Let’s talk about the weather

Europe is experiencing ever more extreme weather, with storms, floods and drought hitting several countries in 2020. This is part of a change from steady, predictable weather patterns to one more dominated by extremes. 

Listen to a discussion on the impact on energy markets, and the outlook for the coming months. Will the “beast from the East” return this winter? 

Host: 

• Richard Sverrisson, Editor-in-Chief Europe, Montel, 

Guest: 

• Mark Stephens-Row, Meteorologist, The Weather Company, an IBM Business. 

Transcript

Anna Siwecka, freelance journalist/podcaster: 0:01

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Richard Sverrisson, Editor-in-Chief Europe, Montel: 0:29

Hello listeners and welcome to the Montel Weekly podcast. Bring Your Energy Matters in an informal setting. In today's pod, we talk about the weather. This year has been the warmest and September the warmest month on record and images of floods, fires, and devastation wrought by natural forces. Bring home the reality of manmade climate change. We will discuss changes in the weather, both long and short term, and especially the outlook for the coming winter. Will we see a return of the Beast from the East, for example? I'm Richard Sverrisson and helping me discuss these issues is Mark Stevens Row meteorologist at IBM Weather. A warm welcome to you, mark.

Mark Stephens-Row, Meteorologist, The Weather Company, an IBM Business: 1:07

Thank you very much indeed, Richard. It's a pleasure to talk to you again.

Richard Sverrisson, Editor-in-Chief Europe, Montel: 1:10

You are based in the part of the UK where a lot of my family live and actually. I think my grandmother who turns 99 on Monday, she taught you at primary school, isn't that right?

Mark Stephens-Row, Meteorologist, The Weather Company, an IBM Business: 1:21

I believe so. That's right indeed, Richard. Yes. Yeah. And I will hasten to add the view behind me is it's not a view from the Rolling Plains of Suffolk, but actually from my holiday earlier this year in New Zealand where I was very fortunate to visit. Perfect.

Richard Sverrisson, Editor-in-Chief Europe, Montel: 1:33

Our listeners may not be able to see this view mark, but it's nice for us as we are recording this, so that great background to have. But I, I think if we get to it, as I mentioned in the intro here, 2020 was the warmest year and September the hottest month on record. So what's the outlook for the winter, the coming months as you see it, Mark?

Mark Stephens-Row, Meteorologist, The Weather Company, an IBM Business: 1:50

It's more of the same, I'm afraid. It gets a bit boring for us meteorologists, I think over the last few years, I will hasten to add that our sort of official winter forecast will be released probably within the next sort of two or three weeks. So this is a very early look ahead. Quite a lot of the indicators that we like to. Have, if you like, at our disposal for us to give a firmer view on the winter are still generating right now things like snow cover starting to build across Siberia, for example. But certainly if we look at all the weather models, I'm afraid it's it's a very familiar story. There's an awful lot of pink on the temperature maps and a fair amount of blue on the precipitation maps as well.

Richard Sverrisson, Editor-in-Chief Europe, Montel: 2:29

Is there a sort of sense of regional variation here? North, south, east, west for Europe. I'm thinking here

Mark Stephens-Row, Meteorologist, The Weather Company, an IBM Business: 2:34

in Indeed. Yeah. I had a more detailed look at the Nordic region in particular as well before our conversation. And interestingly enough, actually certainly in the sort of more medium term, shall we say, through much of the rest of October, perhaps even into early November. There does actually appear to be a bit of a drying up, particularly on the western side of Norway. So we will actually see the precipitation levels that look like there come back to nearer, or even perhaps even slightly below normal, whereas it appears that it's perhaps more the southeastern part of the Nordic region and then stand into parts of Germany, for example. Where we're likely to see rather wetter than normal conditions. That's also unfortunately true, I suspect of much of the UK and probably much of France and around the sort of northern part of the Alps as well. Temperature wise, we will actually see temperature is actually a little bit below normal, particularly in that western and northwestern part of Europe, the furthest sort of east you go. And certainly in the earlier part of October we've already seen very warm temperatures. That looks set to continue through much of the rest of the month as well. So rather cooler in Western Europe generally, rather warmer in eastern Europe. Almost holding onto summer like conditions in some parts of Europe there as we had a bit further into the winter. Then the signal changes I think a little bit, and I would suspect we might see a bit more of a north south rather than east west divide there developing.

