The climate Thermageddonites got their U.K. heat record of 40°C in the end, courtesy of a measuring device in Coningsby, Lincolnshire. The BBC noted on Radio 4 last night that the record temperature arose in the “village” but co-ordinates on the Met Office site place the device halfway down the runway at RAF Coningsby, home of two squadrons of frontline, combat ready squadrons and a training base for Typhoon pilots. In joint second place, perhaps to nobody’s great surprise, was Heathrow, one of the busiest airports in the world.
The last two days in England were very hot, probably the hottest for over 100 years, although the possible distortions caused by urban heat (and jet afterburners!) need to be taken into account in the surface record. On the Radio 4 late news, BBC meteorologist Ben Rich explained that the heat was caused by southerly winds bringing hot air from the Sahara. The wind direction then changed to the west, and by the time he spoke on Tuesday evening, the rain was falling in London and the temperature had plunged 20°C. This of course was the sound scientific reason for the high temperatures, although science was laid to one side at the end when Rich said it “feels like a tipping point”.
In a similar emotional outburst, the serial Covid lockdown campaigner Piers Morgan told his audience on TalkTV that if we are not very careful, “we are heading for an apocalypse”. Also signed onto the apocalypse theme was London Mayor Sadiq Khan. He pulled the ‘things were much colder in the old days’ line, by telling Nick Robinson on Wednesday’s Today programme that when he was growing up, “you had heatwaves every 20 years”.
Brendan O’Neill captured the hysterical wittering with an entertaining article for the Spectator. Is anyone else tiring of all this green nonsense, he asked. “There is something medieval about it. There is something creepily pre-modern in the idea that sinful mankind has brought heat and fire and floods upon himself with his wicked, hubristic behaviour. What next – plagues of locusts as a punishment for our failure to recycle?” O’Neill noted the thoughts of the Guardian Environment Editor who claimed we were as “guilty as hell”. He sounded like “one of those crackpot millenarian preachers you’d see on street corners in the old days”.
Certainly the recent heatwave has been manna from heaven for the climate alarmists. They have played it for everything it is worth in their pursuit of the command-and-control Net Zero agenda. But using a change of wind direction to argue that the climate is undergoing long-term change that is primarily caused by humans is unscientific nonsense-on-stilts. As I have often noted, there is not a single credible science paper that provides proof to support this political opinion.
But the emotional cherry-picking is now off the chart. Needless to say, no publicity was given in the mainstream media to the recent news that the tropics recorded their coolest June for 22 years, according to accurate satellite recordings. In addition, it was the ninth coolest June in the 44-year satellite record. The news is unsurprising, since recent warming in the tropics has been much less than the northern hemisphere. Move all the way down to the South Pole and one finds barely any temperature movement over the last 40 years and probably long before that. Overall, the latest satellite record shows that the pause in global temperatures continues, and now extends to almost eight years.
Back in the northern hemisphere, and moving swiftly on from the ‘Britain on fire’ headlines, there seems little appetite to report that Arctic ice continues to make a measurable comeback. As of the middle of the Arctic summer on July 17th, the extent of the ice was the highest since 2015, and overall was the thirteenth lowest in the satellite record, meaning 12 years have had lower sea ice by this point.
As can be seen in the graph above, the decline rate of the sea ice extent is not far off the 1981-2010 average and well above 2012. Furthermore, as Europe warmed through July, air temperatures at 2,500 feet plunged on the Eurasian side of the Arctic up to the North Pole. Generally they were around 3-6°C lower than average.
None of this proves the world is getting hotter, or colder, due to humans burning fossil fuel. Like the recent brief U.K. heatwave, natural forces provide a reasonable explanation for such events. As the Daily Sceptic explained recently, the Arctic is subject to regular ocean oscillations that pump warmer waters into the area on a regular basis. These are known as the Atlantic Multidecadal and Pacific Decadal Oscillations. These appear to work on around a 70-80 year basis. The last high point, with considerable loss of sea ice, was in the 1930s, and observations going back to the beginning of the 19th century give some support to the trend.
Apocalypse denied – as Mr O’Neill advises, “It’s sunny. Go outside. Sit in the shade. Have an ice-cream”.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor
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Excellent article. Not sure where Sadiq Khan grew up, but where I grew up (London/Herts borders) a summer without at least a few very hot days was rare!
I’m not sure Sadiq Khan has grown up.
Wildfires started by the heatwave? Or deliberately started by those with an interest in the climate change agenda?
Many things are not as they seem. Funny how all the fires happened on one day, which just happened to be the day when the fabled forty was expected.
Just passed the arsonist theory onto my non sceptical friend…..stunned silence.
Thing is, if you actually were one of these Insulate Britain/XR nutters who glue themselves to the roads, jump in front of Jubilee processions, invade football pitches, disrupt art galleries etc, etc; then setting fires on a day heavily publicised by the MSM as the hottest EVER is exactly what you would do to maximise the propaganda effect.
The only surprise to me is why there is even any alternatives to the arsonist theory, it’s obvious what’s happened. But that doesn’t suit.
Absolutely.
I’m waiting for the inevitable fires on the Saddleworth moors. They’re an annual event now. Fortunately, local people tend to dismiss them as acts of arson.
