Official blog of the Met Office news team

The European Space Agency (ESA) today confirmed the contractors for the long-awaited Vigil mission which will transform global space weather forecasting.

The confirmation of the building of the satellite is the next step in the process positioning a satellite with a side-on view of the Sun to provide enhanced space weather forecasting.

The Met Office Space Weather Operations Centre, now celebrating its tenth year in operation, is one of a number of centres that will benefit from the new satellite.

The Vigil mission, as it’s known among space weather scientists, will enhance space weather forecasting capabilities and help provide more notice for potentially impactful space weather events such as coronal mass ejections.

Mark Gibbs, who leads the Met Office Space Weather Operations Centre (MOSWOC), said: “The Vigil mission represents a step-change in space weather forecasting capability. As well as replacing aging satellites, this mission will help to improve our forecasting capability and deepen our scientific understanding of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that generate geomagnetic storms.”

Confirmation of the contract for the mission, which is being managed by the European Space Agency, represents the next milestone in the process of launching the new satellite by the end of this decade and will revolutionise imagery and data available to space weather forecasts.

Mark continued: “A side-on view of the Sun-Earth line is critical to provide accurate predictions of CME arrival at Earth. We’ll get access to more reliable, more advanced data to initialise models to predict CME arrival and also to monitor their progress as they head towards the Earth. We’ll be continuing to work with ESA to help ensure there’s as much benefit as possible to not just us at MOSWOC, but also to forecasting centres around the world. The Vigil mission will work in tandem with the current and future US missions stationed at L1.”

The news comes after geomagnetic storms two weeks ago brought aurora visibility to much of the UK in what was the strongest event since 2003 to impact Earth. While auroras provide immaculate photos, impactful space weather has the potential to affect everyone and is recognised on the UK’s National Risk Register. The ability to forecast these events can help to mitigate the worst impacts.

Find out more about the contract announcement.

Find out more about the Met Office Space Weather Operations Centre.

A new discussion paper from the Met Office and the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) highlights the practical challenges of understanding the performance of autonomous vehicles (AVs) in different weather conditions. 

The paper draws from an ongoing project conducted by the Met Office and NPL and is funded by the UK’s Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV). 

This Sensor Assurance Framework (SAF) project aims to create a reliable and usable framework for understanding how well AV perception sensors (the eyes and ears of the vehicle) perform in different weather-related conditions. When fully developed, this framework will support validation, safety assurance and simulation testing of AVs across the UK.   

Central to SAF project has been the Cardington weather-sensor testbed, which has accumulated over two years of detailed weather measurements and corresponding AV sensor measurements as they observe targets set up at varied distances in a wide range of weather conditions including fog, intense rainfall, clear and cloudy skies and direct sunlight. 

Met Office Observations Principal Consultant Dave Jones, who is part of the team leading the weather measurement side of the Cardington testing, said: “The effect of weather on sensor performance is very complex and it is challenging to reflect this when trying to capture the weather envelope for the AV as simply as possible. 

“This discussion paper gives examples of how this complexity reveals itself on our testbed and how we might begin to handle this by careful consideration of uncertainty.  We are very interested in hearing views from everyone in the wider AV community involved in safety assurance.” 

National Physical Laboratory’s Andre Burgess, who looks after strategic partnerships, said: “As well as the scientific and technical aspects of our joint SAF project, we are placing a huge emphasis on engagement with regulators, industry, standards bodies and academia to ensure that these testbed results make a positive difference to the AV industry and public safety.” 

The discussion paper comes as the Automated Vehicles Act became law this week and paved the way for self-driving vehicles to be possibly on the UK’s roads as soon as 2026.

Ongoing research 

The Met Office and NPL’s Sensor Assurance Framework research at Cardington has been undertaken for around two years, with the aim to test sensor performance against as many different weather types as possible, including rain, hail, sunshine and fog.  

The research so far demonstrates an observable relationship between weather conditions and sensor performance, though further study is needed to fully understand this area, including the impact of different locations, road surfaces, vehicle movements and a broader range of weather types. It’s hoped this research will help the autonomous vehicle industry to develop further in the coming years.  

The Met Office and NPL will continue collecting weather data and assessing sensor performance in the coming months, with a new testbed at NPL’s headquarters in Teddington and plans to develop a relocatable testbed which can be deployed in a wider range of weather conditions.  

The SAF principles also extend to marine autonomous vehicles. Plans are already well underway to build a demonstration testbed around Plymouth Sound UK, as part of the Maritime Autonomy Assurance Testbed (MAAT) project, which is lead by NPL and Lloyds Register with partners including the Met Office, Plymouth Marine Lab (PML), University of Plymouth, and Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG). 

Read the AV and weather discussion paper on the NPL website.  

Find out more about the Met Office’s services with Connected and Autonomous Vehicles.

Each year, from June-October, polar climate scientists from the Met Office produce a series of monthly sea ice briefings for the government and the general public. These briefings describe the state of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, compare how these relate to historic patterns, and, where possible, assess causes of unusual behaviour.

Sea ice is frozen seawater that floats on the surface of the ocean and is found when temperatures are cold enough for sea water to freeze. The extent of sea ice is a key climate indicator, because sea ice cover insulates the ocean in winter and reflects sunlight in summer, as well as providing a habitat for a range of species. 

