Instant Genius - Winter storms, with Alex Deakin

Episode Date: February 24, 2023

Storm Otto caused havoc across Scotland last week. Yet it was unusual in that it was the first named storm to hit our shores this autumn and winter.   Alex Deakin, a weather forecaster and meteorologist for the Met Office, reveals why we had such calm conditions this winter, why we name storms, and whether climate change could make storms worse. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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a bite-sized master class in podcast form. I'm Alice Lipscomb Southwell, the managing editor at BBC Science Focus magazine. Now last week, Storm Otto hit the UK, And while it was devastating, it was unusual because it was the first named storm that we'd had this autumn and winter. Usually, we would have expected the UK to have been hit by about three named winter storms by February. So we spoke to Alex Deakin, a meteorologist and weather forecaster at the Met Office, to find out more about storms and to figure out what caused the calmer conditions this winter. So perhaps the easiest question to start.

What exactly is a storm? Well, I guess there's a few different meteorological definitions of what a storm is. we could just have a single thunderstorm that comes up, particularly in the summer months, but that only covers, you know, a few miles here and there. Or other storms around the world, things like hurricanes and typhoons are classed as storms. But when we talk about storms in the UK, and particularly naming a storm, we're talking about a low-pressure system, a low that's going to impact the UK with significant winds and is likely to cause some serious disruption.

So it's a low-pressure system. They're usually 100, 200 miles across something like that, other the serious winds can affect areas smaller than that. But low pressure systems, we see quite a few across the UK during the year, but it's when they really intensify and are really likely to impact the UK that we would call it a storm. Now, over the last few days, there have been stories in the news that Storm Otto is about to hit Northern England and Scotland.

But until that point, we've actually had no named winter storms over this winter. Now, is that quite unusual? And is this the calm before the storm to part? Pardon the pun? It has been really weird. We haven't had any for a year. We had three storms in a week last February and then we didn't have any for a year. And then Storm Otto has just turned up, yes. But it's very unusual to go that length of time without having a storm. We have had strong winds across the UK in that period. But it's just been quite a calm autumn and winter. And that is, a few to a number of factors. We've had higher pressure than usual sitting in the Atlantic and the jet stream's been further north. And a bit weak. than usual. Now, the jet stream is really important when it comes to storms. It's kind of our weather maker, if you like. It's a ribbon of air high up in the atmosphere. There's pretty much always there, but it meanders around and it gains intensity, and it wiggles around the different parts across the northern hemisphere, close to the UK. But sometimes it's to the north, sometimes it's to the south,

sometimes it's pretty weak. Now, for most of this autumn winter, it's been either weak or away to the north, so not directly whipping up these areas of low pressure, because it's the jet stream that picks up a low and really intensifies it. And it's just been a bit weaker than normal. And part of that is to do with its general changing pattern. It's never consistent, but also part of the weather patterns we've seen so far this autumn and winter have been caused by Laninia, which is a weather event in the southern Pacific, but it can have a knock on effect. And usually when we have a strong Laninia, that does tend to mean we, we, get higher pressure than usual just to the west of the UK. So we're not seeing as many lows.

So there's a number of factors involved, but Laninia is one and a weakened jet stream is another. Now, when exactly does bad weather become a storm? Is there some sort of tipping point there? We would name a storm when it would, when we think it's going to reach our amber weather criteria. So here at the Met Office, we have yellow, amber and red weather warnings. And if the winds are like to reach into that amber weather category from one of these low-pressure systems, that when we would name it. But there's always a little bit of wiggle room. Sometimes if the storm is also going to bring very heavy rain or heavy snow,

and the winds may only reach into the yellow category, then we could consider naming it as well. So that's broadly speaking how it goes, but all of our warnings are done on impacts. They're not just, oh, it's going to be 60 miles and out, therefore we have a warning in place. It depends where that is. 60 mile an hour winds have a much bigger impact across the south of England than they would in Northern Scotland. In Northern Scotland, we get 60 mile an hour winds several, several times through a winter and an autumn period. That would be pretty unusual, though, in parts of the south.