I thought that of the London gras fires. Either this was carelessness, ie, thrown away cigarettes, or – and I consider that much more likely – the XR crackpots set this on fire to generate some nice headlines.
Or that these fires would normally only be of interest to local news (if that) but the nationals probably scoured the news feeds and picked stories to suit their agenda.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziOLn0gADvw
Frankly, councils haven’t cut back bushes and weeds, attended to trees or cut the grass adequately in the better part of three years. Part of it is COVID-19 and part of it is eco-loons saying it’s ‘good for insects!’ Plymouth, where I live, is a disgrace. Some of our roundabouts and verges are waist high. In warm weather, scrubland that would have been fine if attended is now overgrown and dry, becoming a tinderbox of someone chucks a fag in their direction.
Sabotage wouldn’t surprise me either. We have generation of spoilt brats who have been turned into terrorists.
It would be interesting to see how many of the fires are in areas that are being ‘rewilded’. Most edges and central reservations on roads have suddenly been captured by a fashion to let them grow, because biodiversity, rather than trim them short. Similarly embankments near roads and railways have lost the regular maintenance of clearing shrubs and brush from very close to tracks and roads.
It reminds me of the rivers that aren’t dredged because some newt or water fly, and a few years later, when everyone’s house is four feet deep in water, and the council and Department look aghast that such a thing could possibly happen.
“bringing hot air from the Sahara”
That explains the sand on my car after the brief shower at 10 pm.
In Reading, the Air from the Sahara effect was clearly visible when clouds in the sky reddened long before dusk. According to the met office chief scientist (as reported by the BBC) aggressive emission cuts are called for to reduce the frequency of such events. One can only wonder what influence emissions in the UK only can have on wind directions and wind systems elsewhere in the world.
The met office guy should be able to explain that in detail before asking for it because surely, if he knows that emissions in the UK (of an unspecified nature) caused the hot air to come here, he must know how this exactly happened. But for some strange reason, the BBC failed to question him about his deep insight into how stuff works out in the atmoshpere, so far believed to be a chaotic system, ie, one changing rapidly and randomly.
Some bloomin’ heatwave. Yesterday afternoon I saw the black clouds in the distance and just had time to get the cushions in, let the sun umbrellas down and shut the windows before it poured with rain!
One of my favourite films, Passport to Pimlico, portrays a wonderful late 1940s heatwave as an integral part of the story. I don’t know how old Sadiq Khan is, but I can remember many heatwaves of my youth, one of them being the glorious summer of 1959. These people will say anything won’t they? Why aren’t they challenged more?
Well done everybody for your contributions to a few days of sunshine in the UK, you know, nipping to the shops in the car, turning the lights on occasionally, it has really paid dividends and done wonders for my tan.
Cheers.
I’m surprised that Farnborough, Hants wasn’t on the list as it’s their air show this week. https://bbc.in/3ohoWVe reason for fire in North Derbyshire.
When I was 12 or 13 there was one day when it was overcast, very humid and 90 degrees Fahrenheit according to the data recorded on the schools weather station. This was due to air from the Sahara and was in the late 1960’s. Several times since there have been reports of “coloured rain” falling across the Midlands and the south, due to dust from the Sahara.
Then there’s the jet stream which can meander, if it’s to the south of the U.K. we have rubbish summers, if it’s to the north then we get Mediterranean weather.
Theres a theory that under certain circumstances a standing wave can be created, which doesn’t move for weeks (1976, 2003). Even Michael Mann has written a paper on this caused by warming of the Arctic, but he blames CO2 for this, completely ignoring the fact that during the summer the Arctic circle has almost 24 hours of sunlight.
Also the sun has a maximum altitude of about 60 degrees in the U.K. which is higher than for the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere.
There does seem to be a correlation with solar activity although this changes of 1% on average. However, that radiance is averaged across all wavelengths, and IIRC the ultraviolet component is larger.
Every year, for as long as I remember, there are maybe five of six days where I need a fan running overnight. The rest of the time, things are pretty ordinary. So far, I’ve used a fan upstairs in my office for two days and run the fan in my bedroom at night for two nights. So nothing unusual for this time of year. It’s the height of summer, after all. It’s rained where I am the last two days!
I get the argument about how an increase in concentration of CO2 from 280 parts per million to 420 parts per million can create some warming through the greenhouse effect. I don’t think it’s a big effect, but at least I can see the mechanism – however, I don’t see a mechanism whereby CO2 can drag weather from the Sahara drop it in the UK for two days. It seems CO2 can do anything!
There’s a lot to be said for a geoengineered hot spell when you are trying to con the public into paying so much more for life’s essentials.
I walked my dog at 5 am on Monday and Tuesday.
Monday: lots of chemtrails already there to the east or being laid by planes flying roughly north to south, when nearly all commercial flights are south to north.
Tuesday: nothing. Job already done?
I don’t really believe in these temperature records, either. I believe that, after they didn’t manifests themselves naturally on the first day of hot air in lieu of climate change, someone took care that this wouldn’t happen again on the next day in some suitable way. I have obviously absolutely no proof for that. But past performance has convinced me that these people will only tell the truth by accident, ie, when they don’t know that what they’re telling is actually true.
Well I never…
https://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/news/local-news/huge-scunthorpe-blaze-deliberate-says-7357664