Is this a warmer January than usual?

[andrewducker]

Adam was discusing this morning how unreasonably warm it felt. And, while it felt that way to me too, I don't trust my memory, and so wanted to go find some hard data.

There is a (possibly multiple) Met Office sensors in Edinburgh, but they don't make the historical information generally available for it. Nobody is making it available for free, and buying it was going to cost me about £7.

So instead I found a website that got the data using API calls and left their API key in the URL, fudged the API call to get the date ranges I wanted, turned the 15-odd daily readings into a minimum/maximum/average for each January for the last 22 years, and dropped it into a graph (I love how easy this stuff is nowadays).

And now you can see that, indeed, things are a lot warmer than last January, and also warmer than the average January since 2000!

Comments

[coth]

I became convinced global heating was a thing the year I drank tea outdoors on the terrace of the Botanic Garden in Edinburgh - in February! That would have been 1998.

[rhythmaning]

Although I'd reckon - just by sight - that it's not way off. Clearly last year and 2010 were a lot colder, but 2020 and 2016 were warmer. I can't remember what statistics would be used to examine this kind of data.

When I was doing my PhD, the Met Office had a series of algorhithms with which one could calculate a whole range of variables based on location. Which was incredibly useful!

Also, excellent data-hacking there! :)

[andrewducker]

Yeah, average temperatures have clearly been within a hair of 5 degrees most years.

[swampers]

Just want to point out that I crunched some stats on the daily average temperatures that Andy passed me and came to the conclusion that we're in (based purely on days 1-25 of January, and I think 20 years? of records) the 70th percentile of Januaries. Roughly. Which definitely makes it warmer than it ordinarily is. But certainly not the warmest January.

-Adam

[andrewducker]

Ooh, I should pass you the version of the spreadsheet where I haven't fucked up the nulls! See if that changes things.

[swampers]

...I obviously spoke too soon. ;)

[dreema]

Have you seen Weather Underground? (www.wunderground.com) They have a network of personal weather stations around the globe that people upload weather stats to.
Similar idea to the mini trackers dotted about for flight radar.

[andrewducker]

It was them I grabbed the data from illicitly.

[dreema]

heh
nothing to see here, move along.