In a UN speech today, President Trump said that "all of these [climate] predictions were wrong". Back in 2019 I led a research effort to digitize old climate model projections and assess how well they did. Turns out they got future warming pretty spot on!

It would be great if there were some sort of centralised review load system so editors could see how many reviews an individual has outstanding Speaking as someone who has been (relatively) barraged with review requests in the past few days

A chilly minimum of 3.1°C at Leuchars (northeast Fife) this morning. But another example of Leuchars' minima being brief and usually ~1°C below surrounding hourly reports. Lack of sustained cold air pooling due to a generally flat area, adjacent to estuary (turb flux)? www.ogimet.com/cgi-bin/gsyn...

Reviewers: if you are uploading your review as a PDF, it can be helpful to write the file name in your plain text comments (e.g. "Please see file 'Review_20250918.pdf'"). If all reviewers upload files, some systems require the Editor to add comments to make it clear which file is from which reviewer

It has been quite a mathsy week! Kicked off our third year (Junior Honours level) module with some rotating fluid dynamics 🌀 It all looks rather complex until scale analysis and several justifiable approximations make things quite a bit simpler 😀 (with thanks to Marshall & Plumb’s textbook)

We're hiring! We have an open search for an Assistant Professor in physics of the ocean and/or atmosphere in Columbia's Dept. of Earth and Environmental Sciences. Please circulate this information to good candidates, and apply yourself if you are one! Ad & link to apply: apply.interfolio.com/173819

Extremely low water levels today at Thruscross Reservoir, North Yorkshire (top reservoir in the Washburn Valley chain) 😯 Sustained wet conditions will be needed to refill reservoir stocks — a few rainy days might green things up, but much more will be needed to reverse this deficit.

I'm sure Leonhard Euler would approve of these automated lecture captions.

“Big D big T big D little t is equal to little d big T little d little t…” Kicking off the autumn semester with some geophysical fluid dynamics in the 9am slot this week. Good coffee might just be a class pre-requisite.

Last week, our 4th year Environmental Earth Science students were at Loch Etive, getting hands-on experience collecting data for investigating water column profiles & overturning events. Led by Drs James Barnet & @gmacgilchrist.bsky.social & supported back in the lab by @oceanicandrea.bsky.social.

Meet the motley crew of the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences – ready to kick off the new academic year! 🌍👋 Special mention to our Head of School, Prof. Rob Wilson, who is cleverly disguised a a responsible adult (the T-shirt says it all) 😅🤦‍♂ www.st-andrews.ac.uk/earth-scienc...

An evening rainbow over St Andrews today as students return, conversations among faculty become dominated by module codes, and a distinctly autumnal chill fills the air 🌈 🍂

The BBC are constantly fawning over Farage's every move despite Reform only having four MPs. Our national broadcaster should reflect the whole country, not just one man’s ego.

✍️ New article: "How Britain built some of the world’s safest roads" Decades ago, Britain’s roads were much more dangerous. Cars had no seatbelts, airbags, mirrors, or flashing indicators. Traffic signs and signals were rare, and speed limits and other rules were rarely enforced.

🌍 Welcome to Earth Sciences at St Andrews! 👋 A huge welcome to all our new students – and a big welcome back to our returning students! We’re thrilled to have you with us. Get ready to (re)discover the dynamic planet we call home – from rocks 🪨 to oceans 🌊 volcanoes 🌋and climate change 🌡️

Big congratulations to @mudwaterclimate.bsky.social & team on securing funding to launch the St Andrews Global Research Centre for Changing Climates! 🌍 📈 The centre will take an interdisciplinary approach, harnessing the breadth of expertise across St Andrews news.st-andrews.ac.uk/archive/the-...

Wrapped up a great week in Taipei with discussions at the Central Weather Administration regarding the development and implementation of their S2S model, and its ability to predict SSWs during winter 2024. Great to see the model improvement and future plans.

#Gibraltar #Levanter - 05/09 - it's a cracker this morning! 😍

🎉 Big news! Dr Hana Jurikova has won a €2.5 million @erc.europa.eu Starting Grant for CarbonDIOs – a groundbreaking project to reconstruct 500 million years of Earth's atmospheric CO2 & ocean pH. Well done Hana! This also marks our School's 5th ERC grant in 10 years! 🌍🔬🧪

A true pleasure to be visiting National Taiwan University this week, alongside Ioana Colfescu @ncas-uk.bsky.social, as part of our project on stratosphere-troposphere coupling & machine learning, funded jointly by @uniofstandrews.bsky.social & NTU. The hospitality and the food has been outstanding!

