Talk:Climate of the United Kingdom
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[edit] Older entries
max. gust speed wrong, winter sunshine 5hrs a day is ludicrously high - nowhere more than about 2. 90 rain days absurdly low
- 5 hours a day is definitely wrong. I don't see the problem with 90 days of rain in sheltered eastern parts though. Marky-Son 13:40, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Pretty well all of this article is badly unsourced. But especially the climate change bit, which I'm not sure I even believe. 13:34, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
OK, I've been bold and cut the lot, since no sources exist for any of it William M. Connolley 19:03, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
Does anyone want to incorporate the fun school sentence "warm wet winds from the west in winter"? Worth a mention. --Chrisjwowen 14:28, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
[edit] tornadoes/contradiction
This statement :
"Relative to its land area, the United Kingdom has more reported tornados than any other country (around 33 per year), excluding the Netherlands, although most are minor."
is contradicted on the page for tornadoes :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado
"Tornadoes do occur throughout the world as well; the most tornado-prone region of the world (outside North America), as measured by number of reported tornadoes per unit area, is the Netherlands, followed by the United Kingdom (especially England)."
The contradiction being the phrase "(outside North America)".
I'm not sure if this is simply a gramatical error or not.
Can someone clarify?
Max.
[edit] Rename as "Climate of Great Britain" or "Climate of the British Isles"?
Does anyone else feel it's a bit artificial for the article to be about the climate of the UK? Climate doesn't respect borders that are pretty arbitrary such as between Northern Ireland and the Republic, so why should this article cover the UK and only the UK? So I think the article should be renamed:
- Either Climate of Great Britain (with a separate article Climate of Ireland as and when someone wants to do one)
- Or Climate of the British Isles
Any comments/ideas/suggestions? --A bit iffy 11:26, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
Yes! I was thinking exactly the same thing. This is an article about the climate of the British Isles (a geographical entity) and not the United Kingdom (a political entity) which only happens to be mostly located in the British Isles, but has many parts elsewhere in the world. RPTB1 12:45, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
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- Hi. This page seems to have been renamed and then all references to UK replaced with references to BI by a crude search and replace. Worse, the content is sufficiently vague that it could be referring to almost anywhere in NW Europe. Also, UK + Ireland ≠ British Isles, but whoever renamed the page seems to be unaware of that. Also, for Rptb1's reference, the UK doesn't have "many parts elsewhere". There are places that are related to the UK, but it's not like France, which does have "parts elsewhere". This page should be renamed to "Climate of Great Britain" if it's to be geographical and "Climate of the UK" if it is be political. As it stands the fact of the crude search and replace shows in the quality of the article. Hughsheehy 13:29, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
- The point about having this page as the UK is that data can be found that relates to the UK, at the Met Office. There is not weather service devoted to Great Britain or Ireland, but there are separate services for the UK and ROI. Yes, climate does not observe national borders, but information on it does. If this article is going to have reliable referenced content, then it must be based on the same areas that we have data for. I know the political option is not the best, but it is the only viable option on an encyclopaedia. So that this highly unreferenced article can be improved, I moved it back to Climate of the United Kingdom as per discussion below. Rossenglish 14:06, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
- Hi. This page seems to have been renamed and then all references to UK replaced with references to BI by a crude search and replace. Worse, the content is sufficiently vague that it could be referring to almost anywhere in NW Europe. Also, UK + Ireland ≠ British Isles, but whoever renamed the page seems to be unaware of that. Also, for Rptb1's reference, the UK doesn't have "many parts elsewhere". There are places that are related to the UK, but it's not like France, which does have "parts elsewhere". This page should be renamed to "Climate of Great Britain" if it's to be geographical and "Climate of the UK" if it is be political. As it stands the fact of the crude search and replace shows in the quality of the article. Hughsheehy 13:29, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Warm to hot summers?!?
Temperature: "Generally the UK has mild to cool winters and warm to hot summers with moderate variation in temperature throughout the year." Averages about 15-18ºC cannot be regarded as "warm to hot". What about Phoenix, Arizona?
