Earth 10 cm Earth 20 cm Earth 30 cm Earth 60 cm Earth 120 cm 0-5 Hurst and Lenz, Dec 11 Dec 21 Dec 31 Dec 10 Jan 20 Jan 30 Jan 9 Feb 19 Feb 1 Mar 11 Mar

13 January mean MSLP Source: Met Office Monthly Weather Report. Crown Copyright

14 February March 1963 Early February: entire country covered in deep snow Central and southern England cm N England > 30 cm: Spadeadam, Cumbria 63 cm 7 th, 8 th : Kielder Castle 56 cm 14 th SW England and S Wales > 30 cm, blizzard 4-5 February Tredegar, Monmouth 165 cm 7 th, 8 th Lowest February temperatures Braemar min C on 18 th, Corbridge, North land C on 25 th Lauder, Berwicks C, Kielder Castle C 26 th Rapid rise in temperatures after first week March Bellingham, Northumberland 76 cm snow depth 1 March Kielder Castle min C 1, 3, 4 March: Braemar C 2 March

15 Why was the winter so cold? Pa Pa Mean MSLP December 1962 February 1963 MSLP anomaly December 1962 February 1963 Source: NOAA ESRL 20thC reanalysis dataset

16 The North Atlantic Oscillation (DJF) 4 NAO After Hurrell /

17 Temperature anomalies northern Hemisphere Very cold over NW Europe (anomalies below -5 degc) Very mild over Greenland and northern Canada (+5 degc) Courtesy John Kennedy, Met Office Hadley Centre

18 MSLP and rainfall anomalies, NW Europe Seasonal anomalies for winter (DJF) 1962/63 Lines: Sea level pressure (hpa) from NCAR/NCEP reanalyses. Thick line is 1 SD above mean Shading: percentage of accumulated seasonal precipitation compared with the climatology from the seasonal GPCC precipitation data Courtesy of Ricardo Trigo and David Barriopedro, Univ. Lisbon

19 Precipitation anomalies northern Hemisphere Courtesy Peter Bissolli, DWD

20 The rarity of the winter Ranked CET coldest Top 10 months December, January, February and Winter Rank December January February Winter

21 Could such a winter ever happen again? The 1963 winter is well within the population of other cold winters that have been experienced in this country... It is not necessary therefore to seek some very special cause in order to explain it. H.C. Shellard, Meteorological Magazine, 1968 The winter of 2010/11 was a rare weather event, even in the context of the 352 years of the Central England temperature record. Yet while the odds of such an event have lengthened as a result of human influence on climate, such unlikely events can still happen, as the winter of 2010/11 demonstrated. Nikolaos Christidis and Peter Stott, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, July 2012

22 The rarity of the winter Ranked CET coldest Top 10 months December, January, February and Winter Rank December January February Winter

23 Summary The winter of 1962/63 was the coldest winter in central England since 1740 Since 1879 or 1895 in Scotland and Northern Ireland Notable for persistence of cold rather than absolute lowest values Great penetration of frost into the ground Several notable snowfalls late December to early February Tredegar, Monmouth 165 cm depth on 7 and 8 February Widespread record extreme persistence of snow on the ground Anomalous easterly flow from anticyclone over Scandinavia, Icelandic low displaced west of Greenland DJF MSLP anomaly +15 hpa Iceland, -9 hpa Portugal NAO index -4.0, lowest on the series to that date Very cold, dry winter NW Europe, mild and wet Greenland and N Canada

24 Acknowledgements, sources and references Anomaly charts by kind courtesy of - Ricardo Trigo and David Barriopedro, University of Lisbon - John Kennedy, Met Office Hadley Centre - Peter Bissolli, Deutscher Wetterdienst DWD (from GPCC Visualizer: ) CET data monthly and seasonal means from Hadley Centre website : Parker, D.E., T.P. Legg, and C.K. Folland A new daily Central England Temperature Series, Int. J. Clim., 12, pp (PDF available on Hadley Centre website) CRUTEM dataset from Jones, P. D., D. H. Lister, T. J. Osborn, C. Harpham, M. Salmon, and C. P. Morice (2012), Hemispheric and large-scale land surface air temperature variations: An extensive revision and an update to 2010, J. Geophys. Res., 117, D05127, doi: /2011jd NAO from Hurrell, James & NCAR (2012) The Climate Data Guide: Hurrell North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) Index (station-based). Retrieved from Christidis, N and Stott, P (2012) Lengthened odds of the cold winter of 2010/11 attributable to human influence. Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc., 93 (7), pp Clarke, PC (1964) The start of a prolonged cold spell. Weather, 19, pp Hurst, GW and Lenz, Y (1964) Earth temperature changes in Winter Weather, 19, pp Shellard, HC (1968) The winter of in the United Kingdom A climatological survey. Met. Mag., 97, pp

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