Scotland weather: From Hottest June to Storm Babet

2023 was nevertheless a year in which the impact of weather, and its backdrop of climate change, was felt. Months of ‘marine heatwave’ and storms that lashed the country and blocked roads, were part of its story – as was the Cannich wildfire which, in May, burnt through 6 square mile of the Highlands, including the RSPB Corrimony nature reserve. 

A drier-than-normal winter and spring segued into a June that was the hottest on record in Scotland. Temperatures, the Met Office noted, were above average in all areas of the UK,  with “parts of western Scotland having mean maximum temperatures as much as 4 °C above average”.

By the end of June, five areas of Scotland were at the highest level of water scarcity alert – among them Loch Maree, rivers Annan and Nith, the Black Isle and Western Isles.

Cannich wildfire

The drought wasn’t created solely by the searing heat of June. Also to blame were he low levels of rain in a spring in which the Highland region of Scotland saw its eighth driest May since 1890. Rainfall totals for spring were also below average for northwest Scotland.

Meanwhile, heat was a story in the water as well as the air, the sea as well as the land. One of the most severe marine heatwaves on the planet has developed off the coast of Ireland and the UK. Water temperatures reported off Scotland have been as high as 4-5°C above normal.

It was so anomalously warm in our famously chill waters that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Marine Heatwave Watch has categorised this as a Category 4 (extreme) marine heatwave.

And more such heatwaves are expected. Professor Michael Burrows, a world expert on marine heatwaves working at the Scottish Association of Marine Science said: “Marine heatwaves are becoming more frequent and more intense. Climate change is likely to make everything much worse, till the point that at some point in the next five or six decades, we will be in a permanent heatwave”.

Still, one thing you can be sure about is that the weather in Scotland will change – and, as we entered June, the summer went from ’heatwave to washout’. In July as parts of southern Europe burned up and the first three weeks of July became the hottest three-week period so far globally, the UK had a month that was, as the Met Office put it, “unseasonably wet and windy”.

Then came the September heatwave. But, it was in October that Scotland really got its blast of memorable and difficult weather, our stand-out meteorological event of 2023, in Babet, a storm in which two weeks of rain was seen in hours.

Storm Babet hits Stonehaven. Image: Andrew Milligan PA

As the Met Office put it: “Scotland bore the brunt of Atlantic frontal systems and associated rainfall. This included some exceptionally wet weather on 6th and 7th from an 'atmospheric river' event. Scotland overall received 64.1mm in these two days, making this its wettest 2- day period on record.”

Dramatic scenes swamped the news and social media: giant hay bales swept along the River Aray; cars marooned in the flooded car park at Oban Tesco; the A9 running like a causeway between fields of water; landslides covering the A83 and A85. People were airlifted to safety, crops were destroyed, roads cut off, basements flooded, and two people tragically died.

The county of Angus recorded its wettest day on record in a series from 1891. The town of Brechin’s defences were overtopped by the river Esk. Around 30,000 homes in northern Scotland lost power.

Whilst river levels did not exceed historic recorded highs, hydrometry measures were described as “mindblowing.” The storms were also estimated to be Scotland’s costliest in terms of insurance. But the damage they did, perhaps, didn’t quite match the Muckle Spate of Strathspey, one of the most catastrophic floods in UK history, which took place in 1829, and saw bridges washed away and 600 people left homeless.

St Abbs during Storm Babet

But it wasn’t just the power of Babet that was the problem; it was how long it was with us. Storms normally move west to east, but this, unusually, was tracking south to north, and became stuck, unable to clear eastward into the North Sea, because it was blocked by an area of high pressure across Scandinavia. It lingered.

It has been estimated that Storm Babet would likely emerge as Scotland’s most costly weather event. Last month, the Association of British Insurers said they expected to pay out an estimated £560 million following the autumn’s storms across the UK, adding up to more than any other recent storm events.

The storm left Scotland with a new feeling of urgency around adaptation and the need to make secure road routes like the Rest and Be Thankful and adapt to the increasing frequency of extreme weather events predicted to be associated with climate change. At the start of December Angus homes and businesses affected by flooding during Storm Babet can now apply for aid as part of a Scottish government funding package.

Whether Storm Babet, and some of the other weather events of 2023, can be attributed to climate change has not yet been determined, but what research has shown is that such extreme events are likely to become more common as the world heats.

Reports published last week by the James Hutton Institute, revealed findings that Scotland’s climate is changing faster than predicted, with changes expected to see over the next three decades already happening now. “Climate extremes,” one of the reports said, “have already changed and are projected to increase: longer dry periods; heavier rain in winter."

Globally, it’s almost certain that this has been the warmest year on record. Climate Central reported that the twelve months between November 1, 2022 and November 1 2023 were Earth’s hottest on record. Over this period, the global average temperature was 1.3°C (2.3°F) above pre-industrial temperatures.

But the streak is not over. El Nino is still with us, and the Met Office outlook for global temperature suggests 2024 will be a further record-breaking year, expected to exceed 2023.

The 1.5C landmark is round the corner and the Met Office is predicting it could arrive next year. “For the first time, we are forecasting a reasonable chance of a year temporarily exceeding 1.5°C,” said Dr Nick Dunstone at the Met Office.

“A temporary exceedance of 1.5°C won’t mean a breach of the Paris agreement [in which the world agreed to try to prevent global temperatures exceeding 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels],” said Dunstone. “But the first year above 1.5°C would certainly be a milestone in climate history.”