So you just don't have that robustness. So it depends on where it's hitting, the time of day it's hitting. Again, 60 mile and hour winds in the middle of the night, not going to have much impact, but if they happen during rush hour. And time of year also plays a part to take Storm Otto for a time. example, if that storm had hit in October when the trees were in leaf, we probably would have gone amber for that storm because trees in leaf, there's more resistance, you're going to get more trees coming down, more branches, more debris, that kind of thing. So all of these

factors, meteorologists here at the Metror Office, have to take into consideration when they're thinking about the warnings and also when they're thinking about naming storms. You touched on it a bit there that the time of year can have an impact. Now, how do winter storms and summer storms differ? We tend to get our liveliest weather, our stormiest weather, if you like, in the autumn and the winter months, because that's when the jet stream is at its most active. The jet stream is driven by the contrast in temperature between the poles and the equator. And that is greatest in autumn and winter because the poles are cooling down rapidly and the equator, the temperature's there, don't change very much. So in the spring and summer, when the poles are warmer, you don't have that contrast. And it's the contrast that drives the jet stream.

So historically or climatologically, the jet stream is more active in winter and autumn. So that's when you're more likely to get storms. But you can still get vicious areas of low pressure in the spring and summer that can warrant a naming. And again, the criteria if the winds would be less because there's more people out and about. So they're going to have a bigger impact. Again, the trees are in leaf. So there's more people doing things at the beaches, you know, so a stronger wind is more likely to cause impacts and blow people out to see it and create those kind of problems.

So again, you have to take that into consideration as well. So the storms in spring and summer wouldn't be as intense in terms of windfall, on average, but they could cause as much problems because more people are out and about, etc. No one goes to Hank's for spreadsheets. They go for a darn good pizza. Lately, though, the shop's been quiet. So Hank decides to bring back the $1 slice. He asks co-pilot in Microsoft Excel to look at his sales and costs

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So why doesn't the UK experience storms as badly as some other regions of the world? I guess it depends. It's all relative, isn't it? I mean, it's like, I remember, whenever it's snow is in the UK. People say, well, you can't cope with the snow, but they get loads of it in Scandinavia, but they're used to it, right? But I remember seeing a centimeter of snow in Mexico a few years ago, and it caused absolute chaos there because they never get any snow. So it's all relative. Yes, the winds from our storms are not as powerful as they are from hurricanes. Now, hurricanes and typhoons are the same system, tropical cyclones, but they require, they're warmed from below. They require a warm sea. The sea temperature has to be 26 degrees or above.

for a hurricane to form. They are much more powerful beasts tend to be bigger than our low pressure systems as well and they're energized by that warm sea, their warm cord. So it's a different type of weather system. Now, we don't get that

because, as you know, if you've dipped your toe in the sea, anywhere around the UK, it ain't 26 degrees, not even in the height of summer. So we don't have those kind of sea surface temperatures so we don't get hurricanes in the UK. But we can get remnants of hurricanes

that get whipped up by the jet stream. So they're no longer a hurricane because they're not being powered by the sea. But they're still powerful storms and they get re-energized by the jet stream and head our way. And if we do get those, then the naming convention will continue.

So the hurricane center in the United States has named that particular storm because it was a hurricane, even though it's not a hurricane coming to hit the UK. Technically, we would still keep that name of that storm, called an ex-hurricane coming to the UK. And why do we name storms? We name storms simply to raise awareness, and we know it works.

It's all about letting people know. The whole point of the Met Office is to keep people safe since it was established in 1854. That was the whole reason behind the Met Office to keep people safe. And when we have these powerful wind systems coming in that are likely to cause disruption, the more notice we can give and the more we can let people know, then the more likely people are to take precautions and reduce the impact. You're never going to stop it having some impact. It's always going to bring down some trees or some power issues.