Richard Sverrisson, Editor-in-Chief Europe, Montel: 3:54

In some sense, maybe, more of the same for the hydropower producers in the Nordic region, but maybe slight relief on the one for those on the western side of the country.

Mark Stephens-Row, Meteorologist, The Weather Company, an IBM Business: 4:02

Yeah, that's right. And certainly at the moment what we've seen is really September having a pretty substantial and strong positive NAO north Atlantic oscillation. I'm sure a lot of your listeners are probably familiar with that term. It really describes the strength and positioning of the jet stream. So if we have a positive NAO, it tends to be maybe typically where it should be, but probably rather stronger than normal. And that always pretty much exclusively means wet and mild weather across the northern half of Europe and typically windy weather as well. Pretty much on the cost cusp. Right now, we are actually seeing a switch into a more negative NEO regime starting to take over. So what that probably does mean is the jet stream is actually gonna shift away. A little bit from its, shall we say Climatologically normal position probably had a little bit further south and that means that the rain bearing systems are gonna be that little bit further south, which is why it looks like we're gonna see a bit of a drying up on the west coast of Norway, for example. But we may well find much of, central Europe in particular does see some rather wetter weather. That's not, of course, especially good news for France where yeah. US meteorologists I think have been clawing back through the the record books. I saw some, I think it was a place in Italy, recorded 650 millimeters of rain in something around 24 hours. Wow. Putting that into perspective, that's con that's quite a lot more than we'd normally get in a year. In the eastern part of of the United Kingdom, for example. So yes it's very disastrous flooding there and certainly looks like they're gonna get some more of that for the skiers out there though if you're actually allowed to go skiing. That is of course this coming winter. Probably quite good news because there's, I think, a fair bit of early snowfall falling on the Alps as, because the temperature's a little bit depressed and we are getting that precipitation there as well. So it's certainly gonna start to put down a fairly. Early snow cover, at least onto the higher parts of the alpine regions, which obviously for hydro reserves, there would, will be pretty good news.

Richard Sverrisson, Editor-in-Chief Europe, Montel: 5:55

I think on the slopes it's fairly socially distanced, but maybe not in the lifts and the bars of of certain parts of Italy or Austria or, but as you mentioned France, I wanted to talk to you about the storm, Alex, there's some traumatic images here, and a reminder of the power of nature, the impact of the weather system. Six and a half meters. Of rain in 24 hours is quite extraordinary. And I think, has there ever been anything like this on record in this part of the world?

Mark Stephens-Row, Meteorologist, The Weather Company, an IBM Business: 6:20

Yeah. And it's actually 65 centimeters, not sorry, 65 centimeters. I think the actually in world record terms, it's actually, there, there are. There were places that have had far more than that in the tropical regions in the past. But yeah, it's clearly an exceptional storm. I've heard once a century, some people have said even more than that in terms of what's called the return period of a storm like this. We need to be a little bit careful though, because these type of events at this time of year are actually pretty common. These sorts of storms developing, coming in off the Atlantic and taking that track down into that part of Europe. It, it's something that we would expect every year. What I think has been unusual about this one of course is its intensity and that's probably a combination of factors we are seeing that the sea surface temperatures around much of Western and Northwestern Europe, and of course the. Down in the Mediterranean are, really rather higher than they would normally be at the end of September, early October, when to be honest, they are typically pretty high. They actually usually peak sometimes at sometime around about the early part of September or so following the heat of the summer. So what we're seeing, if you like, is a bit of a, a delayed peak and that peak staying pretty high for that much later in the season. What that means is when you start to get some of these cold outbreaks coming out of the Arctic, the very first sort of cold incursions of air, if you like, it makes the atmosphere incredibly unstable because that cold air is passing over water, which has still really got a lot of energy in it. And what that tends to do, of course, is to really pep up the weather. So those low pressure systems that would, would've been there in any typical autumn end up being, a few millibars deeper. Than they might otherwise have been and actually just containing that much more moisture. And when it takes that track, one of the problems is that you actually funnel that really warm, moist air right up over those southern part of the alpine regions that lifts the air up. And that's always a recipe for. Huge amounts of rainfall to come cascading outta the sky. So to coin a phrase, it's pretty much a perfect storm, if you like. And it's just that we seem to be seeing more of those type of events happening because of this warming background where the oceans in particular are hanging on to the warmth that much later into the season. So it's almost inevitable, if you like, that you see this kind of activity start to happen.

