Abstract
AbstractThe U.K. Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS) is required to make, to those eligible, a single payment for additional fuel costs during a period of exceptionally severe weather. Previous methods of assessing exceptionally severe weather, criticized on a number of grounds by Social Security Commissioners, resulted in parliamentary debate and frequent press attention. Work on exceptionally severe weather in winter in Birmingham is presented here for the period since November 1959. Three measures of cold—mean daily temperature, degree days and windchill—are assessed for their usefulness in identifying exceptionally severe weather as a single day occurrence and/or as runs of days, during the winter months from November to March. Recommendations are made that thresholds based on probability of occurrence be used and that windchill is the best of the three measures which could be used in future winters. It is concluded that although climatologists can provide the necessary data, probability levels and parameters, it must be Parliament and the DHSS who must define ‘period’ and ‘exceptionally severe’. In either case the final decision can only be a political one.
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