Synoptics charts and heat

[h2005__uk__]

Below are the SLP and 850 temp charts for the days I've recorded 30C+ (in mid-Essex) in the last few years.

I was looking at the main features required for such heat. It seems to me the most common setup is lack of a Greenland high, high pressure to our east, low pressure to our west and of course correspondingly warm 850 temps. 

Can anyone help me spot other features that have delivered these temps and/or other unusual setups from the charts below?

Thanks!

 

        

        

        

        

        

        

 

Edited July 3, 2019 by h2005__uk__

[mb018538]

You've pretty much hit the nail on the head there. The most favoured set up for UK sunshine and heat is the Iceland/Greenland low combined with the Azores high properly building in, or polar heights to not be excessively high like we've had in 2019.

1976 had it too:



The history maker in 2003:



July 2006:




It's amazing to look back only a week ago and see this chart:



It has all the hallmarks of something spectacular - possibly the hottest 850 chart ever seen in the UK - but it only reached 30c! Even Saturday 'only' saw 34c.

[h2005__uk__]

Could someone please explain the broad syntopics behind the recent heatwave? Was the intensity of it simply due to the heat over France/Spain which the UK was able to tap into?

Thanks.

[Thundery wintry showers]

I think it owed a lot to above-average temperatures over north Africa combined with a few days of southerly winds originating from that region.  In addition the north African air mass was somewhat hotter than it has tended to be in previous heatwaves, as is particularly evident from the 850hPa charts, which show much of north Africa with 850hPa temperatures between 30 and 34C.  In previous heatwaves north Africa has tended to have 850hPa temperatures mostly between 25 and 29C with some small pockets of >= 30C. 

This was reflected also in the 850hPa temperatures that we got across Europe with the 25C isotherm getting through a large part of France and the 20C isotherm extending up to the Scottish border - these values were even higher than anything that we saw in the August 2003 heatwave.  It was a similar story with the late June 2019 heatwave also, which given the time of year was even more exceptional at the 850hPa level, but an undercut of cooler air off the North Sea prevented Britain from seeing record breaking temperatures on that occasion.