Here, Senior Scientist Alex West talks about the 2023 Antarctic sea ice minimum and its interaction with the ocean and atmosphere.

Lowest sea ice extent on record

Antarctic average sea ice extent for 2023 was the lowest on record. During the ice growth season from June-October, ice extent was exceptionally low for the time of year, reaching over 1 million square km below previous record lows and setting a new record low maximum extent by a very large margin. For much of the rest of the year, the ice was at record or near-record low levels, recording a second successive record low minimum in February (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Antarctic sea ice extent in 2023 (bold black line) with other recent years indicated, as well as earlier years with notably low sea ice extent. The 1981-2010 average is also shown, with the shaded region indicating 2 standard deviation intervals.

The very low extent from June-October was partly caused by enhanced warm northerly winds, associated with persistent areas of high and low pressure (Ionita, 2024). Early in the ice growth season, from May-July, these were concentrated near the Antarctic Peninsula, in the Weddell and Bellingshausen Sea regions; later in the growth season, from August-October, the strongest winds were to be found further west, in the Ross Sea. The position of the lowest sea ice conditions changed similarly.

However, it is likely that the ocean also played a part. The low extent of 2023 continues a pattern of very high variability in Antarctic sea ice since 2007, with first high and then low sea ice conditions persisting for long periods of time, in a way unlikely to be caused by known atmospheric changes (Hobbs et al., 2024). A key moment in this period of high variability was a large reduction that occurred in 2016, and this is thought to be linked to changes in the upper ocean caused by stronger westerly winds mixing warmer waters below towards the surface (Earys et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2022). Further mixing of warm waters cannot be ruled out as an additional cause of the very low extent of 2023.

The precise contribution of anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming to the record low sea ice of 2023 is not yet known. While climate models predict that Antarctic sea ice extent will decrease in response to anthropogenic warming, variability in the past 15 years has been considerable, with very high extent from 2012-2014 followed by the current period of very low extent (Figure 2). Further extreme variability in either direction remains possible in the years ahead.

Figure 2. Antarctic sea ice monthly anomalies over the period of satellite observations. For each month, the 1981-2010 average ice extent for that month is subtracted. This largely removes the seasonal cycle so that subtler long-term changes can be viewed more easily.

During April we are exploring the topic of the ocean and climate. Follow the #GetClimateReady hashtag on X (formerly Twitter) to learn more throughout the month.

References

Eayrs, C., X. Li, M.N. Raphael and D.M. Holland (2021) Rapid decline in Antarctic sea ice in recent years hints at future change. Nat. Geosci., 14, 460–464. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00768-3

Hobbs, W., and Coauthors (2024): Observational Evidence for a Regime Shift in Summer Antarctic Sea Ice. J. Climate, 37, 2263–2275, https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-23-0479.1

Ionita M (2024) Large-scale drivers of the exceptionally low winter Antarctic sea ice extent in 2023. Front. Earth Sci. 12:1333706, https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2024.1333706

Zhang, L., T.L. Delworth, X. Yang, F. Zeng, F. Lu, Y. Morioka and M. Bushuk (2022) The relative role of the subsurface Southern Ocean in driving negative Antarctic Sea ice extent anomalies in 2016–2021. Commun. Earth Environ., 3, 302. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-022-00624-1

A map of Antarctica showing the Antarctic Peninsula separated by the Bellingshausen and Weddell Seas. Map: Adobe Stock.

Meteorological spring kicked off with a mild and wet month of weather for the UK, with southern areas particularly wet compared to average.  

Although it’s felt like it hasn’t stopped raining for many, no national records have been broken and March 2024 will go down as a wet and dull month, according to provisional statistics from the Met Office.  

Wetter than average 

The UK experienced 27% more rainfall than an average March, with much of this concentrated in the south. A number of counties saw at least double the amount of rainfall they would expect for the month, including Cornwall, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Wiltshire and Worcestershire. 

Although Scotland experienced widespread rain throughout the month, it was drier than average, especially in northern and western areas.  

A mild month 

The month started cooler than average, with some snow falling early on. But this cool weather was soon replaced with milder conditions for much of the rest of the month, with only brief cooler interludes at times.   

Overall, the provisional mean temperature for the UK was 6.7°C, 1.0°C above average. Southern England was much milder than areas further north, with a mean temperature of 8.2°C (1.4°C above average). Scotland was the coolest region, recording an average temperature of 5.0°C – just 0.6°C above average.  

England provisionally recorded the seventh-warmest March on record in a series from 1884, with an average temperature of 7.8°C.  

Met Office Scientist Emily Carlisle said: “Many will remember how wet March has been, with a succession of fronts and the influence of low pressure seemingly never too far away from the UK. Coming off the back of a wet winter and what has been a wet start to the year, many areas have very saturated ground, which has increased the sensitivity to rainfall events in recent weeks.”  

Sunshine in short supply 

Many of us have been looking forward to some welcome spring sunshine however, as you’d expect with the frequent rain, sunshine amounts have been in disappointingly short supply during March.  

The UK recorded just 95.2 hours of sunshine for the month (87% of the long-term average). Scotland was the only region to have seen more than its average, with 4% extra sunshine hours than the average.