2006 Hot Hot Hot
14.12.06
GWA Met Correspondent

It hasn’t happened yet because the New Years Eve parties still lie in front of us, but the Met Office has predicted 2006 to be the warmest in the UK for 300 years. Following the hottest July, September and autumn no one is going to be surprised that the whole year looks set break the record book too.

At the moment, on a global basis 2006 is coming in at sixth place for the warmest since 1850.

The jet stream, that high energy air at the top of the troposphere is bringing in warm moist air from the tropics, and that in turn is driving our surface systems. Worldwide it appears that the conveyor belts which nature uses to redistribute energy between the equatorial regions and the poles are shifting. We know the jet streams have moved an average of 60 nautical miles polewards and we know the tropopause, the boundary between the troposphere and stratosphere, has risen by an average 900 feet over the last twenty years. Common sense dictates that these monumental changes will manifest themselves in the weather we actually experience on the ground.

Dramatic climate change is inevitable as we heat up the globe.

The scatter graph is predicting ever warmer weather in the years immediately ahead.