WEATHER forecasters say that 2014 was Scotland's warmest year on record and one of the wettest for almost a century.

The average temperature was 8.4C, one degree above the previous high in 2006.

Last year was also the third wettest since 1910, with 1744 mm (68 inches) of rain recorded across the country on a total of 201 wet days somewhere.

The picture in Scotland mirrored that of the UK as a whole, where the average temperature for the year was 9.9C (49.8F), around 1.1C (2F) above the long-term average.

People returning to work yesterday (mond) experienced pleasantly mild conditions for the time of year despite the rain in many parts.

Temperatures will remain around the 8-10C mark for much of the country today (tue), rising to 11C in Edinburgh.

However, the good spell will come to an end later this week with gales and rain due to hit Scotland.

The figures for 2014 mean that eight of the UK's top 10 warmest years have occurred since 2002, the weather and climate experts said.

There were no record-breaking hot months in 2014, but temperatures were consistently warm with only August experiencing below average temperatures.

The number of days where there were frosty spells was also among lowest on record, with 38.9 recorded during the whole of 2014.

But despite the average warm temperature the amount of sunshine was slightly below average, with 1164 hours recorded north of the border.

Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment London School of Economics (LSE) said the record temperatures in 2014 were "part of a pattern", with most of the hottest and wettest years occurring since 2000.

"This is clear evidence of the impact of man-made climate change on the UK," he said.

"However, the latest assessment by the independent Committee on Climate Change shows that the UK public is largely unaware of how climate change is affecting their exposure and vulnerability to extreme weather events.

"The lack of awareness of the UK public of how climate change is already affecting them represents a colossal failure by the Government and its agencies, including the Environment Agency and the Met Office, to communicate with the public about this issue."

The Met Office figures show that the UK's provisional rainfall total of 1297.1mm (51.1 inches) is the fourth highest total on record, meaning five of the six wettest years in the UK have happened since 2000.

A large contribution to the high rainfall total came from the very wet weather in January and February, as a series of storms battered the UK, while May, October and November were also wetter than average.

But September was the driest on record since 1910 for the UK.

The most extreme weather in 2014 was the winter storms, which caused flooding both inland and at the coasts, while the summer had some fine weather, particularly in June and July, with no heat waves but some torrential downpours. the Met Office said.

A Met Office spokesman said: "We're aware that there's a long term warming trend. This does not mean that every year will be warmer than the one before, because there's a lot of natural variability."

"But, for the UK, the increase in temperature that we have seen because of human impact on climate have made the chance of warmer weather ten times more likely."