- I wouldn't describe Phoenix summers as warm to hot, I'd describe them as extremely hot, so I don't see what the problem is there. Daytime temperatures are almost always warm (20C+) and occasionally (increasingly so) hot in most of England and part of Wales during the summer. Conditions that are t-shirt weather cannot be described as anything less than warm. Marky-Son 04:16, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Unreferenced content
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This article does not cite any references or sources. (November 2006) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. |
As the tag says, after reading this article I find it amazing that it has deteriorated to this extent. So much of the facts in the sections are completely made up, and very little of the content is referenced. Even with a basic knowledge of the climate of the British Isles it is easy to see that most of this is nonsense; a quick look at the Met Office UK climate pages shows up so many exaggerations and errors. Any reliable climate data that can replace figures quoted in this article chould be changed accordingly with references. There is a lot to replace though on this article. Rossenglish 21:32, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
- Looking through this article whilst editing, I have also noticed that a lot of the text is plagiarised from the Met Office England Climate page, [1] although strangely some of the figures copied from this source have been altered. Rossenglish 22:03, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
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- Which also supports that this page is basically a UK page, not a British Isles article. There was a renaming a while back that was accompanied by a "search and replace" in the text turning all the references to the UK into references to British Isles. The page needs to be renamed back to UK and then sorted out. Hughsheehy 22:47, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
- I completely agree - there is no Ireland specific content here. If I have time (there is a lot to do), I will compare the article to Met Office pages and convert all plagiarised areas into original prose. A lot of the content has just been copied and tweaked, so it isn't in the normal encyclopaedic format- it is quite easy to spot. Rossenglish 09:58, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
- I noticed the 'search and replace' thing whilst editing; there are many instances of 'its climate' (referring to the UK) rather than the correct 'their climate' (British Isles).
- One can get UK climate averages and ROI climate averages, but not both combined. If there was a British Isles weather service, than maybe this current set up would work, but at the moment, it is just lumping two topics together in my books. It detracts editors away from improving the content on the UK and Ireland, which would be much more accurate and specific on separate articles. I would wholeheartedly support moving this page to Climate of the United Kingdom, and creating a separate Climate of Ireland page - with data drawn from Met Eireann, and any relevant info from here moved across. Rossenglish 14:55, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
- I noticed the 'search and replace' thing whilst editing; there are many instances of 'its climate' (referring to the UK) rather than the correct 'their climate' (British Isles).
- I completely agree - there is no Ireland specific content here. If I have time (there is a lot to do), I will compare the article to Met Office pages and convert all plagiarised areas into original prose. A lot of the content has just been copied and tweaked, so it isn't in the normal encyclopaedic format- it is quite easy to spot. Rossenglish 09:58, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
- Which also supports that this page is basically a UK page, not a British Isles article. There was a renaming a while back that was accompanied by a "search and replace" in the text turning all the references to the UK into references to British Isles. The page needs to be renamed back to UK and then sorted out. Hughsheehy 22:47, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
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- Right..I'll tell you what...I'll make a Climate of Ireland page, although it'll be next week earliest. Can you (Rossenglish) do the renaming/moving here in the meantime? There's little dissenting opinion on this talk page and we seem to both agree - as well as previous editors - that it's the right thing to do. Hughsheehy 11:49, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
- I could do it now - I'll go through the entire article (properly this time!) and change all sentences to refer to the UK. If I find any Ireland specific content than I'll save it somewhere. Then I'll move the page a bit later. Rossenglish 12:22, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
- The article has been modified, and the page has now been moved to Climate of the United Kingdom. Rossenglish 13:03, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
- I have fixed all double redirects now too. Good luck with the Climate of Ireland page Hughsheehy =) Rossenglish 13:11, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
- The article has been modified, and the page has now been moved to Climate of the United Kingdom. Rossenglish 13:03, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
- I could do it now - I'll go through the entire article (properly this time!) and change all sentences to refer to the UK. If I find any Ireland specific content than I'll save it somewhere. Then I'll move the page a bit later. Rossenglish 12:22, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
- Right..I'll tell you what...I'll make a Climate of Ireland page, although it'll be next week earliest. Can you (Rossenglish) do the renaming/moving here in the meantime? There's little dissenting opinion on this talk page and we seem to both agree - as well as previous editors - that it's the right thing to do. Hughsheehy 11:49, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
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[edit] Summer 2007 floods
some sections need tto be updated to include info on the summer 2007 floods. eg. the "most rainfall record" was broken.
