The year was the fourth warmest on record for the UK, behind only , and We find:. See our previous annual analysis for , , , , and The gridded, geographically complete dataset combines observational data for monthly temperature since , rainfall since and sunshine since In other words, they show how much warmer, cooler, wetter, drier, sunnier or cloudier the year was than average.
The maps show that the whole country was warmer than average, with slightly lower temperature anomalies in Scotland, and slightly higher anomalies seen in East Anglia.
Rainfall shows more regional variation, with the wettest regions relative to average in central and southern England, but a slightly drier year than average for Northern Ireland and parts of Scotland. Meanwhile, it was a relatively dull year across the country with lower-than-average sunshine across the vast majority of the UK, particularly in western regions.
The UK annual average absolute temperature for was 9. This makes the fourth-warmest year since records began, coming only after , when the average temperature was Rounding off the top-five warmest years on record is , when the average temperature was 9.
The timeseries plot below shows how average temperature in the UK has followed a clear long-term warming trend since the s. Daily minimum and maximum temperatures have been recorded in the UK since the 19th century. These observe the highest and lowest temperature reached during a hour period which starts and ends at GMT each day. The daily maximum temperature tends to be in the early afternoon and the minimum temperature in the hours before dawn, but not exclusively.
