The last 12 months made up Britain’s second-warmest year since records began, the Met Office has said.
They included the warmest April and Spring on record - and the second warmest Autumn. The highest single-day temperature for October was also broken, with Gravesend in Kent notching up 29.9 degrees on October 1, beating the previous record of 29.4 set at March in Cambridgeshire in 1985.
The top temperature of the year was 33.1 degrees on 27 June at Gravesend. Britain's hottest-ever mark came in 2003, again in Gravesend, when 38.1 degrees was reached.
All of the UK's top seven warmest years have happened in the last decade.
- The Met Office also noted ‘marked variations in rainfall’.
Scotland had its wettest year since records began, but some parts of England have had very low levels of rainfall. East Anglia had its second driest year on record and the Midlands its third driest.
- Water watch: On 23 December, the government granted a drought order to South East Water to help it protect Ardingly reservoir in Sussex after water levels dropped to 12% by the end of November. The water company said an "exceptionally dry" September, October and November had "raised the urgency of the situation".
- Temperatures in December have been close to average overall, despite many reports of Spring-like phenomena. The mean temperature was 4.7 degrees Celsius (40.5 degrees Fahrenheit), 0.5 above the 1971-2000 average although a far cry from 2010, when temperatures were 5 degrees below average during the coldest-ever end to a year."It may be that the stark change from last year, which was the coldest December on record for the UK, has led many to think it has been unseasonably warm," said John Prior, national climate manager at the Met Office.
- trevor farrer - 04/01/2012
it will be interesting to see what the global temperatures were in 2011.