- The "most rainfall" for what period? Marky-Son 11:47, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
According to UK Met Office, June and also July 2007 broke the records for the wettest June and July (although the data cover only the last 95 years) in England and Wales. In addition the summer period (June to August) was also the wettest (average 342.2mm) since the data series began, breaking a record that has stood since 1927. For the UK as a whole, June 2007 was the wettest on record but the summer as a whole just fell 1.3mm short of the current record set in 1956 (358.4mm). --AssegaiAli (talk) 22:25, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Infoboxes?
All the data in this article is in prose form. It would be a lot clearer if the climates of different regions of the UK could be summarised in table/chart form. Comparisons between the regions, and with other climates around the world, could then be drawn more easily. I'm thinking the regions section could be expanded to include something like this. Each chart/table could have a paragraph summarising the main points, e.g Scotland has cooler summers than England etc.
Here's one way it could be done. I drew the colours from the standard ones they use in the Template:Infobox Weather tables, so that comparisons can be drawn with all articles that use that infobox. The info came from the regional averages on the Met Office site:–
| England Climate Averages | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year | |
| Average max. temperature °C (°F) | 6.6 (43.9) |
6.9 (44.4) |
9.3 (48.7) |
11.7 (53.1) |
15.4 (59.7) |
18.1 (64.6) |
20.6 (69.1) |
20.5 (68.9) |
17.5 (63.5) |
13.6 (56.5) |
9.5 (49.1) |
7.4 (45.3) |
13.1 (55.6) |
|
| Average min. temperature °C (°F) | 1.1 (34.0) |
1.0 (33.8) |
2.4 (36.3) |
3.6 (38.5) |
6.3 (43.3) |
9.1 (48.4) |
11.4 (52.5) |
11.2 (52.2) |
9.3 (48.7) |
6.6 (33.1) |
3.5 (38.3) |
2.0 (35.6) |
5.6 (42.1) |
|
| Sunshine hours |
50.5 | 67.7 | 102.5 | 145.2 | 189.9 | 179.4 | 192.8 | 184.1 | 135.0 | 101.3 | 65.2 | 43.9 | 1457.4 | |
| Rainfall mm (inches) |
84.2 (3.3) |
60.1 (2.4) |
66.5 (2.6) |
56.8 (2.2) |
55.9 (2.2) |
62.9 (2.5) |
54.1 (2.1) |
66.7 (2.6) |
73.3 (2.9) |
83.6 (3.3) |
83.5 (3.3) |
90.4 (3.6) |
838.0 (44.3) |
|
| Rainfall >= 1 mm days |
13.4 | 10.4 | 12.1 | 10.1 | 9.8 | 9.8 | 8.5 | 9.4 | 10.2 | 11.8 | 12.5 | 13.1 | 131.2 | |
| Source: Met Office[1] (1971–2000 averages) | ||||||||||||||
I reckon one each for England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales would be adequate - the data is there on the Met Office site. They also have data from regions like S England, East Anglia etc, but that would probably be too much information!, so I think just four tables would be best.
What does everyone else think? Should we have this sort of thing? Should we use tables or charts? And should we stick to the four constituent countries or try something else? Rossenglish 11:53, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
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- Looks seriously good. 4 should be enough. Hughsheehy 13:22, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
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- I added the extended 'Regions' section with climate tables in. It is also on my sandbox page. If something doesn't look or sound right, or if I missed something, then edit away or ask me ;) Rossenglish 11:23, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
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[edit] Temperature scale
There is a very handy little template for easily showing °F for our cousins over the water and readers from a certain generation. I've used it in the climate section in the UK article. Would it be courteous to use it here as well? ᴀᴊᴋɢᴏʀᴅᴏɴ«» 17:03, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
- Yes it is quite a nice template. I agree it could be handy for those who understand Fahrenheit better. Rossenglish 17:09, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
- I see you've gone and done it, Rossenglish.
- I must say, that's very big of you considering the contents of your user page! :) Personally, I think the more often that °F is shown alongside °C, the more opportunity it gives Americans and older Brits to compare the two and become familiar with °C. Excellent. ᴀᴊᴋɢᴏʀᴅᴏɴ«» 21:52, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
- Ah yes my user page. My opinions are for in an ideal world, but until such a time, conversions are necessary to allow familiarity. Although there could come a point where conversion hinders familiarity, if people still 'think' in imperial if it is given. Rossenglish 13:10, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
