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Click on today's infra-red satellite images below for full size version (source: Nottingham University)
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Where would your pupils like to have been today? Well, if you're in a school in northern Europe, you would probably have preferred a location south of the equator, where it is now summer. The participating schools in southern Africa reported sunny, warm weather, thin high cloud, and temperatures over 20 degrees Celsius. And it was just as nice in India, judging by Bombay's weather report: clear and sunny with the temperature up to 30 degrees Celsius. In India, this is the dry season, with north-easterly winds and plenty of sunshine. Why, though, Bombay's report of a wind from the south-west? Well ... Bombay is on the coast (the west coast of India) and sea breezes occur there by day. Not far out to sea, the winds were probably from the north-east.
In Oman, south-east Australia, Ethiopia and Uganda, the weather was also nice and warm and pretty sunny. Between Uganda and Zambia, though, there were lots of towering clouds, called cumulonimbus clouds, and these produced thunderstorms and heavy rain. These clouds and thunderstorms normally occur over Africa south of the equator at this time of year. Later in the year, they will move northwards, to reach Ethiopia in June.
In Spain, Portugal and Malta, the weather was quite pleasant, too, though not as warm as in Africa, Australia, India and Oman. In northern Europe, many places have had mild weather, with temperatures above average. Even in central Finland, at our school near Vaasa, the temperature has exceeded 0 degrees Celsius, and at Bor School (Sweden) the temperature has also risen above 0 degrees. In many parts of the British Isles, temperatures have exceeded 12 degrees, but the westerly winds from the Atlantic have also brought a lot of damp, overcast, windy weather. We expect very cold weather in Canada at this time of the year, but even there mild weather has occurred. At Edmonton, the temperature managed to reach 0 degrees Celsius today. It's all a far cry from a year ago, when temperatures in Scandinavia were exceedingly low. Indeed, a temperature of -51 degrees Celsius occurred in northern Finland in the last week of January 1999, during the active phase of MetLinkInternational.
Points for discussion with the pupils:
To visit the website of your national weather service, click here, but please note that some countries do not yet have websites.
In many respects, today has been typical for the time of year. As today's DTOT Meteosat image shows - the DTOT image being the one that provides an infra-red view of Africa, Europe and the Atlantic - the band of near-equatorial convective systems producing cumulus and cumulonimbus clouds, thunderstorms and heavy bursts of rain lay, as usual at this time of year, a little to the south of the equator, with generally clear skies to the north and south of it (the dominant influences there being subtropical anticyclones). The weather reports from MetLink schools in southern, central and North Africa show that the weather in those places was warm and sunny, with temperatures reaching the upper 20s and in some places 30 degrees Celsius. Weather charts for the South Atlantic show that vigorous depressions were present over the Southern Ocean well to the south of South Africa. The dominant weather influence at Ascension was the South Atlantic subtropical anticyclone.
In Oman and south-east Australia and at Bombay, the weather was also warm and sunny, with temperatures which those living in northern Europe would consider very agreeable! The JMA/GMS satellite image of Australia shows a few clouds over Victoria, where our MetLink schools are located, and clear skies over the desert regions of Australia. Consistent with this being the time of year when the Australian monsoon occurs, there was a lot of cloud today over the northernmost parts of Australia and adjacent parts of the ocean. The weather chart for 1200 UTC on 31 January shows an area of high pressure (central pressure 1024 mb) near Tasmania and an area of low pressure (1005 mb) east of Queensland. This chart also shows a tropical cyclone over the Indian Ocean off western Australia. There was another tropical cyclone over the Indian Ocean off southern Madagascar. As this is the cyclone season over the South Indian Ocean, the existence of these weather systems is not unusual. The warm, dry, sunny weather at Bombay is also not unusual at this time of year, the season of the so-called 'North-east Monsoon'. The reason for the south-westerly breeze reported at Bombay is that this city lies on the west coast of India and sea breezes develop over this coast at this time of year (and other times of year).
Over southern Europe, as our schools in Spain, Portugal and Malta reported, the weather was very pleasant, though temperatures were not as high as those reported by the schools in Africa, Oman, India and Australia. In northern Europe these past few days, depressions have been bringing strong winds, rain and mild weather. After a stormy weekend in many parts of the British Isles and Scandinavia, today was less windy, but temperatures remained quite high for the time of year. They exceeded 12 degrees Celsius in southern parts of Britain and topped 0 degrees Celsius as far north as central Finland. This is very different from last year, when, in the last week of January 1999, during the active phase of MetLinkInternational, the temperature fell to -51 degrees Celsius at a place in northern Finland. There has been a lot of cloud over the British Isles today, as the satellite images from Dundee show, and this has produced some rain and drizzle in places. There has been snow in the northern parts of Scandinavia, but most of today's precipitation in Europe has occurred over Poland, Czechoslovakia and Russia.
Finally today, we travel to Canada, to Alberta, where, at our school in Edmonton, there were light southerly winds and the temperature reached 0 degrees Celsius. Is there no really cold weather in the MetLink world this year?!
What will the weather bring tomorrow? Let us wait and see. Later in the project, I shall include some forecasts. How different is your weather from average. To try and find out, you might like to visit the Royal Meteorological Society's website, where you will find a facility called Climate on the Web. Go, in particular, to Buttle and Tuttle's WorldClimate.com and The Washington Post's site.
To visit the website of your national weather service, click here, but please note that some countries do not yet have websites.
Our records show that on this day at Edmonton The highest ppt. was 27.9mm in 1885 The record high temperature was 11.1 in 1976 The record low temp. was -42.8 in 1893 Cheers James Gibbons School
