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West Moors (East Dorset): 1971-2000 climatology.


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West Moors (East Dorset) estimated long-term climatology (eLTA) 1971-2000**

(the data below are based initially on Hurn airport figures [ for rainfall], or based on Hurn [for temperature], continuously updated as we acquire data. When I get 5, then 10 years data, I'll put up averages based on my own data for those periods.
West Moors lies roughly 6 km or 3.5mi NNW of Bournemouth [Hurn] airport, and is about 12 km or 7 miles inland from the nearest coast at Bournemouth - which is nearly due south of us here: elsewhere on this site there are some maps etc., to make all this clearer. ** See at bottom of panel for idea of how the 1981-2010 averages might differ from these here.)

(precipitation in mm, temperatures in degC)
Remember, that for the temperature data, the data are gathered from a severely enclosed suburban garden. They are a true reflection of similarly exposed locations, so in a sense they are 'real' data; however, they cannot be compared with 'official', open-site data. However, we are now approaching 5 years-worth of data, so I hope to give an idea of how our figures might relate to an 'official' site in the near future.

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   AvgPPN  MeanTx(24hr)  MeanTn(24hr)  MeanDay
 JAN  86   8.1  2.2  5.1
 FEB  69   8.6  2.3  5.5
 MAR  71  11.9  3.6  7.7
 APR  52  14.9  4.6  9.7
 MAY  57  18.2  7.7  13.0
 JUN  59  21.0  10.6  15.8
 JUL  38  23.3  12.4  17.9
 AUG  53  23.2  12.1  17.7
 SEP  66  20.1  10.2  15.1
 OCT  86  15.8  7.6  11.7
 NOV  89  11.2  4.0  7.6
 DEC  106  8.7  3.4  6.1
         
 ANN  833  15.42  6.73  11.05
         
Spring  180  15.0  5.3  10.1
Summer  151  22.5  11.7  17.1
Autumn  241  15.7  7.3  11.5
Winter  261  8.5  2.6  5.5


** I have compared the averages for Hurn (a little away from us) over the 'standard' 30-year periods 1971-2000 [7100] & 1981-2010 [8110]: the following are the key points ...
RAINFALL:
+ Winter (November to February): [ 8110 ] slightly drier than [7100], but only some -2 to -4%.
+ April & May: [ 8100 ] was a little wetter (~+4%) than [ 7100 ].
+ Early/mid summer showed quite a 'swing' in fortunes; June [ 8100 ] was some -8% drier than [ 7100 ], but more than made up by July being some +29% wetter! July showed the largest change across the entire year.
+ October/November: showed up the marked increase in precipitation noted elsewhere; the change from [ 7100 ] to [ 8110 ] was some +15%.
+ All other months showed only small, non-significant changes.
+ For the year as a whole, the area showed a 'wet' bias, with a +3% change [ 7100 ] to [ 8110 ].

TEMPERATURE:
+ In general, mean temperatures between the two thirty-year periods (1971-2000 & 1981-2010) show an increase, of the order +0.2 to +0.5C, with April showing the largest increase; however, a notable exception was December - for this month, the mean from the early data-set has decreased by 0.5C!
The small increase between the 30-year periods is to be expected, though what the exact mechanism was remains speculative. It isn't sufficient to quote 'global warming' (especially in view of the December decrease), and urbanisation & the increase in commercial traffic around the observing site may have played an important part. Another factor is the undoubted warming of the nearly-adjacent English Channel, though again the decrease in December values is problematical here.


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