Richard Sverrisson, Editor-in-Chief Europe, Montel: 8:40

That's gonna be my next question away, mark. Is this something we can expect more of at this time of year over the coming years?

Mark Stephens-Row, Meteorologist, The Weather Company, an IBM Business: 8:46

It will always depend on the patterns at the time. We don't have to go back to too many Autumns. I was only thinking this actually a couple of days ago when I was in my camper van, which was being rocked by howling winds coming outta the north down the east coast of the uk The temperature was about 11, 10, 11 degrees Celsius, streaming rainfall. The same time of year, I think probably going back four or five years or so ago now, we actually had the temperatures in the high twenties. In fact it very got very close to 30 degrees on the 1st of October. So it's not necessarily the case that we'll always expect to see these kind of storms and the general background, if you like of weather patterns at the time of year will determine if you like the likelihood of you getting one of these sorts of events happening. But. At the end of the day, the world keeps spinning. It's tilted up at its angle of 22, 23 degrees. So we have the seasonal impact. We transition from summer into autumn every year and autumn into winter. And although the winters generally in particularly in the last sort of seven or eight years or so in Northwest Europe, have been, really pretty benign. If not exceptionally mild, especially last winter. And of course at times very wet. It's almost inevitable that some cold ones will get thrown in there. And you mentioned the beast at the east in the introduction. Of course, that particular event happened right towards the end of the winter, but it actually happened. In what until that point, had been an incredibly mild winter. It made it a bit of a, a double shock, if you like, coming right at the end of the winter and in the middle of what had been a very mild winter. So those type of events are still going to happen. They'll probably just happen less often, that's probably the reality of it. So us, us snow lovers, I'm afraid we'll probably see rather less of those sorts of events. But to a degree, when they do happen, they'll probably cause, even more consternation and disruption because they're seem to be so relatively unusual.

Richard Sverrisson, Editor-in-Chief Europe, Montel: 10:40

Many sort of recent summers, I've also seen heat waves, droughts, low river levels, very high temperatures for rivers that are used for cooling. Power plants. Is this something also that we can expect more of? It seems to be happening more regularly over the previous sort of five, 10 years than it did to the previous 10 years.

Mark Stephens-Row, Meteorologist, The Weather Company, an IBM Business: 11:00

Absolutely, and again, the statistics speak for themselves. At the UK Met Office are one of the world leaders in this sort of, kind of climate change research. Certainly a lot of the analysis that they've been producing over this past summer is suggesting that the types of summer that we've seen, over recent years are absolutely likely to occur. Much more frequently, something that's considered now to be a freak will be average, normal probably within. 50 years or less. And at the moment, of course we're, we are actually only seeing, typically global temperatures are somewhere, around about 1.2, 1.3 degrees Celsius above, the kind of pre-industrial normal that often gets referred to. There are many scenarios that suggest at the moment, unless things really do change quite dramatically we could be heading for two or three degrees Celsius above that by the end of this century. Yeah, it's almost inevitable that we will see these sorts of extreme events. Again, here in the UK we've we just seem to keep on breaking that extreme temperature record, virtually every year. This. This past summer has not been anywhere near as good as the previous one in terms of average temperatures on a monthly basis. Indeed, July actually was slightly below normal, relative to a 30 year normal here in the uk, and yet we still managed in July to actually get what was the third highest temperature ever recorded, thrown in at the end of the month in August. Again, I think we, we had virtually near record breaking temperatures. These sorts of events are absolutely, likely to become that much more frequent. We will see the rivers obviously responding to that in attaining very high levels and keeping them, at high levels throughout the summertime periods. But I think to me as a meteorologist, what I find. Is the most remarkable are the changes. It's one extreme to another, and particularly in much of northwestern Europe. It seems like a distant memory looking out my window at the driving rain again now. But we've had at times, incredibly long periods of dry weather. This spring was one of the driest and sunniest in much of Northwestern Europe ever recorded. And then it's almost like the atmosphere throws a switch and we then head into a period of unremitting rain. And then we've had to switch back again. And certainly here in, in the southeastern part of the uk, we had a phenomenally dry weather throughout much of the latter part of August and through into September, and then it's not stopped raining for two weeks. So it's we don't seem to get these kind of very benign conditions anymore, normal doesn't happen. It's either very wet or very dry.

