Scotland East Climate – Sep 2026September 2026 Update

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

Braemar in Aberdeenshire, in this region, has recorded -27.2°C twice - in 1895 and again in 1982 - jointly the lowest temperature ever measured anywhere in the UK. It fell to -23°C again in February 2021.

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

The 1953 surge ran down this coast overnight on 31 January, killing nineteen people in eastern Scotland with damage from Dundee to Aberdeen. It is described as probably the most devastating storm to hit Scotland in 500 years.

The Conversation, Royal Meteorological Society, Wikipedia, Wikipedia (2)

UK Clean Air Act

Scotland was covered by the Clean Air Act 1956, which carried its own schedule of adapted Scottish provisions, bringing smoke control areas and curbs on domestic coal burning - the start of the long fall in British aerosol pollution that later unmasked greenhouse warming.

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

The Big Freeze of 1962-63

Braemar fell to -22.2°C on 18 January 1963, the coldest reading of the winter. Eastern Scotland's own coldest year on record is 1919 rather than 1963 - unlike England, where the Big Freeze year still holds that place.

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 1976 UK drought

The Aberdeen area had its warmest summer since at least 1864 in 1976, the eastern Scottish end of the driest 16 months across the UK in over 200 years.

Royal Meteorological Society, Met Office, Royal Meteorological Society (2)

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. Its most damaging winds struck further south as it moved away to the south-east, killing 47 people - more than twice the toll of the Great Storm of 1987 - and bringing down around 3 million trees.

Met Office, Royal Meteorological Society

August 1990 UK heatwave breaks 79-year record

Leuchars in Fife reached 30.8°C on 2 August 1990 - eastern Scotland's contribution to a spell that set new maximum records from here to the Isle of Wight.

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

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)

Greycrook in the Scottish Borders reached 32.9°C on 9 August 2003 - Scotland's own record from the event, set in this region.

Met Office / ONS, Impact of the 2003 heat wave on daily…

Summer 2007 UK floods

Scotland was among the first places hit when the summer 2007 floods began on 14 June. Two months of flooding followed, falling hardest further south: across the UK it killed 13 people, flooded more than 55,000 homes and businesses and caused about £6.5 billion of damage.

Wikipedia / GOV.UK flood cost report, Met Office

Negative NAO blocking cluster, 2009-2013

December 2010 was the coldest December on record across the UK, and eastern Scotland sat under the same blocked pattern - high pressure over Greenland steering Arctic air south. Scotland's low that winter, -21.3°C, came at Altnaharra in the far north.

4byo, Met Office, WikipediaNAO Tracker

Start of the sustained rise in UK heatwave frequency

Eastern Scotland has the lowest heatwave count in the UK, but it is rising on the same curve as everywhere else: a decade mean of 2.25 Heatwave Days in the 2000s, 4.59 in the 2010s and 8.66 so far in the 2020s - close to a quadrupling.

Met Office, State of the UK Climate

UK's post-2013 warmth acceleration

5 of eastern Scotland's 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2013, with 2025 the warmest - a weaker clustering than England's 8 of 10, and typical of how the signal thins northwards.

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. In Scotland East the pattern is weaker: only four of its eleven warmest fall in that span, with 2014, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003 and 1997 outside it. Its warmest year is 2025. The warming is in Scotland East's record; it simply arrives in a different order.

Learn more →

Scotland's wettest winter on record, 2015-16

Winter 2015-16 (December to February) brought this region 628mm of rain, 210% of the 1961-90 average - its wettest winter since this site's Met Office regional record begins in 1901. Scotland as a whole had its wettest winter on record, at 737 mm.

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

The Beast from the East

The 'Beast from the East' brings 21cm of snow to Gogarbank, Edinburgh - the deepest March snow in the city since 1979 (25cm at Turnhouse); 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 was eastern Scotland's wettest February in this site's Met Office record from 1900 - 211.7mm, more than two and a half times its 1961-90 average, just ahead of 1990's 204.4mm - 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's national temperature record was set in this region: 35.1°C at Floors Castle in the Borders on 19 July 2022, in the heatwave that 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