State of the UK Climate in 2024

This report provides a summary of the state of the UK's climate in 2024. It is one of a series of annual reports published in the International Journal of Climatology (IJC) since 2017. It provides the latest assessment of UK climate trends, variations, and extremes based on the most up to date observations and shows what has already happened to our climate. “Metric Units. – The Meteorological Office, under the direction of Sir Napier Shaw, has introduced a new system of units for the official records of British Meteorology based on absolute measures and the metric system. … I should not have felt justified this year undertaking the expense of converting over 5000 values from inches to millimetres (an operation which had to be done twice over to ensure accuracy), and of altering the format of the volume by widening the page to admit the additional column; but on explaining the position to Sir Napier Shaw I had the satisfaction of finding that the Meteorological Office was prepared to assist by bearing the cost of the change, which amounted to £30.” This report provides a summary of the state of the UK's climate in 2024. It is one of a series of annual reports published in the International Journal of Climatology (IJC) since 2017. It provides the latest assessment of UK climate trends, variations and extremes based on the most up to date observations, and shows what has already happened to our climate. The majority of observations presented are from the UK's network of weather stations, managed by both the Met Office and a number of key partners and co-operating volunteers. These observations represent ‘ground truth’. They conform to current best-practice observational standards as defined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). They also pass through a range of quality assurance procedures at the Met Office before application for climate monitoring. The report also includes time series of near-coast sea-surface temperature and sea-level, and a short section on phenology. This report and the UK's climate monitoring capability would not be possible without these observations, emphasizing the vital importance of maintaining observation networks, particularly the UK's land weather station network, into the future as our climate changes. Observations cannot be made retrospectively. The UK's extensive observational records back to the 19th Century provide evidence that scientists from previous generations clearly recognised the importance of maintaining this capability. National, regional and county statistics are from the HadUK-Grid dataset which is the principal data source (Hollis et al. 2019). Monthly temperature and rainfall series from the HadUK-Grid dataset extend back to 1884 and 1836 respectively. Daily temperature has been extended back to 1931 (formerly 1960) in the latest version. The appendices provide details of the datasets used and how the series presented are derived. This report presents summary statistics for the most recent year (2024) and decade (2015–2024). In comparison with previous reports, we have placed less emphasis on the most recent year and more on the most recent decade, representing a 10-year ‘snapshot’ of the UK's current climate from a climate change perspective. This period's relatively short length means that statistics for the latest decade may reflect shorter-term decadal variations as well as longer our climate is that the climate of may be to that of and this 10-year ‘snapshot’ is a these the in the UK's is to the observational series presented in this report as one of of possible represent the UK's climate the year is this means that year is less for climate change the most recent year and decade the climate and the World Meteorological Organization is used for climate change and climate also in statistics for temperature of and and and to the UK's climate of the The series provides a comparison is also made to for the series from the the to the be used with for by the for temperature and rainfall recent observations this longer be as for the UK's current and may be that the of is in a climate. the of the UK's climate is how this in annual temperature not provide a of the state of the UK's climate. 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