Eastbourne sunshine - an expert's guide!

Some may call today Blue Monday but for us, here in Eastbourne, it brings good news! Eastbourne has just been confirmed as the sunniest place in 2011 according to renowned meteorologist Philip Eden.

Philip has written for the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph as well as managing his own websites weather-uk.com and climate-uk.com, and has confirmed that Eastbourne recorded a huge 1962 hours of sunshine during 2011, with an average 5 hours 23 minutes per day.

And with a sunny start to the year already with lovely sunshine this past weekend, we're hopeful for another sunny year but it's all down to our resident weather expert Paul Quanstrom (Eastbourne Borough Council's Health and Environment Manager) who has to record our sunshine data every day! We caught up with Paul to find out what he makes about today's exciting news and exactly how he measures Eastbourne's sunshine...

So Eastbourne has been confirmed as the sunniest place again in 2011, you must be pleased?
Of course; I enjoy being the ‘bloke who does the weather’ and this is the icing on the cake as it were for the town.

What’s it like being the man responsible for the weather in the sunniest place in the whole country? You must feel under quite a bit of pressure to take good sunshine readings for Eastbourne!
Yes I guess it is crucial I take accurate readings in case we should be challenged by our competitors! The readings are taken by a sun recorder, which records sunshine by literally burning a trace in a piece of card so I have to visit the weather station every day to change it, even Christmas Day!

Which month(s) tend to be the sunniest for Eastbourne so we can tell our visitors when the best time is to visit?
Well, as we all know, the longest day is June 21st so 2-3 months either side of this are the months when we get most sunshine. In the last 2 years we have had exceptionally high sunshine hours in April, irritatingly only just short of the all time record set in 1893. As a rule, May to August are the best sun months with a daily average of 8 hours.

And why are we so lucky with our high hours of sunshine?
It is probably due to 2 factors; firstly, as a coastal location we tend to be free of cloud as convection tends to blow the clouds inland thus keeping the coast clear and secondly, we have a unique microclimate in Eastbourne as the town is ‘protected’ from the prevailing south westerly wind by the South Downs. On a sunny day you will often see clouds blowing to the North of the town around Polegate and off towards Hastings keeping us in the sunshine!

Where is our sunshine recorder and why is it in that spot?
It is on the roof of our offices at 1 Grove Road. It has to be in an elevated position with a clear ‘line of sight’ to the horizon from East-South-West to ensure we capture all sunshine on the daily card.

How do you take a sunshine reading?
The sunshine recorder (Campbell Stokes recorder) is an old, arguably an antique piece of kit, which has a glass ball, which focuses sunlight onto a card into which a trace is burnt. The card is graduated into hourly sections and the daily sunshine is represented by the length of the trace. Despite being an antique, it is a highly effective method of recording the sun and is recommended by the Met Office to whom all our weather readings are sent

What’s your favourite thing to do in the Eastbourne sunshine outside of work?
I’d rather be outdoors than stuck inside; I enjoy regular walks on the Downs and in the Summer I try to swim in the sea every day, weather permitting!

We need you to get your crystal ball out now! What do you think 2012 has in store for Eastbourne sunshine?
That’s a tough one even for the Met Office with their multi-million pound state-of-the-art computers! I would say that, subjectively on the basis that we have had unexceptional summers for the last few years, we are probably overdue a decent summer so I will stick my neck out and say that it’ll be a good year for sun with higher temperatures. What’s the betting it pours down!

Thanks Paul. Very interesting to hear about the method used to record our sunshine and take a peek below to see what the sunshine recorder and sun cards look like!

Eastbourne's sun recorder

Sun cards

Above are 3 sun cards - winter, equinoctial and summer. These vary in length as there is more sun in the summer (obviously!) and they are in different positions in the recorder to follow the sun's different position relative to the horizon throughout the year. The winter card runs from mid Oct to end Feb, equinoctial from March to mid April/Sept to mid Oct and summer from mid April to end August. The three cards above show decent trails, the winter card (9/12/2011) has 6.7 hours, eqinoctial (14/10/2011) 8.0 hours and summer (31/8/-1/9/2011) 11.0 + 1.8 hours.

Today's sunrise over the sea - photo taken by Paul!