A Century Of UK/NI Rainfall (part 7)
A butcher's at drought and deluge over the last 100 years. Are things getting worse, and what does ‘worse’ even mean?
In part 6 of this series I finally got to producing a time series for mean monthly rainfall for the UK for the period 1883 - 2021 using records held by Armagh, Durham, Oxford, Sheffield and Stornoway Airport observatories, these being dubbed the ‘big five’ a.k.a. UK5 in graphs and tables. We observed that the rainfall record over 139 years has remained remarkably consistent, with the possibility of a positive trend from 1950 onward. Counts of drought months revealed things were certainly not getting drier as many alarmists claim and, if anything, things are getting wetter.
Rainfall on a small island caught between a warm ocean and cold northerly sea is pretty darn variable, which is why there is both sunscreen and wellington boots in the back of my old Land Rover. Not just any old wellies either - herewith a selfie of my summer and winter wellies that prove I take rain seriously:
But Five Is Not A Lot, Is It?
No it’s not. The trouble is long series weather stations are pretty thin on the…