Summer 2022 - General Discussion

Gonzo

Spotted this today, this Copernicus EU Sentinel-3 image taken on 12 August 2022 shows the extent of the drought conditions over much of the UK and parts of eastern and southern Irealnd.

Graces7

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119652903#Comment_119652903

Just horrific.. Thank you

sporina

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119571568#Comment_119571568

where is this?

sporina

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119571568#Comment_119571568

where is this?

sryanbruen

Here's a table of where summer 2022 stacks up in the records for various Irish synoptic stations in terms of seasonal mean temperature. Clearly the more north and west you go, the more unremarkable the summer was with southern and eastern regions being warmest (Claremorris being an exception). In the warmest places, 2022 tended to be the 4th or 5th warmest summer. Warmer summers tended to be 1995, 1976, 1983, 2006 and 2018. 1995 is clearly the warmest on record for the nation with most places sharing it as their warmest summer.

Using the data that's come in so far, here's the station maximum temperatures that were set during summer 2022 whether during the July heat spike or August heatwave. *The record history for Oak Park refers to when it became automatic in 2003, the 1983 record was from when the station was manual.

Should be noted that if the Phoenix Park value is disregarded (which is unlikely as it passed provisional QC), the Athy value of 32.4C would also be a new July record for Ireland as the old record was 32.3C in July 2006.

In terms of rainfall, the most remarkable stat was Cork Airport with 126.4mm of rain during summer 2022 which was its 4th driest since 1962. Only 2018, 1995 and 1972 were drier. Dublin Airport had its 6th driest since 1939 with 106.5mm - 1975, 1995, 2018, 2006 and 1959 were drier. All places were drier than average.

Yes those stats show it was a pretty good summer, all told. Out east particularly.

any stats on sunshine. I feel some people think that wasn’t so great.

sryanbruen

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119690870#Comment_119690870

Problem with sunshine is, our station network for it is very lacking to begin with and a good bit of the data is not public. As uafásach mentioned, the western part of Northern Ireland was notably cloudy and this would likely carry on into Donegal and other northwestern parts. Magilligan in Derry had only 249.5 hours all summer whilst Thomastown in Fermanagh had 308.1 hours. Aldergrove near Belfast had 429.0 hours.

Here's the available sun totals (hours) from the seasonal summaries for recent summers (rounded).

2022 and 2019 tended to be somewhat similar whilst 2018 was definitely the sunniest and 2020 was the cloudiest. 2021 was just here or there.