Deep Dive 21/07/2026 – Marine heatwaves are making changes – Met Office weekly weather forecast UK

[00:00:00]The heat wave is fading over land, but it continues in the oceans. Yes, we are diving deep this week into the sea.

[00:00:10]We're going to be talking about marine heat waves, why they're important, and what the impacts can be. Also, did you wake up to an orangey sky this morning?

[00:00:20]Well, there's a reason for that, and we'll be looking at just how sunny July has been. Welcome along to this week's Met Office deep dive. We do this every Tuesday, half an hour or so of delving into a particular subject of meteorology. If you're a Metad or know someone who is, then share the love. Let everyone know that we do this Met Office deep dive, as I say, every Tuesday. Ask us anything you like. Put any comments you like in the chats. We do try and read as many as possible. And well, if you haven't done already, you want to subscribe to our channel. Right, who's uh coming for a dip? Uh I don't like to swim alone. So earlier on I spoke to an expert. I'm joined now by Dr. Sealen Bertu. Uh Sealan, thank you for being here. Thank you for joining us on the deep dive. Do you want to explain what your role is here at the Met Office first of all?

[00:01:12]>> Yes. So I'm an airc interaction specialist. My team develops um couple system between the atmosphere, the ocean, the waves, and also the land and the rivers. Um so we bring all the forecasting systems together in one research system. So, it's all about how the sea and the air interact with each other. I mean, historically, we've not really done a lot of that linking have kind of been kept apart almost, haven't they? The seas and the atmosphere. But obviously, there's there's a very strong link between the two.

[00:01:37]>> Yes, indeed. And our marine forecast now sends it sea surface temperature into our weather forecast, for example, which is a big improvement from a fixed sea surface temperature throughout the forecast.

[00:01:47]>> So, big developments, big changes, and we've seen how important that is. and we've seen particularly over recent years how much warmer our seas have become. So that's what we're really talking about today just the the seas around the UK and the sea surface temperatures that we've been seeing. Um let's start with what's going on currently. This is the uh this is the map around the UK showing the sea surface temperature anomaly and how how warmer than the average it is.

[00:02:16]>> Yes.

[00:02:16]>> And it's been like that for quite some time. What what is the definition? Let's start with, I guess, the definition of what a marine heat wave is, cuz we know what the the land heat wave is. We've seen, you know, three big heat waves uh this year across land through the UK where you have to have three days over a specific temperature. Marine heat waves measured slightly differently.

[00:02:40]>> Yeah. So, it's five days. Five days for the definition is above the 90th percentile of a 30-year distribution. So um we've got to be if we above that threshold which should happen about 10% of the time we're in marine heatwave condition and if you take that anomaly and double it triple it quadruple it then you're in strong severe or extreme >> extreme. So they're the >> conditions >> the four different categories of marine heat wave and this would be this was an example of what a heat wave would look like. It would you classically wouldn't be in a marine heat wave until you got beyond that 90th percentile and then it would go through various different stages perhaps and then once it's come back down here assuming that time period is longer than 5 days and you you'd class that as a marine heat wave but extreme ones are pretty rare. I mean that's that's that's pretty extreme by the by the definition. Um, so that is what a marine heat wave is, but it's not based on specific temperatures and that's what because the temperature varies quite a bit in and around the UK.

[00:03:41]Obviously, it would be hard to to put a number on that. So, it's it's based on that 30-year average. Anything in the top 10% would be classed as a heat wave, but getting more extreme depending on how how much above the average we are looking at.

[00:03:54]>> Yes.

[00:03:55]>> Okay. So, that is what a marine heat wave is. And how how long has the UK been experiencing marine heat waves? So um last year we had about three quarters of the year in marine heatwave conditions. So when you remember it should be 10% >> should be 10% 75%.

[00:04:11]>> Yeah even slightly more than 75%. So 25 2025 was exceptional. We've had exceptional marine heat waves in 2022 three bit less in four 2025 has been exceptional and then 2026 is uh again yeah >> let's look at where we're at now. Uh this is the current situation around the UK. Um and what are the implic why do we care? What does it matter? It just makes it warmer if you're going in the sea, right? So what what are the implications?

