There has been no temperature warming for at least 17 years across the United States, according to results from a rarely referenced dataset that was designed to remove all urban heat distortions. The dataset, compiled by the Natural Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the U.S., shows oscillating temperature changes, but very little evidence to indicate a warming trend. In fact, the above graph clearly shows the United States to be cooler in May 2022 compared to May 2005.
The information is contained in the latest survey of all NOAA’s weather stations by the U.S. meteorologist Anthony Watts. The data is compiled from a select group of 114 stations across the country that have been specifically sited away from urban development. Called the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN), NOAA started it in 2005 and noted that it was aiming for “superior accuracy and continuity in places that land use will not likely impact during the next five decades”. Representative pictures of the weather stations, as seen in this 2013 science paper, show there is no sign of any urban development. In his latest survey of U.S. “Corrupted Climate Stations”, Anthony Watts notes the existence of USCRN, adding: “It is free of localised heat biases by design, but the data it produces is never mentioned in monthly or yearly climate reports published by NOAA for public consumption.”
The USCRN disclosures are the latest evidence suggesting global warming started to run out of steam over 20 years ago. Local temperature measurements by the U.K. Met Office show that the average temperature across the U.K. fell to 9.17oC in the 2010s, compared to 9.31oC in the 2000s. Meanwhile, global datasets run by NOAA, the Met Office and NASA continue to show substantial warming since 2000, helped by regular ‘adjustments’ that mostly warm the recent record and depress earlier readings. As a result, surface global datasets show an increasing disconnect from accurate satellite and meteorological balloon records, both of which point to a lengthy pause from about 1998-2012, and a current one that has lasted almost eight years. The only significant temperature rise during this period occurred around 2016, and was caused by a powerful, and natural, El Nino oscillation.
State-funded weather services around the world have become increasing politicised in recent years, and they offer strong support for the command-and-control Net Zero project. With global warming currently dying on its feet, they have increasingly turned to the promotion of what used to called ‘bad’ weather, but has now been re-branded as ‘extreme’. Datasets that continue to show some warmth are used to proclaim records, and promote the political view that one-off events are caused by man-made climate change, i.e., burning fossil fuel. Having bet the ranch on global warming, any suggestion that the current warming phase, seen countless times in the paleoclimatic record, is pausing, or even stopping, is a major blow to the elite backers of the trillion-dollar Net Zero project. Without warming, the need for Net Zero, and the economic and societal devastation it will cause, disappears.
Specific mention of NOAA’s urban heatless data – showing the absence of domestic warming for at least 17 years – was missing from its recent 2021 climate report. North America was said to have had its seventh warmest year on record, with nine of the 10 warmest years having occurred since 2001.
These ‘official’ U.S. temperatures and records arise from a much larger set of weather stations across the country that have been criticised for incorporating massive heat inputs due to being sited in urban areas. Anthony Watts has drawn attention to this problem in the past. His latest nationwide study “follows up widespread corruption and heat biases found at NOAA stations in 2009, and the heat bias distortion problem is even worse now”.
Describing the U.S. surface temperature record as “fatally flawed”, Watts found about 96% of U.S. temperature stations failed to meet what NOAA itself considered to be acceptable and uncorrupted placement standards. Watts defines ‘corruption’ as caused by the localised effects of urbanisation, producing heat bias because of a close proximity to asphalt, machinery, and other heat-producing, heat-trapping, or heat-accentuating objects. According to Watts, data that had not been corrupted by faulty placement showed a rate of warming in the U.S. “reduced by almost a half compared to all stations”.
As we noted recently, atmospheric scientists Professors William Happer and Richard Lindzen are unimpressed with NOAA and NASA’s more conventional temperature collecting activities. They told a U.S. government inquiry that for several decades “NASA and NOAA have been fabricating temperature data to argue that rising CO2 levels have led to the hottest year on record”. They described what they identified as false and manipulated data as an “egregious violation of scientific method”.
Watts notes that the corruption of data “strongly undermines the legitimacy and the magnitude of the official consensus on long-term climate warming trends in the United States”.
Using urban heat-affected data is now a regular feature of reporting the so-called climate emergency by both the Met Office in the U.K. and the BBC. The four highest temperatures of around 40oC during the recent heatwave were claimed by three airports, including Heathrow, and a measuring device in Kew Gardens next to the giant 16,000 pane greenhouse, known as the Palm House. Within a few days, the BBC was reporting that a group called World Weather Attribution said the high temperatures were “basically impossible” without climate change. Dr. Friederike Otto of the green billionaire-funded Grantham Institute at Imperial College claimed the temperatures were up to 4oC higher as a result of human climate change.
The BBC did not query the near instant verdict, reporting that the academics had used “complex mathematical models” to come to their conclusion.
There is no scientific evidence that proves conclusively single event weather is related to humans changing the climate by burning fossil fuel. The heatwave in Britain, and parts of Europe, had a logical meteorological explanation that also saw below average temperatures on either side of the localised event. Such explanations for ‘extreme’ weather are little more than opinions, and, one can argue, highly political ones. And of course, the 4oC warming attributed to humans in the heatwave is around the figure often quoted for the contribution of urban heat.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor
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