Doubts are rising about the recent U.K. record high temperature, measured by the runway at RAF Coningsby on the afternoon of July 19th. Over six minutes, the temperature jumped suddenly by 1.3°C to 40.3°C at 15.12 (3.12pm), and was 0.6°C lower just a minute later. In just two minutes from 15.10 the rise was 0.6°C. The record was set during a mini-heatwave last summer, and has rarely been out of the headlines promoting climate ‘breakdown’ and the need for a Net Zero solution ever since.
Air temperatures can rise over short periods if weather conditions change – for instance, if the sun appears quickly from behind a large cloud, or the wind direction moves. But July 19th in Coningsby, Lincolnshire, was more or less cloudless around 3pm (see below), and the wind direction from the south-west was constant. Another explanation might be sought in the movement of two squadrons of Typhoon fighter jets at the large base that employs up to 3,000 people. The thermometer at Coningsby, the RAF’s primary Typhoon station, as with all airports, is placed next to the runway to provide vital operational information. In the absence of credible meteorological explanations for such a large spike, aeroplane movement must be suspected as the most obvious cause.
According to the plane spotters guide website Thunder & Lightnings, on a good day at Coningsby, “it can be wall-to-wall action” with never more than half an hour or so quiet. Modern fighter aircraft are extremely powerful machines. Spotters note fence panels blown away by the after-burners, while photographers are warned that “heat haze” can spoil pictures. When the jets are taking off or taxiing, they are pumping considerable amounts of hot gas into the surrounding atmosphere.
This is not the first time that concerns have been raised about Met Office claims of a temperature record at an airport. In 2015, it claimed a U.K. July record temperature of 36.7°C. Soon after, a number of journalists including Paul Homewood and the late Christopher Booker from the Sunday Telegraph raised doubts about some of the circumstances surrounding the record at Heathrow airport. It was noted that the temperature jumped by 0.9°C in two minutes.
Homewood remarked at the time:
No engineer would trust such a spike in any other field, and would throw it out unless he had firm evidence that it was correct. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the reading at the Met Office station at Heathrow is either incorrect, or has been artificially inflated by local, non-climatic factors.
The Met Office responded to the concerns by floating the possibility that breaks in cloud cover were the main cause. Dr. Mark McCarthy from the Met Office told the green activist site Carbon Brief that solar radiation is “the most plausible and sufficient explanation” for the peak in temperatures. It would seem that another “plausible” explanation is required for Coningsby, since, as noted, clouds were absent.
Whatever the reason for the sudden spike at Coningsby to produce the now official U.K. temperature record, there can be no doubt that temperature data taken by busy airport runways are of use only to ground crew and pilots. They are far too corrupted to be used for plotting local or global trends in temperature, and are being used as a political tool to influence progress on the command-and-control Net Zero project.
But as we have seen, airport temperature data are widely used in all the major global datasets. In 2010, Professor Ross McKitrick discovered that about half of all land surface temperature measurements were taken near or adjacent to airport runways. The U.S. meteorologist Anthony Watts has worked for over a decade looking at U.S. weather stations. His recent report noted that 96% of the weather stations used by the U.S. weather service NOAA were “corrupted” by the localised effects of urbanisation. Watts found that a “slight warming trend” when data were compared with “unperturbed” stations, was “approximately half the claimed rate of increase promoted by many in the climate science community”.
Others are more brutal in their conclusions. Emeritus Professors William Happer and Richard Lindzen recently told the U.S. Government that over the last several decades, “NASA and NOAA have been fabricating temperature data to argue that rising CO2 levels have led to the hottest year on record”. These false and manipulated data were said to be an “egregious violation of scientific method”.
Over the last few weeks we have had the first fruits of ground-breaking urban heat research by atmospheric scientists Dr. Roy Spencer and Professor John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Their work attempts to remove the effect of urban heat from surface temperature datasets. Looking first at the United States, they found 50% less warming over the last 50 years across the eastern U.S.
As the graph above suggests, some of the greatest urbanisation impacts on warming were found at airports.
The Met Office supplied the Daily Sceptic with the detailed temperature record for Coningsby and the satellite photo that shows no significant cloud over Lincolnshire at 3pm on July 19th. It also confirmed the wind was from the south-west throughout the day. The Met Office is welcome to reply to this article and address the issues raised, including the continued use of airport measurements in its own datasets.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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James, Toby – are either of you fans of Elon Musk?
Thanks Toby, I was getting worried by James’s absence.
Probably just as well the “mummy and daddy arguing about the Ukraine” bit was lost, because Toby’s ideas about the Ukraine are absolutely on the level of a zero covid bed-wetter’s thoughts on covid, a middle class antiracist’s ideas about BLM, or a full on climate panicker’s “thinking” about energy policy – vacuous and infantile, and based on simple falsehoods about the world.
We get plenty of hypocritical/profoundly ignorant selective moralising about “aggression”, jingoist silliness about a “Russian threat” and “Britain’s global mission”, and one sided emotionally manipulative, shroud-waving war propaganda on the mainstream media, without Toby adding to it here.
While I don’t agree with everything Toby writes or says, he did create Lockdown Sceptics and the Free Speech Union, for which he deserves much praise. And, given the idea behind FSU, why complain that he exercises his here?
“While I don’t agree with everything Toby writes or says, he did create Lockdown Sceptics and the Free Speech Union, for which he deserves much praise.”
As it happens, I’ve said exactly the same a number of times here, and I have been a member of the FSU for nearly two years now. I have no problem respecting a person for his achievements and agreeing with many of his positions, while simultaneously criticising a particular position he holds.
Ukraine war emoting is basically the same as covid, BLM and climate alarmist emoting, just afflicting a slightly different demographic, and deserves a similar degree of disrespect. And it’s at least similarly costly and harmful. Potentially considerably more.
“And, given the idea behind FSU, why complain that he exercises his here?”
Not really a free speech issue, is it? This is just disagreement (admittedly rather contemptuous, given how conformist and wilfully ignorant his views on that particular topic are – the polar opposite of scepticism).
And no, I didn’t downvote your comment.
‘without Toby adding to it here’ seemed to suggest that you’d rather he didn’t post his opinions.
I don’t disagree with your other points, since I share them.
Imo you are overextending here.
I haven’t heard it. I have listened to them a few times and they provide a pleasant diversion and some amusement but it is as if there is a conscious effort to avoid a discussion of any depth. Why would you want to avoid such a discussion in these times? Is there no fertile ground anymore just the acceptance of a barren landscape and an impassable gulf? One way or another it is just willing it on, let it burn, This is not the Christian perspective. A real Christian perspective in our times would be concerned with damage limitation even though we know that evrything is going to shit.
Personally, I find this ‘James vs Tobes’ schtick a bit too much. It is blatantly put on, and, quite frankly, I am baffled that anyone would take it seriously.
I totally concur.
I’ve never encountered two less punk individuals, so why ‘The Clash’ reference in the title?
In an age of a torrent of podcasts, this one is lame, really lame.
Can’t help but wonder the following;
1. How much income Toby has generated from this site?
2. How well he is still connected to the Establishment?
3. How a silver spooned ‘Christian’ smoker defends traumatising and slaughtering foxes?
4. Why the Daily Round Up is predominantly full of propagandist MSM crap?
5. Why there are NEVER links to the real vanguard of alt media?