[00:04:43]>> So yes indeed it does. Um so your you've got warmer seas. Um that has implication for the weather and we'll talk later about it but also has implication for ecosystems.

[00:04:55]Um we've had uh as you're showing here um we've had actually very few cold spells. The last cold spell we had was 2018.

[00:05:04]>> The last time the sea was below average temperature around >> the 10th person time of um of the distribution um was in 2018 associated with the beast from the east. Right.

[00:05:16]>> Wow. Okay.

[00:05:18]>> And that means that actually all the winters since then have been above average. Um and that means that we haven't reached colder uh sea surface temperatures and that means the the species like the octopus which their northern limits is more usually southern Britany. They've been able to migrate north and it's the first year um now in 2026 that we've seen them reproduce in UK waters and they are in large numbers now in the south of the UK, southwest of the UK. So there are implications particularly to ecosystems around when we when we have these marine heat waves and when the sea surface temperatures are significantly above above the average. Um there's also implications to the weather again as we we'll go into more details but this was quite an interesting from the the heat wave in June the peak of the heat wave in June.

[00:06:07]What are we looking at here?

[00:06:09]>> So here we're looking um at the sea breezes and how they affect the warmer.

[00:06:14]So the over the sea it's all red because we've um run the forecast twice. One with the marine heat wave with the actual conditions and once we've removed the marine heat wave and we're comparing the two simulations. So simulations are substantially warmer in the air temperature over the sea. The anomalies are above uh 1.5° and then um they're carried into the land by the sea breezes. Um and you can see that seab breeze front really nicely here.

[00:06:42]>> That is really nice though, isn't it?

[00:06:43]really striking there. That's where the the land warms up, but the sea warms doesn't warm up as fast and you get that circulation. So, it's it's drawing in and you get that where they clash which often then can generate clouds and sometimes showers. But this is >> so this is in the afternoon and this is when this is the cooler phases of the land heat wave. So, uh, we had very bad land heat wave in the southwest of the UK where actually the seabbze are struggling to to develop here because the high pressure is sitting on there, right?

[00:07:13]>> Um, but where the seabbze develop then the air is the UK is cooling down by the seab breeze, but it's cooling less than it should because the w the sea is is warm.

[00:07:23]>> You don't get the same cooling effect. I mean, you still get a breeze off the sea, but you don't get the same cooling effect because the sea is that much warmer than than average. Uh really interesting stuff uh just to see that.

[00:07:35]And this is where we're at this year as a whole. So we're going datal on the bottom. This is this year's sea surface temperatures around the whole of the UK.

[00:07:46]>> And this this is the 30-year average, the the the dark gray section there. So we see that variation of it.

[00:07:55]interesting that the sea surface temperatures bottom out kind of the middle of March and peak late August into September. So there's that lag with the sea. So you always get that that kind of >> variation through the years. And what each of these squiggly lines are every year for the past since 82 is it? Yeah.

[00:08:13]And then this is the current year and anything red shaded in there is above that 10th percentile. Above the 90th percentile. So we can see quite clearly here those three peaks >> that we've seen. So heat wave one end of May across the land but also in the sea and then that another one in June and then the current one or one that's kind of ending now certainly over land but um still with that still with that heat. So we can we can quite clearly see those three peaks but also even through the through the um springtime temperatures were significantly above average and still with that still with that heat wave. So really quite remarkable to see that that ongoing situation that that that we that we have at the moment. Um let's look a little bit about um the seas around the UK because they're quite interesting. This was quite interesting. I did this experiment on um on Aiden and Alex Burkill yesterday. I asked them how many Eiffel Towers you could fit uh into the depth of the North Sea at at its deepest. And they I think one of them guessed about 26 and the other one guessed about 20. But it's actually remarkably shallow the North Sea, isn't it? Which is which is really significant for things that we're seeing.

[00:09:24]>> Yes, indeed. Yeah.

[00:09:25]>> So, what have we got here?

[00:09:27]>> Yeah. So, this is the bethimemetry um around the UK.

[00:09:30]>> What does Yeah. What does bethimemetry mean?

[00:09:32]>> It's the depth of the ocean.

