Investigating Climate Change in Wales and the UK

Investigating Climate Change in Wales and the UK

In this part 3 of GitN this time we are going to research some aspects of climate change in Wales using resources from the Meteorological Office.

The Met Office (abbreviated) is our national government funded organisation for weather and climate science.

In this article we are going to give you some guidance to carry out research into your local and national climates.

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0

Met Office Weather Station Map

Find information for your local weather station using the weather station map from the Met Office website.

Using the map tools you can find out lots of different information on the climate and how it has changed over the past 50 years.

The maps below have been put together showing warming during winter in Wales.

Mean Daily Maximum Temperatures January

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0

Choose a range of variables to investigate from the drop down menus.

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0

As well as maps it is possible to access data as tables.

The information below has been taken from these tables.

Max Temperature ˚C
Year	JAN	FEB	MAR	APR	MAY	JUN	JUL	AUG	SEP	OCT	NOV	DEC
1961-1990	5.7	5.8	8	10.6	14.1	17	18.6	18.4	16	12.7	8.4	6.5
1981-2010	6.4	6.6	8.9	11.4	14.7	17.3	19.4	19.1	16.5	12.8	9.1	6.7

Notice how many of the months have changes of nearly 1˚C.

You can access historical data for Wales (or other parts of the UK) for example a graph showing mean temperatures for any season or year between 1910 and 2015.

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0

Historical Data Button

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0

100 years ago UK annual temperature means were mostly around 8-8.3˚C recent years they are more like 9.3-9.5˚C.

Detailed information on climate for Wales or other parts of the UK are also available.

Detailed Historical Climate Button

An Extract of three years of monthly data from the start, middle and end of the data on monthly temperature means.

Year	JAN	FEB	MAR	APR	MAY	JUN	JUL	AUG	SEP	OCT	NOV	DEC
1910	3.9	5.0	5.8	6.5	10.6	13.6	13.6	13.9	12.2	10.1	4.2	6.2
1956	3.8	-0.4	5.8	6.4	10.5	12.1	14.5	12.6	13.4	9.0	6.0	5.6
2014	5.4	5.5	6.8	9.2	11.3	14.1	16.2	14.0	14.1	11.5	7.8	5.2

You could show this information as a line graph just like the one below.