Scotland Climate – Sep 2026September 2026 Update

Scotland's coldest-ever temperatures (Braemar/Altnaharra)

Scotland's lowest-ever recorded temperature, -27.2°C, has occurred three times: Braemar (1895 and 1982) and Altnaharra (1995). More recently, Braemar hit -23°C in February 2021 - the lowest UK February temperature since 1955.

Met Office

Post-WWII industrial expansion begins

After the Second World War, coal and oil use grew rapidly across Europe, North America and the Soviet Union. Global sulphur dioxide emissions rose from about 30 to about 130 million tonnes a year by 1980, and the sulphate haze they formed masked part of the greenhouse warming underneath - the effect known as 'global dimming'.

Klimont et al. 2013

The North Sea Flood of 1953

Nineteen people are killed in eastern Scotland - described as probably the most devastating storm to hit Scotland in 500 years, with the surge crossing between Orkney and Shetland and damage from Dundee to Aberdeen and Inverness. The Stranraer-Larne ferry Princess Victoria also sank the same night with the loss of 135 lives, Scotland's worst ferry disaster.

Wikipedia

UK Clean Air Act

Scotland was covered by the 1956 Act, which carried its own schedule of adapted Scottish provisions - unlike Northern Ireland, which the Act did not extend to at all and which had to legislate separately in 1964.

The National Archives, Clean Air Act 1956, The Clean Air Act 1964 (Appointed Day)…

The Big Freeze of 1962-63

Scotland reached -19.4°C at Achany, Sutherland on 11 January 1963 and -22.2°C at Braemar on 18 January, and Glasgow had its first white Christmas since 1938. Scottish records do not run back as far as Central England's, but 1813-14, 1878-79 and 1779-80 were all colder here than 1962-63 - so the 'coldest since 1740' framing is a Central England record, not a Scottish one.

Wikipedia, Wikipedia (2), Royal Meteorological Society, Norfolk Live

Agung eruption

Agung's eruption in Bali put a veil of sulphate haze into the stratosphere that cooled global temperature by about 0.3°C over 1963-66.

Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program, NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory

The Glasgow Hurricane

Hurricane-force winds gusting to 130mph cross Glasgow and central Scotland overnight on 14-15 January 1968, killing 20 people. Over 300 Glasgow houses are destroyed and 70,000 damaged - half the city's council stock - with damage across Scotland put at £30 million at 1968 prices. It is still described as Scotland's worst natural disaster in living memory.

Wikipedia, ScotlandsPeople

The 1976 UK drought

Scotland's own summer was the warmest in the Aberdeen area since at least 1864, and Glasgow's driest since 1868 - part of the wider 1976 UK drought.

Wikipedia

Global SO2 emissions peak

Global sulphur dioxide emissions peak at about 130 million tonnes a year, then begin a long decline as Europe, North America and Japan clean up their air. As the aerosol mask thins, the rate of global warming picks up through the 1980s.

Klimont et al. 2013

El Chichón eruption

A sulphur-rich eruption in Mexico whose aerosol cloud stayed in the stratosphere for more than two years, cooling the Northern Hemisphere by about 0.2°C.

Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program

The UK's strongest recorded wind

A gust of 173mph (150.3 knots) is recorded at Cairn Gorm summit on 20 March 1986 - the strongest wind ever measured in the United Kingdom. The low-level record followed three years later: 142mph at Fraserburgh in Aberdeenshire on 13 February 1989.

The Sunday Post

Daytime warming catches up with the night-led pattern

Across 1961-90, 81% of the world's land saw nights warming faster than days. Across 1991-2020 the pattern reversed: 70% saw days warming faster, as the industrial haze that had been dimming daytime sunshine was cleaned up. The study compares two fixed thirty-year windows; measured as a turning point, this site's own global series turns around 1982.

Zhong et al. 2023

The Burns' Day Storm

The depression that became the Burns' Day Storm crossed southern Scotland on the morning of 25 January 1990 before its damaging winds spread south into England and Wales. Scotland took the storm's track but not the worst of its gusts, which strengthened as the system moved away to the south-east. 1990 is Scotland's wettest year in 126 years of regional record.

Met Office, Royal Meteorological Society

August 1990 UK heatwave breaks 79-year record

The August 1990 heatwave reaches 30.8°C at Leuchars, Fife (2 August) - Scotland's own contribution to the UK's record-breaking spell, whose 37.1°C at Cheltenham broke the national record for the first time in nearly 80 years.

Wikipedia, history.co.uk, Met Office

Positive NAO phase dominates the 1990s

Scotland feels a positive NAO more strongly and more reliably than anywhere else in the UK. The strengthened south-westerly flow of the 1990s drove moist Atlantic air straight onto the western uplands, where orographic uplift turns it into rain - which is why western Scotland records the highest totals of any part of Britain in these winters.

Hurrell 1995, Science, Atmosphere, 2021, Frontiers, 2022NAO Tracker

The New Year's Day storm of 1992

Widely regarded as the most powerful storm to hit the UK in reliable records, the New Year's Day storm of 1992 strikes Scotland hardest and the Northern Isles hardest of all. Shetland takes widespread structural damage and two people are killed.

Wikipedia

1993 River Tay flood

Snowmelt from blizzards six days earlier, on top of heavy overnight rain, drives the Tay to a peak flow of 2,268 m³/s at Ballathie on 17 January 1993 - the highest river flow ever recorded in the UK. The river rises 6.48m above normal, around 50 km² of farmland floods, more than 1,500 people leave their homes and damage reaches about £10 million. Perth's flood defences, finished in 2001, followed.

