Dear Paul and colleagues
As climate change officer for Cumbria County Council, one of my roles is to try and gather information about some of the trends (means and extremes) of weather in our County which might then inform how we consider planning to adapt both to existing weather threats and also to the possibilities / probabilities of increasing occurrences of weather extremes and changing means (rainfall, drought, cloud, wind, sun and so on).
I have read some of the debate on the forum pages about global warming with interest, though I do not have the time to involve myself in it. I must leave this to other scientists.
I'd like to concentrate instead on establishing if there is anyone in the County or in your network who might be able to gather up some information over the last 30 + years which indicates when and what occurred in terms of extreme events, and also of any 'significant' changes in mean temp / seasonal rainfall etc.
We have been in contact with the Met Office who were exceptional in their lack of response!
In any case, we prefer to use local experts if possible.
We recognise that gathering up such information could be a little time consuming (though perhaps someone has this at their fingertips already?)! Either way, we have a small pot of 'thank you' funds to dedicate towards meteorological equipment, training, software or similar for anyone or for a network that can provide this information.
The end goal is to produce a Local Climate Impact Profile which is likely to be a very high level (data wise) picture of the nature of extreme and mean weather events in our County ove the past 30+ years.
Clearly we have the UKCIP 09 projections to help, but these are not as comprehensive and detailed as we would like, if possible.
Please could you pass this email on to any of your colleagues who might wish to help. The work would be aknowledged in any documentation and reports and of course, we would be happy to discuss the 'thank you' 'donation' to whoever helps.
Many thanks
Phil Davies 01228 221032
phil.r.davies@cumbriacc.gov.uk