Standard Chartered Weather Photographer of the Year 2025: The tenth year

by Kirsty McCabe, FRMetS

2025 marks the tenth year of our annual Standard Chartered Weather Photographer of the Year competition. And from 10 April to 19 June 2025, you can submit your best weather or climate photographs. Anyone can enter, amateur or professional, young or old. Full details of the competition and the prizes are HERE. 

Here are my some of MetMatters' favourite images from each year so far — but can you spot the link?

2016

Dawn on the Somerset levels can be very photogenic at times, enhanced by the mist that rises from the water channels and the River Brue which runs through the mostly flat countryside. This was taken on a frosty spring morning which helped to add another aesthetic element, the frost on the foliage and grass skirting along the riverbank.

2017

A dramatic lightning storm over Portsmouth and the Spinnaker Tower as the sun rises. Lightning strikes when electric charge builds up in a storm, creating sudden discharges either between parts of the atmosphere, or between the atmosphere and the Earth’s surface.

Lightning can cause major destruction – damaging property and triggering fires. Climate change is expected to make lightning more common across the world, by creating a hotter atmosphere that holds more water vapour, and so can produce more frequent and intense thunderstorms.

2018

During a stormy afternoon the photographer found a perfect spot to capture this double rainbow over Barcelona. A storm had moved from west to east out into the sea and the beautiful rainbow appeared while the sun set over the horizon. The light from the sunset combined with the double rainbow positioned over the city makes this a quite unique image. 

2019

Altocumulus lenticularis clouds often exhibit multiple banding and a wealth of other structural details on small scales. Where the bands are stacked vertically, the formation is sometimes called ‘pile d’assiettes’, which means ‘stack of plates’ in French. The structural details are best seen when the sides and bases of the clouds are illuminated by low-angle sunlight at sunset or sunrise, as in this beautiful example over Jökulsárlón, Iceland.

2020

This was one of the top two largest haboobs ever recorded in the state of Arizona. At the point of this photo it was fully mature, towering over a mile high with winds in excess of 80mph. The sun was setting, giving the dust wall its deep pink hue. It was a truly incredible sight for Tina to see. 

Dust storms, or haboobs, are the result of a microburst — an intense column of sinking air within a thunderstorm — which spreads out in all directions as it hits the ground and carries dust particles at speeds of up to 60mph. The lofted particles can reach heights of 5,000ft and can extend up to 100 miles wide. As long as there is enough dry, exposed land with loose sediment, dust storms can happen anywhere and are capable of reducing visibility to near zero in a matter of seconds. In Arizona, US, dust storms are most common in the early part of the monsoon and near agricultural areas.

2021

At an altitude of 4,800 metres, Jiming took this beautiful image of Sapu Mountain (Tibet). It had been hidden in the clouds for three days, but at the end of Jiming’s last day, the clouds finally cleared just as the sun set. It is a stunning image with the orange and red hues of the setting sun catching the mountain peaks, all of which is reflected in the lake. 

But why are sunsets orange or red? Even though sunlight or visible light may appear white, it is actually made up of a spectrum of colours from red to violet, all of which have a slightly different wavelength. As light travels through our atmosphere, it is scattered by air molecules. This happens more to the shorter wavelengths (blue and violet), which is why we see the sky as blue. When the sun is lower in the sky during sunrise and sunset, the light travels a longer path through our atmosphere. This causes more of the blue portion of the sun’s rays to scatter away from our eyes, leaving relatively more of the longer wavelengths (yellow, orange and red) for us to see.

2022

During a beautiful, calm evening in Tankerton, Kent, Brendan captured this image of people walking along the famous shingle ‘street’, exposed at low tide, as they were treated to a spectacular mock mirage sunset over the Thames Estuary. 

During a mock mirage sunset, the sun is distorted and appears to be sliced horizontally. This can occur when there are one or more shallow layers in the atmosphere with a temperature difference between each layer, known as temperature inversions. The sunlight is refracted more as it travels through colder layers, distorting how an object appears. A temperature inversion also caused another optical phenomenon called an inferior mirage, making the distant buildings in Southend appear elevated above their normal position.

2023

Would you surf a scene like this? Photographer Les Irwig captured a surfer’s contemplation of brooding weather conditions on one of Australia’s beaches in Sydney. 

“One wonders what was on his mind as he stands in readiness.” The early morning light of the sunrise illuminates heavy convective clouds as they rain off in the distance. Sunrises have such warm hues, since the sun’s rays travel a long distance through the atmosphere, and the bluer frequencies of light get scattered away en route, through “Rayleigh scattering”. Convective clouds form as warm, moist air rises in the lower atmosphere. And they’re not just dramatic to look at. These clouds are associated with heavy downpours and lightning. Perhaps that explains why the surfer seems so pensive!

2024

In this image, a family hangs dyed cotton cloth to dry as the sun rises in the background while parched and cracked earth dominates the foreground. 

Unfortunately, the parched earth is a reminder of how water-intensive it is to grow cotton. Just one cotton T-shirt requires almost 2,700 litres of water, the equivalent of 2.5 years’ worth of drinking water for one person! Droughts are common in Myanmar’s Dry Zone, where much of the country’s cotton is grown. As the climate warms and rainfall is predicted to become more variable in Myanmar, good water management will be essential for the cotton industry.

Did you spot the link? 

These images were taken around sunrise or sunset, making the most of the magical light during golden hour — the hour just after sunrise or just before sunset, when sunlight must travel through the greatest amount of atmosphere to reach an observer’s eyes. The more atmosphere through which sunlight travels, the more blue light is scattered away, leaving a higher proportion of yellow to red light. Mornings and evenings are also the best time to spot phenomena such as rainbows or rare clouds due to the sun's position in the sky.