A year without a summer?

According to Météo France, 2013 could be one of the coldest and wettest summers for some time.

After a long, cold winter, France is experiencing its coolest spring for 20 years. There was sleet at low level in Southern Belgium last week, and the seasonal forecast for summer provides little optimism.

Apparently the main numerical models suggests a likely (70%) scenario of the persistence of a cold anomaly during the 3 months of summer (June, July, August) combined with normal rainfall. This does not preclude short warm spells but overall the pattern that emerges is that of a “rotten summer” in Western Europe. According to the forecast there is just a 1.5% risk of a summer heatwave.

Statistics from summers past
During years when the spring in France was cool, there was an 80% likelihood of it being followed by a cool and wet summer.

In the 1960s and again in the 2000s, no “rotten” spring was followed by a real good summer. In the 1970s, 80s and 90s, there are three notable exceptions: in 1975, 1983 and 1995, where the summers were very hot but also stormy. Only the year 1983 is the exception, a month comparable to the one we’ve just experienced, followed by a July heat wave.”

Cold Seas

Current ocean temperatures – the Atlantic, the English Channel, the North Sea and the Mediterranean – are much colder than normal. Given the size of the deficit (close to -5 ° to the English Channel and the North Sea), it is unlikely that the delay in warming will catch up in the coming weeks, which postpones any building heat. This is why the western side of the continent, including the Iberian Peninsula, seems worse off.

A year without a summer?

Compared to those balmy summers of recent years it will feel cool (if the forecast bears out), but how would it compare with the infamous “Year Without a Summer” – 1816?

The more extreme iterations of the models suggest comparable anomalies…

“The combination of a long and late winter which resulted in a cooling of the waters in the seas and solar activity become very weak for several months may have a direct effect on the weather of our summer: some calculations considering an anomaly -2 ° to – 3 in France with rainfall totals twice higher than normal. This scenario, however, seems rather extreme, so we opt for a remaining gloomy summer, punctuated by a heatwave of short duration followed by violent thunderstorms. One could nevertheless see some overall improvement with a return to normal late in the season (late August and September), with a gradual blurring of the cold anomaly.

September and October could therefore be the most settled and warmest months…“

Ever get that feeling of deja vu?

So will the Met Office be predicting a BBQ summer again then? Maybe they’ll forecast rain and we can rejoice if they are wrong again.

That reminds me of an anecdote of my father’s.  One of his work colleagues always seemed to suffer poor holiday weather (this was before jetting off to Europe was the norm).  One year they got a postcard from Oban that said:

“Weather wonderful.  Michael Fish thinks I’m in the Isle of Wight”