An increase in flows over the Downs, maybe, causing clouds to break up? Anything between WSW and ESE will do the trick for various parts of Kent.

Thank you for posting the charts, they confirm that it's become a fair bit warmer, a lot sunnier and drier down here since the 60s (and anecdotally since the 80s, too!)

Great maps 

MBY has seen a slight increase in rainfall, slight increase in sunshine, moderate increase in temps

DOn't know what to make of that, really. Can understand the temps (in part due to milder winters) and rainfall (some prolonged wet periods, including most of the summers that fell 2007-2012), but more sunshine? That surprises me.

And here’s the thing. While we clean the air, the earth is heating at a faster rate?

While we reduce the amount of gasses, we are reducing sulfate gasses which cool the earth. While these gasses only remain in the atmosphere for at best a few weeks, greenhouse gasses can remain for years, hundreds of years. With our cleaning, we are increasing the differential between the gasses causing a heating imbalance, a reason why we are warming faster.

I would prefer fossil fuels gone, but I don’t know what the answer is. It could be without thinking about the other side of the coin, the innocent intentions of cleaning the air is actually making things worse. How long will this go on for? We need something to keep the remaining greenhouse gasses in check.

Heating through global brightening with reduction in aerosols is a one time hit. Like cold turkey. Whereas CO2 warming is a long term, cumulative issue. So best get it dive with and at the same time save lungs across the developing world.

On the maps: I notice an increase in sunshine and summer index along the North Sea coast of Lincs and E Yorks which to me implies an increase in westerlies.

Yes there was a lot in that sunshine chart that surprised me too.

I think the trend increases in many areas since 1961 has more to do with the closure of heavy industry than the weather.  Looking at the +400hrs/year improvements for the Midlands, NE and Parts of SW Wales it looks like the close down of the Coal and Steel industries more than the weather synoptics so perhaps this chart is more of general interest than climate change !

It still doesn't explain why Ramsgate in East Kent logged an improvement of +310 hrs/year (and I went back and hand checked this one !) whilst some other spots further west near the S Coast in Devon and Dorset showed negatives (reductions)

How long is this warming going to go on for though Tim? I’m all for getting things ‘sorted’, but when does the rate of increase start to subside? It could get worse! Over the last two decades the graphs don’t lie. If things carry on as they are we will reach the precipice quicker than we thought through the actions of Greta & co.

Has everything really been thought through here?

To quote an old saying which I have seen used in this forum in the past more than once, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions".

Looks like we might have even seen a decrease in rainfall here. A 1.5 to 2 degree temperature increase isn’t too shabby either.

I feel like sunshine has increased more outside of the summer months, particularly spring.

We've lived in the SE since 1976 (and in my case also before 1960). Thunderstorms were a regular occurrence, either drifting up overnight from France or marking the end of a hot spell as a cold front swung in from the W. For the last 20 years, any thunderstorms seem to have been home-grown, i.e generated over the UK and drifting N from there. The weather expert used as a go-to by Radio Sussex, Ian Curry, was making the same point last weekend, along with the increasing frequency of summer drought S of London.

Hoping to  be proved wrong with a good storm on Monday!

Sorry but you'll have to explain how the actions of people trying to raise the profile of the growing and serious threat from climate change are making it worse? That is just a bizarre suggestion.

It seems pretty bl**dy obvious to me that we are all responsible for our use of fossil fuels and causing the resulting CO2 emissions.

The rate of increase will not lessen: we have pushed the concentrations of GHGs to levels not seen for 3-5 million years and they're still climbing.

I was only thinking today about the storms of years past. You’d go to bed only to be woken in the early hours by all hell let loose as a storm had trundled up from France on warm sultry nights. Nowadays, a lot of storms seem to be deflected to the east with only the Kent crew seeing some action.

Pretty easy really. If you are reducing gasses, both warming greenhouse and cooling sullfates, you, we are creating an imbalance because the gg’s are harder to get rid of and stay up in the atmosphere a lot lot longer, perhaps hundreds of years compared to just a few weeks from sulfates.

While we reduce gasses, the differential grows, the cooling gasses are less, the heat increases. What else explains the warming charts over the last two decades. They don’t lie.

As we clean the air, we are in fact making the earth warmer. I am not sure what the answer is, but where does this end? When the UK reaches 45c, maybe more, we don’t know.

Ah, OK. You don’t understand the subject.  

I’m sorry but you have completely misunderstood the processes and the issues.  Where did you get these ideas?

No come on. I provided an answer so rather than you ask another question, if you could provide your take on things and we’ll see how this stacks up.

You scrutinised me, let’s scrutinise you for a change.

I think it’s a fair concern to worry about an increase in heating once sulphate and pollution levels drop, but the cold spots such as they are now are over East and South Asia, and most of the brightening has already happened here and in North America.

The wider point is that aerosol cooling is only ever a fraction of greenhouse warming, that the amount we can reduce warming from cutting emissions is way greater than the amount of compensating warming from cutting aerosols, and finally the human impacts of air pollution in the industrialised and developing worlds - on the lungs and brains of children, on rares of cancer and heart disease, are hideous and need addressing anyway. 

But this thread was intended to be about what’s actually happened to regional climate in the UK, not future policy. This week looks increasingly likely to be another case in point (with apologies to our North and Scotland members).

Thanks very much Tim. Totally agree with the impact on health that needs to be addressed, but I just wonder however how long the warming trend will go on though. It appears more methane is being released from the ground from melting permafrosts. Did we unwittingly cause that by cleaning the air, warming the temps.

Back on topic, in recent years I am sure many members living towards the SE have welcomed ‘useable’ summers and weather. Not been good if you like snow though!

That seems rather unfair. It is pretty well established that the "global dimming" that was seen last century due to sulfate emissions etc has gone into decline. That global dimming did indeed mask some of the background warming, so it is quite right that as sulfate levels drop, some of the "hidden" warming will become evident, thus increasing the rate of warming.

eg see this BBC report: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dimming_trans.shtml

"We thought we live in a global warming world, but this is actually not right. We lived in a global warming plus a Global Dimming world, and now we are taking out Global Dimming. So we end up with the global warming world, which will be much worse than we thought it will be, much hotter." - that quote is from Dr Beate Liepert, who is not some crank or AGW denier, she is an IPCC contributor.

Sulfate is important, that is the rationale behind the idea of geoengineering: deliberately spraying sulfate into the troposphere to reflect back some sunlight.

In marginally on-topic news, my purchase of land for a vineyard in Kent fell through this morning, right on the point of exchanging. Very annoying.

Thanks Rob.

And just will we see the end of this warming due to our ‘cleaning’? Will we burn?
I’m all for clean air but the innocent intentions and consequences of achieving that may be more catastrophic for the planet than planned. With higher heat, this will also have an impact on health, sea level rises, worse storms etc.

Could it be that Greta & co are changing the planet and actually taking us towards the precipice at full speed ahead. Have they thought about the flipside of the impact of their actions also?

Sorry to hear that Tim. Stop whining 

Sorry to hear that. Where was the land?

That's a shame. Of course you realise that if you had bought it, there would be a sudden climate flip and Kent would see a run of washout summers and damaging bitter frosts in winter, so lucky escape really 

I wrote an article a few years ago on vineyard owners in England for the ST property section.