Richard Sverrisson, Editor-in-Chief Europe, Montel: 13:26

It's also incredibly worrying then if that's the outlook towards the end of the century. And I think that's what's certainly being discussed in Brussels and in governments probably across the world at the moment. But back to the weather mark, I see you talk on social media about. A quiet sun, what is that and does that increase the likelihood, what we mentioned earlier, the beast from the east?

Mark Stephens-Row, Meteorologist, The Weather Company, an IBM Business: 13:45

Effectively at the moment, we are just starting to come out of a solar minimum. I'm sure many of your listeners may be aware. There's like an 11 year cycle in solar activity that's usually measured by looking at the number of sunspots, the number of these little black patches that you can see on the sun, and typically. Over an 11 year cycle, you go from a peak to a trough and back to a peak again. This current sort of solar cycle that we are in the previous peak was actually a very low and relatively short-lived one compared to previous peaks. The current trough. Is actually again, a very prolonged and a very flat trough, as it were. But we are just now starting to come out from that. A lot of work over many years has shown a link, particularly in the northern hemisphere between what I refer to as a quiet sun, IE, a lack of this solar, this sun spot activity and frequency of relatively cold winters now. Certainly the last couple of winters that we've had when we've been near the bottom of that cycle, that's not matched that at all. I know our own seasonal team, I think put quite a lot of weight in the last winter forecast, on the quiet sun, on, on the fact that we were at the bottom of this peak. But it's interesting actually, that. Quite a lot of the work shows that the clusters of cold winters actually tend to occur just after that sort of quiet sun period and some of the really severe weather we had 2009 and particularly 2010 in much of Northwest Europe. Clearly that sort of, corresponded with just coming out of the of the previous one. Now of course, we are at the end of the day in a bit of a different scenario now with this background, if you like of climate warming. And it may well mean that linkages that we felt worked in the past may not work so, so well anymore. For sure. There are still quite a number of scientists out there who do think that the fact that the sun is relatively quiet and we're only just gonna start to slowly come outta, that will play a part. For many years, actually it was a bit confusing. We could see the statistical linkage. It was significant, but we weren't really sure why, because there's not actually that much of a change in the actual radiative output of the sun between the top and the bottom of the cycle. In fact, the metal is found about 10 years or so ago now that there actually is quite a change in a particular spectrum of radiation, reaching the top of the atmosphere from the top to the bottom of the cycle, and it appears to be that which influences warming in the stratosphere. Way above the surface of the planet and that what seems to be the linkage it, it has a tendency to generate more of these negative NAO events and therefore in winter corresponding more of these relatively cold outbreaks of air, like the beast from the east, the beast from the east. Incidentally, I think most people would, in, in the world of weather would agree was nothing to do with quiet sun and everything to do at that time with what was a dramatic stratospheric warming event. We often get these towards the end of winters, and the one that occurred that year was pretty phenomenal and actually led to this huge outbreak of cold air from Siberia at that time.

Richard Sverrisson, Editor-in-Chief Europe, Montel: 16:49

It's fair to say that there's been a massive growth in offshore wind across north, especially north Europe. This is set to continue. I'm thinking of the UK plans Dutch plans, French, et cetera, and given then the European Union's ambitious strategy for hydrogen. Could me, bbc, that boosted even more. And at the same time, we're also seeing an increasing number of cables. Being built across this region. I'm just wondering what is the general offshore wind pattern here and what will that say for the flow of power on these interconnectors? Does wind generally, go from west to east or the other way around?

Mark Stephens-Row, Meteorologist, The Weather Company, an IBM Business: 17:27

Yeah, I mean it's something certainly as a meteorologist I get a little concerned about, our own beloved prime minister obviously this week has been making enormous, andex expensive promises around wind generation for the uk and of course we have seen really quite significant shifts in wind patterns over the last decade or so, as. The rest of the weather, if you like has responded to the background change and the background warming. So it is more than possible that changes in the jet stream changes therefore in the path of the intensity of. Low pressure systems that affect Northwest Europe will change the distribution of where we get, wind. And I think one of the problems that we've had, again, in much of Northwest Europe in recent years is that, is this sort of switch in patterns where instead of a nice steady background generation of wind, you get long periods of no wind and then suddenly long periods of an enormous amount of wind and sometimes too much wind. Of course, if these big storms, like an Alex or whatever, the name of the storm might be. Come across your offshore wind farm. You may well find you're actually having to take that farm off the grid because the winds are up over 25 meters a second, and likely to cause issues to the farm itself. Certainly in terms of these patterns, we are, I think, seeing. More, if you like, more extreme windier spells in the sort of, more southern parts of, the North Sea, so around southern North sea waters of Belgium off the Netherlands, off the uk and perhaps, maybe even slightly fewer of them the further north that you are, relative to some background. Long term normal. But I think that's, there's gonna be a huge amount, more work needed to understand how. Changes in the jet stream and changes in these cyclonic systems, feed into wind energy generation. I actually attended a very interesting event organized by the Raw Meteorological Society recently, and the research there was looking into these, what are called extra tropical storms and their frequency and their tracks and so forth, and how that is changing. So I'm sure some of that work will be being used to understand. Where is it now sensible to put these wind farms because it may have been obvious to build them in Scotland in the past. Maybe not so much anymore. Maybe there are other parts, of the United Kingdom or different parts of Germany or France where you may find there's actually going to be a better wind resource than there has been here. The two.

