In this issue of Weather

Abstract

We begin this issue on p. 207 with an examination of heatwaves and their occurrence in Poland since 1950. In ‘The August 2015 mega-heatwave in Poland in the context of past events’ by Agniewska Krzyźewska and Jamie Dyer, the effects of high summer temperatures and the occurrence of heatwaves in this central European country with a high degree of continentality are discussed. On p. 215, Rodney Hale gives us a fascinating brief overview of unusual electrical phenomena in ‘Rare, anomalous non-transient lights associated with cumulonimbus Clouds’. Through much of the history of meteorological observation, recording instruments produced graphical charts (and this is still the case from some instruments). Tilting syphon rain gauges have been an important method of recording rainfall rates and quantities, but they use daily, weekly or monthly charts which have to be changed at these intervals and that do not provide a digital record that can be used and stored readily. ‘Open-source tool for interactive digitisation of pluviograph strip charts’ by Nejc Sušin and Peter Peer provides a description of freely available software that can be used to extract both rainfall amounts and their rates as digital records from these charts on p. 222. Although there is a well-established observations system for hurricanes in the Atlantic and eastern Pacific Oceans, this a developing science for typhoons in the North-West Pacific, even though this area is globally most active for these storms. Recently, the Chinese government has provided an aircraft to carry out typhoon observation from Hong Kong, as described in ‘The first complete dropsonde observation of a tropical cyclone over the South China Sea by the Hong Kong Observatory’ by Pak-Wai Chan, NG Wu, CZ Zhang, WJ Deng and KK Hon on p. 227. This final paper in our July 2018 issue describes the insights they gained into Tropical Storm Aere and its structure.