[00:09:33]>> The depth of the ocean. Where does that come from? Is that some kind of >> uh Latin term? I've never seen that.

[00:09:38]Bethimemetry. That's a good one for a quiz. The bethimemetry of the UK. So um yeah that's that's showing and everything in gray color here is shallower than 250 m and the Eiffel Tower is 300 m high. So if you dip the Eiffel Tower anywhere here will stick out.

[00:09:56]>> You would still see the top of the Eiffel Tower pretty much anywhere within the North Sea. It does get a bit deeper as you get to right towards Norway doesn't trench.

[00:10:04]>> Yeah. Yeah. most places in and around the the UK, the seas are not as deep as the Eiffel Tower is tall and really quite shallow. So that point there is represented here.

[00:10:15]>> Yeah, that's the English Channel. So that's the Do Strait here where the Euro Tunnel goes through. Um and it's only about 30 m deep here. I mean the Dog Bank is even shallower than this. And then you've got the North Sea here that goes a bit further into >> so kind of a midpoint if you like in the North Sea is is around about a third well not even a third is it it's less than a third of of the full depth of the of the Eiffel Tower. That is >> that's really quite remarkable but it has an impact right it's really important what you know that being so shallow is really important for what we see weatherwise but also particularly with with marine heat and retention of the temperature.

[00:10:54]>> Yeah. Exactly. So in um yeah around the UK basically we also the the the bit that are shallower here are insulated by a current that goes around that shelf and what the life of water in the northeast Atlantic is relatively independent from what happens on the >> shelf we yeah let's show you that because that's that's kind of displayed here right so what are we looking at here >> yeah so here we we're looking at um surface currents over a 25hour period and this is the currents that are driven by the tides. So around the UK when the tides uh come up at a 12.4 uh frequency hour frequency um they drive um big blobs of of um high and low sea level which propagate around the UK and these move means that the water has to move around the UK coastline. it's quite constrained between all the the land masses and every six hours the the current direction changes um and that that that current is much stronger than what happens in the northeast Atlantic.

[00:11:59]>> Basically looking at the speed of the that the sea is moving at here. So there's really fast moving seas in and around this part.

[00:12:05]>> Exactly. But it moves one direction and it comes back. So it kind of um is and is moving and um that that means that all the seas around here they're shallow. they have strong currents that actually are fully mixed throughout their depth. So we can't develop a warm layer at the surface in these seas. So these seas just very close to the UK take longer to warm and longer to cool.

[00:12:27]So they they store that heat. Um and they also mean so that um the heat that is trapped in the northwest European shelf um struggles to escape from this shelf, >> right? because there's no depth there's no depth into which the the heat can uh um uh sink and therefore these areas especially the nor southern North Sea has been warming uh at twice the rate uh so at about 0.5 0.6 six degrees per decade whereas the whole average is 0.3 degree per decade. So >> um these regions do warm have warmed in the last 40 years faster than other regions because they the heat is trapped there.

[00:13:12]>> Can't you can't move you can't. So basically you when you heat to heat the sea you know the sun beats down obviously but that only heats the it's not and you get some circulation. So some of it will go down unlike the land where it can't go down obviously. So you have that circulation. So that's why it's very a a different mechanism, but the speed of which everything's moving is really important to how that heat gets transferred around. So you get these big variations because there's very little movement there in in the North Sea. And as we've seen, it's also very shallow whereas around here, it's very shallow, but you're getting that you're getting that movement. So it's different mechanisms creating different temperature profiles. Yes. At any one time, and it varies quite a lot. And you've got these little That's quite interesting. you pointing out those little eddies earlier in in the in in the ocean, but you don't get those in the North Sea >> uh because you haven't got the depth.

[00:14:00]>> Yes.

[00:14:01]>> So, there's all these very subtle shifts and all these very subtle things that we need to be aware. People just think, "Oh, I'm going get the sea." They may wonder whether the tide's in or out, but actually an awful lot going on and the way that it gets heated the way it's really fascinating the way the heat gets gets transferred and moved around.

[00:14:17]>> Yeah. And when it's high tide in Cold War, it's low tide.

