Through the remainder of this week and the weekend, we remain in the battle between Azores high pressure which will dominate the Southern UK and Icelandic low pressure which will influence Northern Ireland and Scotland. Winds will begin easing through today as heights build and with building heights, temps will gradually climb with low 20s returning to Southern England.

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One day will see cloud and rain over western Scotland, the next may see sunshine but showers in the Southeast, it’s a back and forth pattern and this looks set to remain through the holiday weekend. For details on the upcoming holiday weekend, see yesterday’s post for more details.

In recent days, the major global models of ECMWF and GFS showed the North Atlantic/Azores ridge building into the UK day 5-10, trying to hint at a more sustained period of settled over Ireland and the northern UK. However, given what we’ve seen so far and the fact our ground is much wetter and the El Nino continues to strengthen, I’ve said, use caution but once that pattern flipped from dry to wet late April, I thought it would be hard to get the ridge back. Sure enough the newer runs of both ECMWF and GFS hold back the ridge and we appear, in the MEANS anyway, to remain in the fight zone between a high to the SW and low to the NE with a cool NW flow for the UK.

Here’s the ECMWF 5-day mean 500mb height anomalies.

GFS

Even in cooler, wetter patterns, we often get breaks in between and right now I am trying to figure out whether a break comes in this pattern late May into June with a more sustained spell of ridging and warmth or whether it remains more progressive and north to south divided.

The GFS sees a ridge over trough scenario day 10-15.

Like the ECMWF and GFS operational, the GFS ensemble also holds back the ridge and in fact has more trough extending from the UK into the near continent through day 15.

CFSv2 weeklies going with a -NAO (Icelandic blocking high) solution deep into June. Looking cool and at times wet for the UK/Ireland and near continent.

This is near opposite this time last year with an east QBO now stronger than it’s 2012 episode while this El Nino is likely strongest since 1997.

Interesting the warming in Nino 3.4 is faster than past El Nino events including 1997!

What true effects there is on Western Europe with the exceptions of a wetter summer very much remains to be seen later down the road. I am very much working on trying to figure out what effects this El Nino and other factors will have on next winter. Nothing is clear cut or straight forward.

Here’s the latest Jamstec for the summer over Europe. (temp anomalies)

For the first time, the Jamstec now shows a strong El Nino with late summer/early autumn peak.

No video today but will have one again tomorrow.

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Tags: Atlantic multidecadal oscillation, el nino, el nino 1997, el nino 1998, ENSO, Pacific Decadal Osciillation