From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

As I reported earlier, it was one of the sunniest springs on record this year as well as the warmest. Are the two things related?

I have charted the average of daily max temperatures and sunshine hours in England, and there appears to be a good correlation:

A co-efficient of 0.69 is strong. In short, sunnier weather correlates with warmer weather.

This is not surprising, as the Met Office themselves found exactly the same thing in a 2006 study:

The daily max is strongly correlated, but there is also a weaker correlation with daily mins. There is no evidence, in other words, that clearer skies result in colder nights during spring.

As the Met Office also suggested, the extra sunshine could be linked to reduced air pollution.

That Met Office study has since been buried and is only archived on Wayback.