[00:14:19]>> Yeah. That's another thing people don't realize that, do they? They just think, "Oh, it's high tide. It must be everywhere around the differences that you see. You see similar maps to this with the way the tides change in and out around the UK and it's all very different, all very complicated, >> all thanks to the moon, of course." Um, so yeah, really interesting the way that that everything shifts around and can change. Um, let's look now at historically what we've seen in the past and go back to 2023. We'll talk we'll talk about um Storm Babette in a minute because that's what your paper is all about. That's that's out today. We'll have more on that a second. But before we get to the the uh heat in the sea in the autumn time, 2023 was remarkable for this bowl. So this is the same graphic we saw earlier for this year, but this is for 2023. So we've got the whole year. Uh and this was particularly strong marine heat wave. So these are the surface sea surface temperatures around the UK. And we had a huge bulge there in June into July.

[00:15:17]That was one of the biggest heat waves we've seen, marine heat waves we've seen around the UK.

[00:15:21]>> Indeed. Yeah.

[00:15:22]>> And what we've seen from that actually um we can see the impacts from that generated we've talked about the sea breezes, but actually they can then generate um increase the the shower activity. And that's another study that's been that's been done how the marine heat wave enhanced heavy showers during the summer. So this is from June 2023 and it shows how the storms were enhanced. If we actually we zoom in on the radar first of all. So this is the radar from a specific day. What are we looking at here?

[00:15:57]>> So we're seeing um a band of rain here uh is centered on the middle of the southwest peninsula which corresponds to um that seabbze convergence. uh zebras coming from the north, the south converging, triggering a scent and then triggering convection and we see also some bands of rain here in Wales in the Midlands um and some convection going on in >> this was a day in the summer where the heat was causing showers but yeah you that classic where the winds are combining they're converging pushing the air can't go down so it goes up creates showers but what you've done some or there's been some research done was it you involved in this or was it this is your paper as Um and what are we so what are we looking at here? What have you compared?

[00:16:40]>> So we've run the weather forecast um as it is set up now with the sea temperature coming from the marine forecast which is quite accurate and this is showing you the probability of rainfall um across an ensemble because you know showers are a bit >> yeah chaotic. So chaotic good.

[00:17:00]>> We we we get um these bands here that well captured by the model where we had the bands in the reality and then we reran the same forecast but um removing the marine heatwave anomaly right >> and we run the forecast again and what you see is that the probability of rainfall really decreases dramatically uh without the marine heat wave. Um, so we can quite confidently say that this convection that we had that day was probably triggered and enhanced by the marine heat wave. Um, and that seabbze dynamics. Um, yeah.

[00:17:34]>> So proof there. This is this is what this is the forecast and that's pretty much what happened. You took out the marine heat wave and the signal was much less for for that convection. So from this it's you can deduce that that the convection was heavier uh more intense thunderstorms from as a result as a direct result of the marine heat wave.

[00:17:53]So it's another one of those impacts.

[00:17:54]We've talked about the ecosystem but along with the seab breeze not not cooling down the UK as much. Uh and this is another one of those impacts that you can directly see as a result of the sea being hotter than than it should be. um really interesting stuff about what happened in the early part of of of June that year. But then something more significant well maybe not more significant but something very significant happened later on and that's what your paper is about today. the papers published today all about uh this which is um storm babet >> October this is from the 17th I think the 17th of October >> um so this is the storm uh we named it a couple of days ahead of time there's uh Spain and Portugal and there's the Iberian Peninsula the UK's here and this is the storm as it approached the UK came up it's coming up it's bringing up a lot of warmth bringing up a lot of moisture because it's crossing the Bay of Bisque and coming up from the south.

[00:18:56]It brought warmth, it brought moisture, and it brought a lot of heavy rain and uh caused quite widespread problems across eastern Scotland in particular, but also other parts of the UK were were pretty badly affected. We were obviously making videos about it. Uh Aiden highlighting that risk area and this is what the warnings board looked like um Thursday to Saturday. There was a lot of warnings in place from this storm. wind was a bit of an impact, but it it was more the rainfall, wasn't it? And and >> well, the wind had an impact more because of the direction rather than the intensity of it. So, we had a lot of warnings out, including red uh rainfall warnings. We were expecting 150 perhaps 200 mm of rain over the hills of eastern Scotland. That's pretty much what we saw. Uh but that was all enhanced by the fact that the sea was warmer than average. So, what have we got here? These these are in your paper today aren't they? So what what we looking at here?

