Any correlation between mild winters and warm summers

[Methuselah]

19 hours ago, qwertyK said:

The Met Office say that this January was the 6th warmest on record, so obviously not that mild in the scheme of things, with an average temp of 5.6C, but the warmest since 2007. Is there any correlation between mild winters and above average summers? Last February we had some very mild tempreature (albeit some pretty cold weather too) and had record breaking heat in the summer and across Europe. Europe has also been pretty mild, especially in Russia and in the last few days southern Europe has seen temps into the 20s. Does this mean 2020 will have another hot or record breaking summer? Similar winters to this such as 2008 and 2007 were followed by cool, wet summers but could that be atributed to a period of wet and cold summers anyway (2007-2012). Summer 2018 and 2019 were both hot, can we expect it again this year? Will 2020 be the warmest year on record?

Well, I do not know the answer to that question; but a link between warmth down south, in winter, and a warmer than average (following) summer seems plausible:

Winter 1974-75 was very mild and was followed by a hot summer;

Winter 1975-76 was less-mild and was followed by a hot summer;

Winter 1982-83 was not cold and was followed by a hot summer;

Winter 1988-89 was very mild and was followed by a hot summer;

Winter 1989-90 was far from outstanding and was followed by a hot summer;

Winter 1994-95 was not cold and was followed by a hot summer;

Winter 2002-03 was mild and was followed by a hot summer;

I can't even remember winter 2005-06, but the following summer was a stonker;

Winter 2012-13 was cold and snowy and was followed by a hot summer;

Winter 2017-18 was indifferent and was followed by a hot summer;

Winter 2018-19 was record-breaking, in February, and was followed by record-breaking summer temps;

Winter 2019-20 looks like being very mild and will be followed by...?

Could do with running those all through a Bayesian Inference Engine...

 

[qwertyK]

4 minutes ago, General Cluster said:

Well, I do not know the answer to that question; but a link between warmth down south, in winter, and a warmer than average (following) summer seems plausible:

Winter 1974-75 was very mild and was followed by a hot summer;

Winter 1975-76 was less-mild and was followed by a hot summer;

Winter 1982-83 was not cold and was followed by a hot summer;

Winter 1988-89 was very mild and was followed by a hot summer;

Winter 1989-90 was far from outstanding and was followed by a hot summer;

Winter 1994-95 was not cold and was followed by a hot summer;

Winter 2002-03 was mild and was followed by a hot summer;

I can't even remember winter 2005-06, but the following summer was a stonker;

Winter 2012-13 was cold and snowy and was followed by a hot summer;

Winter 2017-18 was indifferent and was followed by a hot summer;

Winter 2018-19 was record-breaking, in February, and was followed by record-breaking summer temps;

Winter 2019-20 looks like being very mild and will be followed by...?

Could do with running those all through a Bayesian Inference Engine...

 

It hasn't though just been mild down south; north has been milder than south at times. 

In the USA this is not the case generally.

2017-2018 was very cold and was followed by a very hot summer. 

February 2017 was mild, very mild at  times (18c) recorded, I think this feb will be similar to that, maybe a little milder but overall winter will be very much. maybe some more wintry conditions in spring who knows.

 

Anyway of checking the weather in the arctic in those years? Arctic temps right now are colder than average, significantly colder in some places. 

[Methuselah]

33 minutes ago, qwertyK said:

It hasn't though just been mild down south; north has been milder than south at times. 

In the USA this is not the case generally.

2017-2018 was very cold and was followed by a very hot summer. 

February 2017 was mild, very mild at  times (18c) recorded, I think this feb will be similar to that, maybe a little milder but overall winter will be very much. maybe some more wintry conditions in spring who knows.

 

Anyway of checking the weather in the arctic in those years? Arctic temps right now are colder than average, significantly colder in some places. 

This is what I meant by 'warmth down south'...and how it may, or may not, relate to the summer that follows. As far as correlations/links are concerned, someone with a better grasp of statistics (and meteorology!) than mine is required.

    

[95 Degrees]

I'd definately rate Summer '19. Sure the first half of June was awful but we hit 30c on the South Coast during the hot spell at the end of the June, which is very rare. July was slightly warmer than average pretty much throughout with a truly historic heatwave from the 22nd-25th July. The only dissapointment was the following couple of weeks following that, but they weren't as bad as what came during the 1st half of June. Come the last two weeks of August another proper spell of heat arrived with 33C in London just a few days before the start of September. September itself was decent also and when it did turn was on the 21st was when arguably Autumn truly begins. 