State of the Coast (Scotland), Wikipedia, Dundee Hydrology

Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation flips to a warm phase

The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation flipped to a warm phase in 1995. For the UK it is one of the background rhythms sitting underneath the warming trend: warm AMO phases are associated with warmer North Atlantic surface waters on the UK's doorstep, and have been linked to wetter summers in parts of north-west Europe. It is a natural cycle of roughly 60-70 years, so it shifts the baseline rather than driving the long-term trend - which matters when reading any UK record set since the mid-1990s.

Learn more →

August 2003 European heatwave (UK)

The August 2003 heatwave reaches 32.9°C at Greycrook, Scottish Borders (9 August) - Scotland's own record from the event.

Wikipedia

Summer 2007 UK floods

The summer 2007 floods reached Scotland first, on 14 June, but England and Wales took the worst of them: 13 deaths, more than 55,000 homes and businesses flooded and about £6.5 billion of damage, with May to July the wettest such spell in the England and Wales series since 1766.

Wikipedia / GOV.UK flood cost report, Met Office

Negative NAO blocking cluster, 2009-2013

Altnaharra in Sutherland fell to -21.3°C on 2 December 2010 - the coldest temperature recorded anywhere in the UK that winter - as blocked, negative-NAO conditions steered Arctic air south over Scotland. Heavy blizzards closed roads across the country that month.

4byo, Met Office, WikipediaNAO Tracker

Start of the sustained rise in UK heatwave frequency

Scotland's own Heatwave Days count rose from a decade mean of 3.43 days in the 2000s to 5.19 in the 2010s, and 11.25 so far in the 2020s - the same sustained UK-wide acceleration, though more moderate in Scotland's own data than England's.

Met Office, State of the UK Climate

UK's post-2013 warmth acceleration

5 of Scotland's own 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2013 - a real but more moderate version of the UK-wide acceleration (7 of the UK's own top 10).

Met Office, State of the UK Climate

2015-2025: the eleven warmest years on record

Globally, the eleven warmest years on record have all happened since 2015. Scotland's own record is a looser fit - five of its eleven warmest fall in that span, with 2014, 2007, 2006, 2004, 2003 and 1997 outside it. Its warmest year is 2025.

Learn more →

Scotland's wettest winter on record, 2015-16

737 mm of rain fell over December, January and February - Scotland's wettest winter in 126 years of record. The previous record, 731 mm, had been set just two years earlier in 2013-14, so Scotland's two wettest winters on record fell within a three-year span. The margin between them is under 6 mm, which is narrow enough that the pair matters more than the order.

State of the Coast (Scotland) / Met…, Met Office UK regional series (Scotland

The Beast from the East

The 'Beast from the East' brings 49cm of snow to Drumalbin, near Lanark - a March snowfall record for the area - and the coldest March day on record for Glasgow, Ayr, Shetland and Orkney; two deaths are reported in Scotland. It followed a sudden stratospheric warming in mid-February that split the polar vortex.

MarkVoganWeatherPolar Vortex Tracker

Low-sulphur shipping fuel rule (IMO 2020)

New international shipping rules cut the sulphur allowed in ship fuel from 3.5% to 0.5% almost overnight, removing about 8 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide a year. With less sulphate haze over the oceans, it may have added around 0.1°C of warming by 2023-24.

Gettelman et al. 2024

The Stonehaven flash floods and derailment

Thunderstorms sweep eastern Scotland on 11-12 August 2020, flooding Aberdeenshire, Falkirk, Fife and Perth. A landslip triggered by the rainfall derails a train near Stonehaven, killing three people - the first passenger fatalities in a UK derailment since 2007.

SEPA

The UK's wettest February on record, 2020

February 2020 brought Scotland 277.3mm of rain, more than two and a half times its 1961-90 average - its second-wettest February in this site's Met Office record from 1900, behind 1990's 289.5mm - as Storms Ciara, Dennis and Jorge followed one another in on a strong, southward-shifted jet stream.

Davies et al. (2021), Carbon Brief / Met Office, NOAA CPCPolar Vortex / AO

Storm Arwen

A rare Met Office red warning is issued as Storm Arwen drives northerly gales down the east coast on 26 November 2021. Around 225,000 Scottish properties lose power, some for over a week, three people are killed across the UK, and Scotland's forests take large-scale damage.

Wikipedia, Scottish Government

The UK's first 40°C day

Scotland set a new national temperature record of 35.1°C at Floors Castle in the Borders on 19 July 2022 - the same day England took the UK past 40°C for the first time.

Met Office review (via Carbon Brief), Met Office, Wikipedia, Met Office (2)

Storm Babet / wettest October on record (Eastern Scotland)

Eastern Scotland's wettest October in a series back to 1836 - 235.9mm, 82% above average, driven by Storm Babet on already-saturated ground.

Met Office

Storm Éowyn

Scotland's Central Belt took the brunt of Storm Éowyn in Great Britain on 24 January 2025, under a Met Office red warning: gusts widely topped 80mph, and the UK's highest gust, 100mph, came at Drumalbin in Lanarkshire. The Met Office called it the UK's most powerful windstorm for over a decade.

Wikipedia, Met Office, Met Office (2)