[00:19:52]>> Yes. So this paper is in collaboration with the University of Reading PhD student powi is is a lead author. Um and this is uh the map average over the four days uh three days sorry of storm Babette uh which shows in general low pressure as you've described here. Uh we also had a higher pressure over Scandinavia and that jet here is squeezed between that lower pressure which couldn't progress because of the high pressure and um yeah so we've got that jet that is lowle jet strongly flowing from Denmark into Scotland. Um and you did say and it's right that it did bring some warm warm and moist air but on the first day of the storm but on the second and third day that air came from Scandinavia was very cold very dry and it arrived on top of this uh very warm sea. So um the sea was about one degree warmer than usual which can seem not much but actually that heat is not just at the top here. We've seen it being throughout the depth of >> should we go back to the Yeah, let's go back to this one because this you talking about this this is really interesting. So this is again back to 20123 the sea surface temperatures that was the one we talked about earlier with the incredible heat in June but this this is the buildup to to Babette. So Babette happens here what what happened in September.

[00:21:13]>> Yeah. So Babette killed the marine heat wave more or less. That's and that's because it mixed it up mixed up.

[00:21:17]>> It mixed it and it and it took a lot of heat and evaporation out of it and the the most of the cooling just happened by evaporation and and heat transfer. Yeah.

[00:21:28]>> Um, and what happened here is that we just had again anomalously anticyclonic conditions, very sunny, very weak winds.

[00:21:37]And that anomaly built, it's quite strong, really strong, >> but it built at the surface. And then as you go into um September, October where you've got a little bit more mixing going on, a bit more winds, that anomaly is sinking throughout depth and it's it's not disappearing from the system.

[00:21:53]the heat is just being transferred across the whole column.

[00:21:57]>> Um, and it's a very important preconditioning for Babette because what the storm the storm didn't have to do any mixing.

[00:22:04]>> It just uh was all pre all mixed throughout the column and it just took the heat and and the evaporation out of that.

[00:22:12]>> So high pressure domination, a lot of sun beating down the sea surface temperature, sea surface temperature peaked.

[00:22:18]>> Yes.

[00:22:19]>> But then this isn't necessarily that's not the sea cooling down. It's just that it mixing through. So the whole of the North Sea which as we've seen isn't very deep got warm. So there was so much energy just all trapped in not just in the surface but so when Baba came tried to mix it up it was just there was still a lot of energy there. There was a lot of energy there because of that. Okay that's really really set the scene for what happened. There's that storm coming up. Uh this will then show the uh let's go through this again. And then we had that easterly wind that persisted for a number of days.

[00:22:56]Unusual wind direction in the first place drawing in all that warmth. So this is the sea surface temperatures being above average but as we've seen the depth of the North Sea was unusually high. right the way through all bringing that energy and the result uh was pretty remarkable in terms of uh the impacts that we saw.

[00:23:18]>> What are we looking at here? So here we what we've taken is we've taken our coupled system air atmosphere land with rivers uh ocean and waves all coupling coupled together and we've run the forecast um and the forecast is is in red here uh this is for the river south and flow which both of them burst their banks um and this is the surge part you know of the the sea level uh and this is the wave power so the um the coastal damages brought by storm bet were very quite incredible. Um the equivalent of five year of erosion happened on the east coast of Scotland. Um >> five years worth of erosion happened just in three days from the storm.

[00:24:01]>> Yes. And it's combination of very high river flows and a longlasting this is you know one day of wave power uh which is really high. And so what we've done is that we rerun that system uh but instead of initializing our ocean in 2023, we initialized it one year that didn't have a marine heat wave >> right >> in. So we've rerun the storm as if it was the ocean conditions of 2020.

[00:24:28]>> And then we've looked at at this um this blue is without the marine heat wave, this red is with it. And we see that across all the hazards we've increased between 9% we've increased the wave power by 9% increased the river flows by 12 to 18% and the surge by about 20%. Um and these are you know several factors for that. Obviously, we know that's a quite a well-known phenomena that as we discussed when the sea is warmer, it brings more moisture into the atmosphere and it rains more and therefore the river flows are enhanced. Um, but this can be nonlinear. The soil moisture was already quite high. So, the the river flow is enhanced more than the rainfall.