Now of course it doesn't compare to Summer 2018 but it is unrealistic to do so, as that is among the all-tme hottest summers ever recorded. Personally I expect Summer 2020 to be cooler than the last two years only because the last truly bad summer was 8 years ago now, but hope to be wrong.

Edited February 4, 2020 by 95 Degrees

[MP-R]

12 hours ago, qwertyK said:

Oops - it was April 2019. 

 

February 2017 was quite mild, we even saw 18c.

The Arctic is much colder than average right now 

Yes it was 25C over Easter, then it didn’t reach that again until June 1st. May’s high was only 22C on the 25th.

[Methuselah]

On the subject of correlations, Cage's Law is mighty impressive:

# of drownings = 5.8 x # of Nic Cage films + 87; correlation coefficient +0.67, statistically significant (p = 0.025)

And that makes me wonder just how meaningful many seemingly 'valid' correlations really are...

 

[B87]

Summer 2019 was warm, but wet and on the cloudy side.

As for looking at mild winters and the following summers (using Heathrow data)

1966/67 had a mild winter, 1967 had a poor summer.

1973/74 had a mild winter, 1974 terrible summer

1997/98 had a mild winter, 1998 poor summer

1999/00 mild winter, 2000 poor summer

2006/07 mild winter, 2007 terrible summer

2007/08 mild winter, 2008 poor summer

It appears there is no link between mild winters and warm summers.

Edited February 5, 2020 by B87

[cheeky_monkey]

what about:

74/75 mild winter ...warm summer

75/76 mild winter ...hot summer

88/89 mild winter ...warm summer

89/90 mild winter...warm summer

94/95 mild winter...hot summer

[B87]

36 minutes ago, cheeky_monkey said:

what about:

74/75 mild winter ...warm summer

75/76 mild winter ...hot summer

88/89 mild winter ...warm summer

89/90 mild winter...warm summer

94/95 mild winter...hot summer

So a mild winter could be followed by a poor summer, an average summer, or a good summer.

[qwertyK]

10 minutes ago, B87 said:

So a mild winter could be followed by a poor summer, an average summer, or a good summer.

In other words...no correlation

[cheeky_monkey]

15 hours ago, B87 said:

So a mild winter could be followed by a poor summer, an average summer, or a good summer.

the point is it does matter the kind of winter you have it wont dictate what kind of summer you have and vice versa

[johnholmes]

There is no link, or none found so far for any kind of weather in one season being followed by a particular kind of weather in the following season.

[rossco89]

Summer 2019 up here from what I remember wasn't all that good, it's rained pretty much every week since May 2019. That was after a mild winter. Summer 2018 was great, weeks on end of dry weather to the point they were having to ferry water supplies out to some of the islands. 

[Thundery wintry showers]

I vaguely recall reading a scientific paper in Weather around the turn of the century that linked a positive NAO with a dry summer, but being unconvinced because of the relatively short span of years that were used in the analysis.  In the 20th century 1911, 1921, 1949, 1975, 1976, 1983, 1984, 1989, 1990 and 1995 all had hot summers that were preceded by mostly westerly-dominated winters, which outnumbered those that weren't (most famously 1947, and also 1933, 1955 and 1959).  But I would want to see an analysis on the 1800s to help determine whether this really is a reliable correlation or whether it is just a quirk, as sometimes you do get long runs of weather that appear to be correlated (such as the warm sunny Junes ending in "0" which went on until 1970) only for the run to be broken and not return.  In the 2000s the analysis would be skewed by the warming climate, but the summers that stick out for me as hot ones (2003, 2006, 2018) weren't preceded by strongly +NAO winters.

 

[Weather-history]

I mentioned this some years ago but severe winters (sub 2C for CET)  are rarely followed by hot summers. 1947 is an example which did 

 

 

 

[Methuselah]

Aye; and severe winters/hot summers only count for a minuscule subset of the total data...an ideal recipe for Wakefieldesque 'links' to show up?

What, for example, is the oft-mentioned 'typical low-solar summer'? 

[qwertyK]

On 09/02/2020 at 13:21, rossco89 said:

Summer 2019 up here from what I remember wasn't all that good, it's rained pretty much every week since May 2019. That was after a mild winter. Summer 2018 was great, weeks on end of dry weather to the point they were having to ferry water supplies out to some of the islands. 

We had the hottest tempreature on record though, and many +30c days. 