Meteorological summer ends on Sunday. But today I have officially marked the end of my summer, as I sent my first email to a bunch of our incoming @earthscista.bsky.social undergraduates for their sub-honours advising meetings. The autumn semester is looming like that wave in Interstellar

Would be interesting — but maybe depressing — to know what proportion of the UK public accept this statement. I can’t imagine the replies over on The Other Place

Simple answer: high rainfall on average doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem when it stops raining.

As summer fades in the Northern Hemisphere, the zonal-mean zonal winds at 10 hPa and 60°N have returned to westerly. The 2025–2026 Arctic stratospheric polar vortex is born.

Post-tropical cyclone Erin over the North Atlantic today. Erin is no longer tropical cyclone but has transitioned to a large extratropical cyclone - luckily its post-tropical intensification occurs over the ocean. MTG satellite image from @eumetsat.int: view.eumetsat.int/productviewe...

The Alaskan Ridge weather regime (AKR) will bring a strong contrast in temperatures across North America in the next few days – with a late blast of summer in the west and an early hint of autumn in the east. GEFS regimes forecasts: simonleewx.com/gefs_north_a...

If I tell you that the average August reservoir capacity is 75%, and this year it is “a quarter lower than normal”, how full is the reservoir? A) 50% (i.e., 75-25) B) 56% (i.e., 0.75 x 75)

Planned to write a paper this summer and somehow *actually wrote a paper* 😀 Although, to find the time to do that, I'm now behind on pretty much everything else... 🫣 #facultylife

🚨I’m excited to share that the final version of my first PhD paper is already published! With my amazing advisor, Maria Molina, we characterized the predictability of North American weather regimes.

“That wasn’t 18 years ago! It was only in 2007!… Oh wait…”

Sign AGU’s letter to defend climate science. 
The Trump administration has proposed overturning the EPA’s endangerment finding — the science-based determination that greenhouse gases threaten public health.

Regime forecast updates on my website missing/delayed due to a wider university IT issue beyond my control — sorry about that

Hurricanes were among the first phenomena that sparked my childhood interest in weather. Sometimes I have to take a step back and remind myself: the atmosphere is capable of truly awesome things. That’s true irrespective of human influence on the climate.

This is a remarkable image from the NOAA-P3 #Hurricane Hunters in #Erin. You can actually see the wind speed gradient by the color of the ocean as you go from extreme #eyewall winds to the relative calm of the #eye. Incredible images & data from @noaa.gov @nws.noaa.gov

Lightning flashes within a powerful, Category 4 Hurricane Erin. An incredible view this morning from GOES-19.

📸August 16: Images from the NOAA Hurricane Hunter and our NOAA Satellites Ocean Winds team show an intense eyewall in Hurricane #Erin This photo shows the ocean surface calm in the eye and roaring in the eyewall. For the latest forecast visit hurricanes.gov

Erin deepening so fast your ears would be continually popping if you were in the eye (maybe)

The answer is "no"! A rather poorly forecast period of the GH regime now beginning IFS: simonleewx.com/ecmwf_north_... GEFS: simonleewx.com/gefs_north_a...

Took under 24 hours to go from Tropical Storm to Category 4 Hurricane Erin

SEES scientists @drmichaelbyrne.bsky.social and @simonleewx.com among those who contributed to this year's State of the Climate update ⬇️

TROPOMI sensor on European Sentinel-5 satellite provisionally indicates max cloud top height of ~13-14km / ~200-150hPa in early stages of yesterday's Highland thunderstorm complex

Worth pointing out that thunderstorms and hail are very much not “unseasonal” in summer as reported here (hail isn’t wintry weather!) but quite dramatic scenes in Dundee and environs today www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Astonishing storm slamming straight into St Andrews now… heavy rain with some small hail. Photo 16:03

Storm northeast of St Andrews is roaring now with strong outflow and possible hail in there… photo 1552

Large thunderstorm near Dundee producing near constant rumbling, looking north from St Andrews at 1529

Happy to have contributed to this vital report for the third time – check out Chapter 5 "The Arctic" doi.org/10.1175/BAMS... And a huge well done to everyone in the US who worked on this during extremely difficult times for climate science

Feeling positively tropical in St Andrews today... Leuchars 1pm obs show 26.2°C with a 17.2°C dew point (that's 79/63 for the Americans) 🌴

Will summer 2025 end with no Greenland High regime days? Forecasts suggest it might: simonleewx.com/ecmwf_north_.... This would put 2025 in the company of 2024 and 2018, and in stark contrast to 2023 and 2019.

Climate deniers often enjoy pointing out that summertime Arctic sea ice extent has shown little declining trend in recent years, as though this is something climate scientists would like to hide. Of course, far from it! Nice paper from @markengland.bsky.social doi.org/10.1029/2025...