[00:25:12]And then we have the coastal impacts which are linked with um we had that very cold uh low-level jets that went over the north the the really warm north sea and that brings a lot of convection in the boundary layer and the winds are really high a loft are brought to the surface and um as the sea is warmer that boundary layer is higher there's more wind brought to the surface and the waves integrate how much more wind you have the surge also integrates how much more water you push towards the coastline and this led to know small changes in the sea, small changes in the atmosphere but then integrating this into bigger know double digit hazard >> big impact changes. Even though those winds after the storm were effectively cold, because they were coming over that incredibly warm sea, like you said, it created a bigger circulation, you got more convection, more uplift. It then generates a bigger >> self-perpetuating almost coming back again. Stronger winds all adds to bigger waves >> and and the the blue here is without the heat wave. So you've been able to do the research, >> run the run the computer models without the heat wave to make that comparison.

[00:26:26]And every all the aspects are showing that increase of between yeah anything between 9 and and 20% depending on obviously more more river flow >> increases more flooding and obviously more more wave power >> um as we saw increased the increase the um >> the the coastal erosion 5 years worth of of damage in just three days.

[00:26:48]Remarkable. There's lots more in the book. We'll try and put the the link to the paper actually in the um in the uh in the description. There's more on the Met Office website today because that paper is fresh. Who is it with? It was with Reading University.

[00:27:00]>> Yeah.

[00:27:01]>> Excellent. So that's absolutely fascinating. We've seen that why marine heat waves >> need to be monitored, why they're so important because the impacts they can have.

[00:27:10]>> Really fascinating.

[00:27:10]>> Particularity of the of the Northwest Shelf is also that lack of depth. So when that storm comes, if it had come over the Atlantic, it would have mixed some colder water in >> and and kind of get rid of the anomaly.

[00:27:24]But here there is no nowhere where this anomaly can go apart from into the storm >> into the storm. And that because of the track and the way that easterly wave was generated, the easterly winds were generated. Really fascinating. So it doesn't happen with every storm that we see coming across the Atlantic far from it. There's the particularities for for Barbett. why uh really important to be able to understand that the differences that those marine heat waves make or the the temperatures in the sea. Really fascinating stuff. Um so one more question I guess then what what does the future hold? We know that uh the climate is warming. We know that we're expecting temperatures to rise as well. Hopefully this will uh play. We can show another graph. Ah it seems to have frozen on me.

[00:28:07]Ah never mind.

[00:28:10]And we're back. could start working again now. So just to end on what are we looking at here future projections?

[00:28:17]>> Yes. So the the red line here is that 2023 marine heat wave that we've seen was very intense. Um but when you put it in the climate projections this is the projection is probably one of the worst case scenarios we can have. U but it's middle of the century. Um this anomaly instead of being that big anomaly could just be a small warm anomaly almost near the average.

[00:28:40]>> Okay. So um gradually that that baseline that average will shift up and um you know if you take uh a fixed baseline it means more marine heatwave days um as we're seeing already.

[00:28:52]>> So that's that they're the projections there in in the yellowy gold and you actually see a bigger gap through the peak. So the summer peak is is is the the the difference in the future is larger than the differences through the winter and the spring.

[00:29:06]>> Yes indeed. than this is because um the seas as we discussed they some parts of the seas around the UK stratify so you've got that warmer layer of water that happens in the summer uh and therefore it's easier to warm so um you know more surface forcing means warmer in the summer whereas in the winter you've got to warm the whole depth which takes you know longer to warm >> yeah and also it shifts a bit towards the autumn because >> oh yeah you can that stratification in these projections actually lengthens by about a month. So we have a month of of more of stratified seas with that warmer layer at the surface.

[00:29:44]>> Potentially the implication I guess on our storm our storm season, you know, traditionally October, November, we often start to see those intense lows.

[00:29:51]So that has an impact perhaps on those with warmer seas as we've seen.

