The Met Office has failed to quash the doubts that have arisen about its claimed 40.3°C UK record temperature produced on the afternoon of July 19th by the side of the main runway at RAF Coningsby. The military station is home to two squadrons of Typhoon jets and is extensively used for fighter pilot training. The U.K. record was set at 3.12pm during a mini-heatwave following a large jump of 1.3°C over the previous five minutes. Within a minute of the record being set, the temperature fell by 0.6°C. The Daily Sceptic has sought a response to three questions seeking further details about the events surrounding the record, but to date has had no reply.
The Met Office did however reply to the local publication Lincolnshire Live stating that the verifying of temperatures was a “rigorous process” and all records collected were accurate. This process was said to involve cross-checking between stations and an analysis of the weather on the day “and how it compared to the Office’s forecasts”. Lincolnshire Live asked about the sudden jump in the temperature at the time of the record, and was told there was some “thin cloud” around at the time.
Breaks in cloud cover was the reason advanced in July 2015 when two journalists queried a record temperature at Heathrow airport. Here it was noted that the temperature had jumped 0.9°C in two minutes. Dr. Mark McCarthy from the Met Office said solar radiation was “the most plausible and sufficient explanation” for the peak in temperature.
Last Monday, the Daily Sceptic published a satellite photograph of the British Isles showing no cloud over large areas of eastern England at 3pm on July 19th. Met Office observations for 2pm on the same day confirm the weather at Coningsby was sunny with visibility up to 40 kms. Given reasonable and continuing doubts, we asked the Met Office three follow-up questions.
- In its “rigorous process” inquiring into the validity of the Coningsby record, did the Met Office rule out all non-climatic causes such as jet aircraft operating near the measuring station located, according to your own latitude/longitude co-ordinates, near the main runway?
- Do Met Office scientists have any idea why the temperature jumped suddenly by 1.3°C in just six minutes (0.6°C in two minutes), and then fell by 0.6°C in the next minute? A similar rise in the Homewood/Booker Heathrow story was blamed on a break in thick cloud. Is this the Met Office’s explanation this time?
- The article also referred to the effect of urban heat corruption, particularly at airports. It noted, for instance, that recent research by two atmospheric scientists, including the Alabama State Climatologist, found significant corruption of data at U.S. airports. For instance, warming at Florida’s Orlando airport was barely a third after urban heat had been removed from the data. Does the Met Office intend to continue using raw data from airport and urban sites without making substantial recalculations to remove all non-climatic corruptions?
The Daily Sceptic made three attempts to elicit a response, but to no avail. This was a little surprising since prior to the publication of our first article the Met Office wrote: “Could you provide a summary of your likely piece so we can provide a relevant statement for inclusion?”
July 19th in the U.K. was an exceptionally hot day in a generally hot summer. Social media correspondents have asked why bother querying the 40.3°C record since similar records were set elsewhere. However, these were also at busy airports, along with a measuring devise set at Kew Gardens located yards from one of the largest tropical greenhouses in the world. But the Coningsby record is hugely valued by green activists because it is the first time – since records began – that 40°C had been broken in the U.K. Discussing the record, Dr. McCarthy noted that in a climate unaffected by human-induced climate change, it would be virtually impossible for temperatures in the UK to reach 40°C.
There is of course no scientific proof Dr. McCarthy can draw on to back up this speculative assertion, but it gives an insight into the totemic value the Coningsby record has already achieved. To this day, it is widely quoted in the mainstream media. However, it is important to investigate all these temperatures records that the Met Office has made a habit of declaring so we can gain an insight into the way the operation collates all its data.
The Met Office is all-in on anthropogenic climate change and over the last two decades it has become a big promoter of the green cause and Net Zero. In January this year, for instance, it funded climate catastrophe work from a group of academics and Cambridge Econometrics that forecast the English could revert to hunter-gathering and feudal warfare after 2040. But its main work, for which it receives considerable taxpayer funding, is to supply accurate meteorological records and reasonable forecasts based on this information.
