It's been rather warm these past few days, albeit with relatively strong winds and heavy rain, because why not? At the time of writing (06/07/2023), the BBC thinks it will be 29°C tomorrow in London.
Finally - temperatures at about 30°C (again) this year. Already news articles have been written about this milestone in weather temperatures this year and whether it will only get hotter. Indeed, climate change continues to be a concern - the Met Office stated this year's June was the hottest on record, with an average temperature of 15.8°C - the whole of the UK got warmer this June than last June.
But what about July? Granted, 29°C isn't blisteringly hot, and temperatures will soon revert to around 22°C in the upcoming two weeks (so says the BBC at least in London), but it's always interesting to see how warm it could be this year round. One way to do this is to compile historical data from a weather station, say Heathrow, and calculate the mean temperature in July since records began (in this case, since 1948). You can obviously adjust the recordings by weather station here on the Met Office's website. You take the average daily maximum temperature and the average daily minimum temperature, and take the mean of the two, for the monthly mean temperature (so the Met Office say). Here is the data (all to 1 decimal place):
Lots of variation (as expected) with a steady increase as time goes on. The R^2 value is 0.256, which indicates positive correlation of some sorts. The warmest July in Heathrow was in 2006 (22.5°C), followed by 2018 (22.5°C), 1983 (21.8°C), 2022 (21.4°C) and 2013 (21.1°C). Twelve Julys broke the 20°C barrier. The coldest July on record (since 1948 (according to Heathrow)) was in 1954 and 1965, at 15.5°C.
The average temperature of a July is...18.3°C (since 1948) and 19.4°C (since 2003, over the last twenty years).
All data for Heathrow (and more) here.
Obviously, however, this average monthly data should be taken with a pinch of salt: warmer days, such as the 40°C recorded in the UK last year in July, can occur at any time.
So expect temperatures to continue being warm this month. Whilst there's a low chance of temperatures reaching 40°C this month - the BBC claims the 19th July in London will be only 23°C warm, and rain is instead very likely to continue - there's always a chance this July could prove to be warmer than many Julys before it.
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