[00:29:55]>> Really fascinating stuff. Um Segen, thank you so much for for being on this week's uh deep dive. We'll have you back again. But yeah, fascinating paper and thank you for explaining marine heat waves to us.

[00:30:07]>> Thank you.

[00:30:09]>> Absolutely fascinating to chat to Seelen earlier on. Right, quick look at the weather. Not going to go into too much detail. Obviously be plenty more in the 10day trends tomorrow with Alex Burkill, but we are still pretty warm across the south at the moment, but signs of things cooling off a little bit as we go over the next few days. So that by Saturday, still some warmth across the southeast, but we are seeing temperatures dipping away. A lot of people after some rain.

[00:30:35]Any sign of that? Well, we are seeing a shift in the jetream. It's been pushing up to the north, allowing this chunky area of high pressure. But if we go through the next few days, what happens?

[00:30:47]The jetream just gets a little bit about it and starts to drift south. As a result, the high pressure gets squished to the south and we start to see weather fronts, low pressure systems influencing our weather a little bit. Initially, some showery rain over Scotland and Northern Ireland. As we go into the weekend, well, that jet is just trickling a little further south and generating a little bit more in the way of cloud and showery rain coming in.

[00:31:11]Now, nothing for gardeners, growers to get too excited about, but we are in for a more changeable outlook as we head through the weekend into the early part of next week. And yes, most of us will see some rain. Most of us won't see very much, but at least there will be a little bit coming in as these weather fronts move through and the jetream has sunk further south. High pressure isn't too far away, however. So, as I said, more on that in the 10day trend tomorrow. But a couple of other things I wanted to draw your attention to that we've seen. Uh really quite interesting satellite image from Tuesday morning.

[00:31:47]You can see the the high pressures out here. So there's quite a lot of cloud trapped under the high and around it the breeze coming in from the north. So you can see all the cloud filtering its way in. But just in here, notice the hazier scene. So you may have well have woken up this morning over parts of Wales and the Midlands to quite a hazy murky almost orangey sky with the sun rising here because of wildfire smoke. It's quite high up so it's not being generated across the UK. This is likely to have come from somewhere across North America. A lot of wildfires still burning there. It's hard to to track it down if you go back through judiciary.

[00:32:25]Hard to actually pinpoint where it came from, but it looks like it's come from North America somewhere over the recent weeks. And yeah, quite a bit of it trapped there across uh parts of the UK this morning. So, you may well have noticed a slightly more orangey hue to the sun. Speaking of sun, we have seen a lot of it in July. Yeah, no joke, Alex.

[00:32:49]Uh this is the latest sunshine chart uh up to the 20th of July. So for the first 23 of the month normally by this stage we would have expected to see about 65% that would be the average.

[00:33:05]Most places are already above that. In fact, everywhere is above that 65% except perhaps uh Shetland uh Ornne there is perhaps in that 30 to 50% bracket. No, the 50 to 70% bracket. Most of the eastern side of Scotland, northeast England in the 70 to 90%. So even that is above the average, but all these yellow areas have already seen their July average of sunshine still with a third to go. pockets of Wales there, North Devon, Somerset have seen between 130 and 150% of their July sunshine. Already we've had more sunshine than we had in the whole of July last year. In fact, this is the the sunniest July since 2021.

[00:33:50]Uh Aiden did some statistical analysis on this. So, yeah, really quite interesting how much sunshine we've already seen so far this July. It's been a remarkable summer and we'll have plenty more on the summer stats, no doubt, as we go through. But yeah, just highlighting there how sunny July has been. Right, that is pretty much it from me for this week's Met Office deep dive.

[00:34:13]Again, big thank you to Segen for uh being on. Let us know in the comments if you like that kind of stuff. If you like it when we get the experts in, let us know in the comments if you've got any other questions uh uh about the weather or about climate. We do try and go through them. Sometimes we answer them on the Weather Studio Live on Friday.

[00:34:31]That'll be me and Alex Burkel, I think, this Friday. So, that's the Weather Studio Live at 12:15. Make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel and then you won't miss one. And if you can hit that thumbs up button for me, uh that would be uh brilliant. Thank you very much for watching. I'll see you again soon.