I have now completed 10 days or weather recording thats over 3600 observations !

below is a basic Max/Min chart for the last 10 years. In the short term my mere 10years is just a blip and shows, in my opionon no obvious trend. If anyone knows how to add a trend line on a MS Excel spreadsheet please let me know.

Paul,
your chart looks good, noticed one trend, each year it goes up+down!
10yrs dedicated work - congratulations - is all of that 10yrs for the Met'O as well?
You won't be surprised to hear that I don't know how to do the trend line.

I think if you were to plot the daily mean temperature you would see the lack of trend more clearly. You can *almost* see it in the white spaces between the max and min graphs. Looks just to be a smooth sine-wave with no trend.
Regards
Rod
SCotby Village

Daily Mean ? - something I hadnt thought of, I,m sure the spreadsheet can work it ourr for me, not sure how to go about it. May leave this one for a while.

great graph paul, dont seem to be much trend either way, you could always just draw a hockey stick over it keep up the good work.

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

I'll go first
MY GOD - 'climate change officer for Cumbria County Council' - another one of these 'non jobs' that very regretably WE are having to pay for.
I didn't know that you and your role existed, but really I shouldn't be surprised because there is literally thousands of you in local/regional/national gov't and then the quango's, etc all doing 'very important jobs' which no doubt entails spending as much time justifying your existance as it does doing your 'work'.
Unfortunately a job that adds nothing and contributes nothing.
I have always maintained that the only good thing about the current recession is that when the necessary cuts are made it will (if there is a god and I believe that there is) your job and others like it will be the first to go.
I see that the Met'O have helped you, you may want to add a comment on that very topic within this forum

If anyone has any information that might be used to determine the frequency and or / intensity of extreme weather events in Cumbria, albeit relying on a limted data set, I would still be most grateful in receiving this and discussing it with you.
There are many homes, businesses and livelihoods in Cumbria which would find this information of comfort, whether it pointed to no meaningful trends, to increasing or decreasing frequencies. I have no doubt that the people of Cockermouth and Workington would be especially appreciative. The hope is that we will be able to draw up an evidence based risk register, rather than use guess work......an approach I'm sure you espouse.
I respect that much of your work and that of the network is dedicated to data and statistical analysis, so it seems sensible to be approaching you first.
In response to your sugestion that my post is pointless, I'm happy to report that I'm in the final stage of securing £16million to support low income families in 'hard to treat' solid walled properties across Cumbria through insulating their homes, something that I hope will allow them to heat their homes more affordably. It'll also secure jobs for up to 30 Cumbrians. My post also focuses on supporting local economies and developing energy security, an issue I am aware that Maulds Maeburn is investigating through the potential harnessing of anaerobic digestion.
As I said, I would be grateful if anyone can help. However, if it's only abuse you wish to offer, I will take it that at least some of the Cumbria Weather Forum aren't interested in informing the public and I will leave you to your work.
Thank you
Phil Davies

Please accept my reassurance that that wasn't abuse in my last post and neither was it intended to be abuse. I would be terribly disappointed if that is what you thought it was.