This process is now under serious investigation by scientists concerned about the constant upward adjustments of all the major global surface temperature datasets. This occurs at a time when accurate satellite and meteorological balloon data suggests considerably less warming over the last two decades. Over the last 10 years, the Met Office has added 30% extra global warming to its recent HadCRUT record. In the process, it removed a temperature pause from 1998 to around 2012. The pause, which the Met Office wrote about at the time, is still visible in the satellite data.
The most pressing issue, however, is the corruption of data caused by the growth of urban centres around the world. The disconnect of all the major surface temperature databases from the satellite and balloon data is becoming obvious. As we noted in one of our questions to the Met Office, recent work by two American atmospheric scientists shows considerable urban corruption in the U.S. record. It was found that urban heat had added around 50% extra warming over the last 50 years to the eastern United States.
The Met Offices does valuable work and provides a vital community weather service in the U.K. But its feverish promotion of the green agenda would sometimes appear to be at odds with its duty to provide unbiased weather/climate information and uncorrupted temperature figures.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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In a happier, simpler time, this would have been a rather boring academic discussion about temperature measurements.
Today it’s part of a battle to keep the state out of our lives and be able to live free.
Pretty nuts really.
This academic discussion is being controlled and as far as I can see, discussed less (ie detail) and sensationalised more! Very nuts!
Some time in the late 1980s or very early 1990, I was on a summer holiday on a farm on Bodmin Moor. By that time, it hadn’t rained in this area for 19 weeks in a row and some of the moor farms received water supplies from tankers. That was a generally hot summer, not the five weeks of no rain with mostly lovely temperatures we had this year.
Ha, my lasting memory of Bodmin is failing my first driving test there ( steep inclines + crap clutch control = going backwards when attempting a hill start. Not great when there’s a car behind you.😨 ) but passing second time. I miss Cornwall though.
Real experts manage to do that after passing the test. I’ve recently encountered one (and waited patiently on the pavement until he had remembered which of all these pedals are supposed to be used in what order).
🙂
My brother’s instructor used to put my brother’s cigarettes, and later his wristwatch behind the back wheel. Made for really good hill starts!
The Met Office used the “break in the clouds” explanation to explain the Heathrow “record”, ignoring criticism that by amazing co-incidence three jets landed on an unusual approach (West to East) and promptly turned on to a taxiway and blew jet exhausts over the exact spot that the temperature sensor was positioned. These Mexplanations are getting tedious. In other news, some US “records” are held by sensors positioned a few feet from a municipal incinerator, or top of a black roof or in a car-park. They served their purpose, but that purpose was not as a measure of climate, and were then re-purposed to create bogus records to fill newspaper headlines and create climate scares.
More detail on the Heathrow 2015 “record”, including site map and aircraft movements: https://clivebest.com/blog/?p=6721
Don’t know if it’s of any use but by looking at Flightradar24 playback for that day, two RAF Typhoons were operating from that base around that time: Flights CHAOS011 (reg ZJ914) and CHAOS012 (reg ZK377). After a brief exercise over the North Sea, CHAOS011 landed just after 15:10. CHAOS012 landed 15 minutes later.
Of course, it must be sheer coincidence!
A weather event is not Climate.
A normal summer is not Climate Hell.
Putting an electronic measuring device at Heathrow on tarmac, near jet engines, behind a magnifying glass, next to a fire is not science. It is fraud. Move it 5 miles to the countryside and the temp was 36C.
The entire cult of warm and cult of the changing thingy is a fraud.
I had first-hand experience of such temperature anomalies during my working life. I knew this was bs as soon as it was published.
“The Met Office distorts data and lies” is not the surprise. That would be them telling the truth
My kitchen is usually a fairly cool room since it’s north facing. But strangely enough, after I’ve cooked a roast and I leave the oven door open, the kitchen quickly warms up a bit for a while and then fairly quickly the temperature drops again.
Must be climate change – so I’d better stop cooking roasts and start eating raw insects.