[qwertyK]

19 hours ago, Thundery wintry showers said:

I vaguely recall reading a scientific paper in Weather around the turn of the century that linked a positive NAO with a dry summer, but being unconvinced because of the relatively short span of years that were used in the analysis.  In the 20th century 1911, 1921, 1949, 1975, 1976, 1983, 1984, 1989, 1990 and 1995 all had hot summers that were preceded by mostly westerly-dominated winters, which outnumbered those that weren't (most famously 1947, and also 1933, 1955 and 1959).  But I would want to see an analysis on the 1800s to help determine whether this really is a reliable correlation or whether it is just a quirk, as sometimes you do get long runs of weather that appear to be correlated (such as the warm sunny Junes ending in "0" which went on until 1970) only for the run to be broken and not return.  In the 2000s the analysis would be skewed by the warming climate, but the summers that stick out for me as hot ones (2003, 2006, 2018) weren't preceded by strongly +NAO winters.

 

2017 - 2018 beast from the east which was a colder than average winter and one of the coldest in recent years turned out to be one of the hottest summers on record.

Winter 2002-2003 was pretty cold, snow a lot of times even in London, apart from having the mildest January Day on record at 17c. Obviously we all know what happened with summer that year.

2017 January was normal-ish, 2017 february was milder than average with highs of 18c, summer was very average, I can't remember any "heatwaves" or if they were they weren't anything to write home about.

2016 winter in the UK was relatively mild, summer was average, overall however hottest year on record.

The weather pattern in Europe has been weird this year. Like, seriously, its been colder in Sofia than Moscow several times, even though Bulgaria is well south of Russia, although the Balkans are usually pretty cold in winter. They did have an extremely mild autumn though. I didn't see any climatologists or forecasters notice it or anything, but temps were often in excess of 20-25C even in late Autumn there. October that year was the warmest on record, though in the UK it was colder than average. 

[Sunny76]

1 hour ago, qwertyK said:

We had the hottest tempreature on record though, and many +30c days. 

We still had lots of dull cloudy days, so it didn’t really feel like a great summer. I remember the heat and humid nights on and off, but also recall some truly poor days between June and August.

[B87]

44 minutes ago, Sunny76 said:

We still had lots of dull cloudy days, so it didn’t really feel like a great summer. I remember the heat and humid nights on and off, but also recall some truly poor days between June and August.

My summer 2019. Warmer, wetter and cloudier than average. It didn't really feel summer-like at all until the middle of June.

 

[reef]

1 hour ago, B87 said:

My summer 2019. Warmer, wetter and cloudier than average. It didn't really feel summer-like at all until the middle of June.

 

Where are those figures from for the sunshine amounts? They are different to these:

>620hrs looks far more realistic than the figures above. It was not a duller than average summer in most of the south-east of the country. The annual sunshine total of just 1546hrs looks remarkably low too. Even here we had north of 1700hrs.

[B87]

27 minutes ago, reef said:

Where are those figures from for the sunshine amounts? They are different to these:

>620hrs looks far more realistic than the figures above. It was not a duller than average summer in most of the south-east of the country. The annual sunshine total of just 1546hrs looks remarkably low too. Even here we had north of 1700hrs.

They are from the Met Office historic data page.  You laugh, but 2019 was actually one of the sunniest years at Heathrow since 2007. Only 2014, 2013 and 2018 were sunnier.  Our average summer (Jun-Aug) sunshine is 621 hours, and last summer definitely felt cloudier than that.

Edited February 10, 2020 by B87

[qwertyK]

I was also going to say 2007,2008, and 2012 all had mild winters, the first especially so but not sure this is particuarly valid given basically every summer from 2007-2012 was very poor. 

[Thundery wintry showers]

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but Heathrow converted to a Kipp-Zonen sunshine sensor in 2005 which tends to record less than the Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorder, especially in the summer half-year.  The sunshine maps are based on estimated Campbell-Stokes equivalents.  Thus, comparing Heathrow's Kipp-Zonen sunshine stats with Campbell-Stokes derived averages is not a like-for-like comparison and will tend to result in summers in particular appearing to be 10-15% cloudier relative to normal than they really are.

[B87]

1 hour ago, Thundery wintry showers said:

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but Heathrow converted to a Kipp-Zonen sunshine sensor in 2005 which tends to record less than the Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorder, especially in the summer half-year.  The sunshine maps are based on estimated Campbell-Stokes equivalents.  Thus, comparing Heathrow's Kipp-Zonen sunshine stats with Campbell-Stokes derived averages is not a like-for-like comparison and will tend to result in summers in particular appearing to be 10-15% cloudier relative to normal than they really are.

The UK is the only place on Earth where that seems to be the case.

Will the Met Office use the CS adjusted figures for the next set of averages (91-20)? It will be the difference between annual sunshine being about 1590 hours vs about 1700 hours. Do they have sunshine records for Kew Gardens, which uses CS?