The UK was unusually warm last week. Half a million of the fed-up locked down were reported to have crowded Bournemouth’s beaches. It was a little cooler in the north-east and at Durham Tees Airport (my “local” weather station) the week ended only 0.08 degrees Centigrade warmer than the week before. I was surprised the differential wasn’t greater, and astonished that Durham Tees, the outsider, beat every one of “the Ten” in the warmth stakes last week.

Given the attention Siberia and the Arctic have been receiving for extraordinary heat, you may wonder at Koltsovo’s 0.36°C drop from its Week 29 Mean. Koltsovo is east of the Urals and considered by some authorities to be part of Russia’s Sibir. Tell that to the folk in Yekaterinburg, twenty minutes by car from Koltsovo Airport. Whatever, while Siberia burned last week, the Urals almost froze. I exaggerate. Koltsovo’s mean temperature for the week was 11.9°C (53.4°F) and Durham Tees 19.2°C (a devilish 66.6°F).

For the Year to Date, the 5 northern stations dropped to 2.63°C above Pre-Industrial by the end of last week. The southern stations continued the gentle warming trend of the last five weeks to reach 0.73°C above P-I. The Ten Station Globe is currently running at 1.68 degrees above P-I, warmer than is comfortable for the Paris Accord people. The Ten Stations warming rate had risen to 52 IPCC units by Week 16 but it has steadily reduced to just 28 units in Week 30. (One unit is the amount the Earth is projected to warm each year by the International Panel on Climate Change, from 2017 to 2040.)

Found Object 36 · Wellie