Richard Sverrisson, Editor-in-Chief Europe, Montel: 19:50

And does the density of these wind parks, does that have something to say as well? Does that slow down or lessen the wind resource? They can't all, they can't all generate from the same gust of wind as it were.

Mark Stephens-Row, Meteorologist, The Weather Company, an IBM Business: 20:00

Yeah I've been asked this question before and it's an interesting one. I think, if you were to actually look at the amount of, shall we say, energy taken out of the weather by a wind farm compared to the general overall energy of a weather system. It's tiny fractions.

Richard Sverrisson, Editor-in-Chief Europe, Montel: 20:16

Okay,

Mark Stephens-Row, Meteorologist, The Weather Company, an IBM Business: 20:16

but that of course said, the reality is there must be some sort of impact. You look at something like the London array where you literally have hundreds of these farms in a relatively, compressed area. Then for sure, in theory, there could be an argument to say actually that is taking energy away at a height. I'm not sure how high they are. Somewhere between sort of 80, a hundred meters or something like that. You are actually removing. Some energy outta the weather system and therefore does that, have a potential change on the climate? I think some work has been done on this, particularly onshore farms in parts of the Western us. I have seen a little bit of work done on that and they tend to rely on a different kind of weather pattern for their wind generation. So I would suspect in terms of the way in which the weather patterns that tend to generate the wind energy that we see in Northwest Europe. It's probably not gonna make any difference. Whereas I could see there could be some parts of the world where they're relying on a particular type of weather pattern to develop, particularly what they, what are called these low level jets that actually form up sometimes actually overnight, they actually generate the wind. Wind power. And I think if they've taken some of that energy out with a farm in one location, it is quite possible that they could actually reduce the resource somewhere else, not too far away. So you do need to be careful how closely you start to put some of these farms.

Richard Sverrisson, Editor-in-Chief Europe, Montel: 21:39

Mark. Lastly, this weekend heading off north of Oslo anyway, up near Lillehammer for a weekend in a cabin with some friends. Should I take my skis or my wellies?

Mark Stephens-Row, Meteorologist, The Weather Company, an IBM Business: 21:49

Gosh, how high you going, Richard? I think would be about 900 meters.

Richard Sverrisson, Editor-in-Chief Europe, Montel: 21:53

Yeah,

Mark Stephens-Row, Meteorologist, The Weather Company, an IBM Business: 21:53

Yeah, no I think actually you, your OB skis might be worthwhile in that case then. Certainly at the moment, the temperatures are looking to be a little bit below normal in the sort of central western part of Norway. So I think if, you're gonna be quite close, I suspect, to the freezing level at 900 meters. But I would hope if you've got a little bit higher than that, you should certainly find some snow up there by now. It's coming early.

Richard Sverrisson, Editor-in-Chief Europe, Montel: 22:14

Excellent, mark. Thanks very. Much for a fascinating insight into, so certainly the underlying patterns of what's driving the weather currently in the short term and the long term. So thank you very much, mark.

Mark Stephens-Row, Meteorologist, The Weather Company, an IBM Business: 22:24

No problem. Good to talk to you again, Richard. Take care.

Richard Sverrisson, Editor-in-Chief Europe, Montel: 22:26

That's all from the Monte Weekly podcast this week, listeners, you can follow the podcast on our own Twitter account called the Monte Weekly podcast. Please direct any messages, suggestions, questions, or let us know if you'd like to be a guest. You can also send us an email to podcast at Monte News. Please subscribe at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast from. And it'd be great if you could leave us a review. Thank you very much and goodbye.