All these institutions that have been hollowed out by GangGreen termites must eventually realise that trust, once destroyed, take years of effort to reestablish. Witness also the Zro Covid, Lockdown and “Vaccine” enthusiasts.
So far as the “Climate” scam is concerned, it should be remembered that accurate records for a significant number of years is the exception rather than the rule, so suggesting that some weather event is “Unprecedented” is meaningless at best.
And that is without considering the multitude of proven cases where activist “Scientists” have had their smelly little thumbs on the ‘data’.
So we have Australia’ BOM admitting that under their regime, the temperatures of the past have been ‘discovered’ to be around 1°C colder than originally recorded.
Coming back to 2022 (and before), all the recent ‘unprecedented’ temperatures such as Coningsby are blatantly and deliberately fraudulent. If we had even a few honest politicians, all these MET chancers would have been sacked, long ago.
“Global Temperature” ??? “Warmest year” ???. etc etc . But what does any of that stuff really mean? Is there really such a thing as a “global temperature? If so, how is it calculated?—– But since most of the time we recorded temperatures using thermometers at individual places around the world at different times and mostly only in wealthy western countries (USA, Europe etc), how can we know what temperatures were where we did not have extensive coverage, which was really the case most of the time and over most of the globe? —-The answer is we cannot. Then we started to get temperature data from satellites around 1979, but how can you compare thermometer readings where coverage was sparse from let’s say 1925 or 1845 to satellite data that covers almost the whole planet? —You cannot.. —–So this idea that we have a “warmest year on record” or “warmest since records began” etc is misleading, especially when it is used to promote solutions to some problem that might not even exist, or that might exist but is not much of a problem. On TV I regularly see politicians and bureaucrats, eco activists and assorted “save the planet” people latch onto elements of the unreliable temperature record, like the one this summer where a temperature of 40C was apparently recorded. This ofcourse is what is known as “cherry picking” or “confirmation bias”, where someone only looks for things that support their preconceived idea and ignore everything that doesn’t.— The temperature record of earth is a jumble of data ,adjusted here and there for various anomalies, such as the build up of towns and cities around a site where temperatures may have been recorded for the last 100 years or more, and it is known that towns and cities are warmer, sometimes by several degrees. Out of all of this clutter of guesses, assumptions, missing data and different forms of data collection we are led to believe that some “scientists” know what year was warmer than some other year, often to accuracies of hundredths of a degree, when the thermometers used were never designed for such accuracies. It is also important to bear in mind that if something warms, it does not necessarily mean humans warmed it. To claim humans have warmed something requires evidence, and since there is nothing unusual about current temperatures that would simply be an assumption, and when the assumption is motivated by the desire for certain public policy’s then what we have is a “cautionary tale”.
So either the Met Office lie by sticking to their story, or lie by giving an unbelievable excuse why they didn’t quality check it thoroughly enough?
In 2015 I happened to be in North East New Zealand, when Cyclone Pam caused extreme damage and around 11 deaths in Vanuatu and some damage to other Pacific island states. The MET (using their extreme GangGreen technology) forecasted major problems next for NE New Zealand but, fortunately this turned out to be a nothingburger.
Although we are assured that The Science is absolutely Settled, it is, in reality, anything but. At that time, Richard Betts, now Head of Climate Impacts at the MET Hadley Centre, was presumably charged by his gaffer, Dame Julia Sligo, to occasionally go onto Climate Blogs and fly the GangGreen flag.
On the then excellent Bishop Hill Blog, I pointed out the inadequacies of their forecasts for Pam, the fact that the claimed wind speed was obviously inflated and that severe tropical cyclones were entirely ‘precedented’.
Betts replied pointing out that the attribution of extreme weather arising from burning “fossil” fuels was well established, quoting the UN’s IPCC Report. To which I pointed out that the IPCC’s latest report said nothing of the kind (as contaminated as it is by GangGreen assumptions) and that his quotation was lifted directly from the “Summary for Policymakers”, which is a 100% political document.
We then heard nothing more from Betts, who is obviously not any kind of scientist, just another GangGreen charlatan.