You can't wrap all the pylons in cotton wool. But you can prepare people for it. You can tell the power companies that this is coming. They can prepare their shift workers better. You can let people know if your journey isn't necessary, don't go out. That can really mitigate the impact of these storms. So we name them because that works across the media, particularly social media, in this day and age. And you put a hashtag on something.

it's far more likely to reach more people. We just put a normal tweet out. I don't know what the algorithm does, but it reaches only a tiny percentage of those people. But if you touch a hashtag to that, then that is going to trend and that is going to flow and that is going to have far more reach. And we know it works.

We've been naming storms since 2015, and the reach with these things just gets bigger and bigger. With the storms last year, last February, 2022, three storms in a week, storm units in particular, 98% of people were aware that there was a storm coming. in the red area. So these kind of statistics just really back up. That's why we do it. We don't do it because it's fun. We don't do it, you know, just to copy the Americans or to over-dramatized thing. It really is just to reach people and we know it works. So who gets to pick the name?

That's a good question. I get asked that question quite a lot. We often put out a call for name so anyone can suggest a name. So every few years we put out call, but we get thousands of suggestions, as you can imagine. So you can suggest a name at any time on our website. But every now and then we'll put out a call, get a new batch of names. We work with the Irish Weather Service and the Netherlands Weather Service as well, K&MI,

and we have to come up with the names together. So then there's a kind of a committee group and we have to share the names around. They have to be evenly spread so that reflecting Irish culture and Dutch culture as well as the culture within the UK. We tend to go boy girl, boy girl,

because that's what happens in the United States. And obviously we go through the alphabet also. And we miss out certain letters, again, to mimic what happens with the United States and the hurricane. So there's a big committee. It's quite technical. All the names have to be pronounceable. People have to kind of understand them. People have to go through them.

And it can take a bit of a time. But we also sometimes, in recent years, we've made it a bit more fun. So we've run polls on Twitter. We actually had a knockout competition for B this year. So we kind of had eight different B letters. and we had a poll and the top two went through to the to the semifinal and the final. And then we had a knockout and Betty won out on that case. But we haven't got there yet.

But hopefully when Betty comes along, she will be a storm worthy of that name. And finally, is climate change having an effect on storms? Is it making them worse? It's really, because we don't see that many storms and because they're so variable across the UK, it's really hard to pinpoint any changes that are happening with our storms. They said we had three in a week last year. We haven't had any over the past year. We've only been naming storms also since 2015.

So that's not a big enough sample to really plot any changes. And in terms of climate change, the jury is a little bit out about whether we'll see more of these storms or whether we'll see fewer of them because it's likely to impact the jet stream, because the jet stream may get weakened by a warmer north pole because the pole is warming up faster than the equator. So there's a lot of things really to iron out in terms of how, many storms we're like to see in our changing climate. What we do know is that when we see storms,

they are likely to be more intense or certainly bring bigger impacts in terms of rainfall. A warmer climate holds more moisture. So when it rains, it rains harder. So we are more likely to see bigger rainfall events from such things as storms and low pressure systems in general. So that is one aspect of it. The other one is actually a warming climate. Also means a warming sea. So I've touched on the fact that we have hurricanes, you know, need 26 degrees Celsius for them to breed and live. We haven't got there yet, and we're not likely to see that anytime soon with climate change. But a warming sea means these hurricanes are likely to travel further. And so we're more likely to see more of the remnants of storms as they get closer to the UK, still as hurricanes.

So we are more likely in that sense. But in terms of whether, you know, specifically we are going to see more storms as a direct result of climate change. That is an area of ongoing research. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius. That was meteorologist and weather forecaster Alex Deakin, talking about winter storms. The latest issue of BBC Science Focus magazine is out now. Pick up a copy and store or visit sciencefocus.com. This podcast is sponsored by Name, Audio and Focal.

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