State of the UK climate 2020
This report provides a summary of the UK weather and climate through the calendar year 2020, alongside the historical context for a number of essential climate variables. The majority of this report is based on observations of temperature, precipitation, sunshine and wind speed from the UK land weather station network as managed by the Met Office and a number of key partners and co-operating volunteers. The observations are carefully managed such that they conform to current best practice observational standards as defined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
The report presents summary statistics for the most recent year 2020 against the most recent decade 2011–2020, the most recent 30-year reference period (1981–2010) and the climate reference period 1961–1990. The full series provide longer-term context, while a comparison is also made to centennial averages for the Central England Temperature series. The decade 2011–2020 is a non-standard reference period, but it provides a 10-year ‘snapshot’ of the most recent experience of the UK's climate and how that compares to historical records. This means differences between 2011 and 2020 and 30-year reference periods may reflect shorter-term decadal variations as well as long-term trends.