Warm North Atlantic Ocean causing UK's wet summers, study shows

Data points to link between warmer oceans and the change in weather, and the possibility of a rapid reversal to drier climate
Wet summer
Wet summers are becoming common but they could rapidly switch back to dry pattern, study says. Photograph: Lewis Whyld/AP

The UK's dismal recent summers can be blamed on a substantial warming of the North Atlantic Ocean in the late 1990s, according to new scientific research. The shift has resulted in rain-soaked weather systems being driven into northern Europe, increasing summer rainfall by about a third.


The summer of 2012 was the wettest in a century and follows a series of above average years for summer rainfall. Sutton's team, who published their study in Nature Geoscience, examined over a century of data and found that the temperature of the North Atlantic remains above or below the long term average for decades at a time. The periods of warmer temperature, the latest of which started in the late 1990s, were found to correlate with wet summers in Northern Europe and hotter, drier summers in the Mediterranean. The team used existing detailed climate simulations to demonstrate a causal link between the warmer oceans and the change in the weather.




Map - Europe rainfall Map: Europe rainfall


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