Warm Atlantic Ocean causing UK's wet summers

[questionmark]

The UK's dismal recent summers can be blamed on a substantial warming of the North Atlantic Ocean in the late 1990s, according to new scientific research. The shift has resulted in rain-soaked weather systems being driven into northern Europe, increasing summer rainfall by about a third.

The pattern is likely to revert to drier summers and may do so suddenly, according to Prof Rowan Sutton, at the University of Reading, who led the work. "I can't guarantee it but it is likely," he said. "However we are not sure of the timing, which is what every one wants to know – but we are working on this now." Sutton added that when the switch occurs, it could happen as rapidly as over two to three years.

The summer of 2012 was the wettest in a century and follows a series of above average years for summer rainfall. Sutton's team, who published their study in Nature Geoscience, examined over a century of data and found that the temperature of the North Atlantic remains above or below the long term average for decades at a time. The periods of warmer temperature, the latest of which started in the late 1990s, were found to correlate with wet summers in Northern Europe and hotter, drier summers in the Mediterranean. The team used existing detailed climate simulations to demonstrate a causal link between the warmer oceans and the change in the weather.

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And the bad news is: The faster the polar ice disappears the warmer the NA will get.

[Ever Learning]

so its not my imagination that summer used to be longer

[Guest]

I can personally atest to this change in weather. Its been getting wetter for years.

Br Cornelius

[Ashotep]

So if it will suddenly shift back to being dryer will it be drier than normal?

With all the polar ice melting at some point will it stop the gulf stream which would leave a lot of us with colder temperatures?

[Ever Learning]

felt like i had to sun bathe when the sun was out once in a blue moon and if i missed this i would have to be pale all summer

[Guest]

felt like i had to sun bathe when the sun was out once in a blue moon and if i missed this i would have to be pale all summer

I find supplementing my Vit.D intake to be essential where I live. We average between 50-100% cloud cover all year round.

Br Cornelius

[Arbenol]

Haven't British summers always been wet?

[Guest]

They are wetter.

Br Cornelius

[spud the mackem]

If the Gulf Stream Current was to move to the west of the Continental Shelf,we would be heading for really frigid winters, because the the Arctic Current would surround the U.K. At the moment it only comes a little way down from Norway in to the North Sea,and is then absorbed by the warmer water coming up the North Sea..