It was a tad on the warm side last year in the United Kingdom. There was, for instance, a new turbo-charged 60-second high temperature record declared on July 19th, halfway down the runway at the jet fighter base of RAF Coningsby. Climate journalists were in full Thermogeddon reporting mode. It is almost a shame to bring facts and statistics to the party, although the poopers might note that there has been no change in average U.K. temperatures for more than two decades, following the short rise during the 1980s and 90s. Furthermore, the 10°C average temperature last year was only a rounding error higher than 2014. No change in the decades-long average temperature is indicated by the fact that the current 10-year running average in the U.K. is still no higher than it was between 1998 and 2007 at 9.4°C.
The above graph was compiled by the climate journalist Paul Homewood for his annual U.K. weather report published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). He further notes that annual temperatures last year were well within the bounds of natural variability, being 0.82°C above the 30-year average. By comparison, 2010 was 0.92°C below, whilst several other years have had bigger anomalies than 2022.
As we have seen in past Daily Sceptic articles, the key misunderstanding in much climate discourse is between weather events, often described as ‘extreme’, and climate trends. Overall global warming has been running out of steam for two decades. Homewood could have noted that the 2010s in the U.K. were actually cooler than the 2000s. But headlines and click-bait science papers designed to promote the collectivist Net Zero project dumb down on weather stories, even attempting to attribute individual events to long-term climatic changes. Perhaps this is not surprising, since many take their lead from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that holds the implausible view that all changes in the climate since 1900 have been caused by humans. This of course is the same IPCC that was set up in 1988 to look into the “scientific basis” of the risk of human-induced climate change.
In a separate note for the GWPF, the former BBC science editor Dr. David Whitehouse recently noted that most environmental journalists habitually report verbatim the ‘weather is climate‘ scam. “If financial organisations or Treasury officials played around with predictions like this they would almost certainly come in for a dose of criticism and further probing from proper journalists,” he observed. Giving a recent example, he noted an unquestioning attitude towards the World Meteorological Organisation that observed natural variability in any coming El Niño warming, but also said the rise would show “global warming is accelerating”.
In his excellent review, Homewood is using the Met Office’s own recordings. But again as we have seen, legitimate scientific questions can be asked about the accuracy of these temperature measurements. The Met Office frequently promotes temperature ‘records’ at airports like Coningsby, Heathrow and Northolt, but these areas are filled with concrete, tarmac, machinery and jet exhaust. It is difficult to think of a worst place to take readings designed to provide an accurate record of U.K. and global trends. Furthermore, the heat distortions caused by growing urbanisation have undoubtedly corrupted both local and global datasets. On a global level, the Met Office has retrospectively adding over 30% heating to the record over the last 20 years, while removing similar amounts of heating from the period 1850-1900 to produce a century long heating trend.
The key to last year’s warm year was the prevalence of sunny weather throughout the spring and summer. In fact, sunshine hours were the seventh highest for the period since records began in 1919. But Homewood reports that there is no evident long-term trend in sunshine hours that would suggest this is part of a pattern of climate change. The Central England record is the longest continuous temperature collection going back to 1660. Last summer tied in fourth place, while 1976 was warmer by 0.4°C. Higher average temperatures were also recorded in 1826 and 2018.
On the rainfall front, annual precipitation in England and Wales has been gradually trending upwards since the 1990s, “but the long-term average is lower than during the 1870s and similar to the 1920s”. Rainfall increased substantially in Scotland between the 1970s and 1990s, but there has been little long-term change since then. In Northern Ireland, there has been little change for almost 100 years. Storms have been named in the U.K. since 2015 and the increased media attention is said to have led to the misapprehension that they are becoming more common. In reality, reports Homewood, wind storm have been declining in both frequency and intensity since the 1990s. The graph below shows this trend.
The Met Office notes that the U.K. climate continues to change and weather is becoming more extreme. But Homewood provides hard facts that show the U.K. climate has changed very little and long-term trends are dwarfed by the natural variability of weather. There is no evidence that weather has become more extreme or will do so in the future.
In conclusion, Homewood states that the U.K. climate remains “absolutely benign”. The changes we have seen have been small and mostly thoroughly welcome. GWPF director Dr. Benny Peiser added that it was extraordinary that we are impoverishing our economy and households in a utopian attempt to achieve Net Zero at any cost. This at a time when the U.K.’s long-term climate trends “have remained relatively stable and pleasant”.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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But the news people tell us everywhere is warming faster than everywhere else. I’ve even seen it in the Dutch news so it must be true! lol
https://twitter.com/FatEmperor/status/1670912970677690372
And RTE here in ireland! Seriously rte are worse than the bbc for absolute bias on this subject, just have a look at their latest climate properganda, no link, it’s easy enough to find!
This is what has caused the hysteria… slight warming since the LIA ended in 1850.
Weird that it should warm coming out of an Ice Age, eh?
Funny how this sort of rational dispassionate analysis is missing form the BBC news.
Ah yes, the ‘always good for a laugh because their propaganda could not be more overt’ BBC;
”Some of the most intense marine heat increases on Earth have developed in seas around the UK and Ireland, the European Space Agency (Esa) says.
Water temperatures are as much as 3 to 4C above the average for this time of year in some areas, according to analysis by Esa and the Met Office.
The sea is particularly warm off the UK’s east coast from Durham to Aberdeen, and off north-west Ireland.
The Met Office says the reason is partly human-caused climate change.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65948544
The sea is warm because the weather has been warm isn’t it? June can be hot. Sounds great I’m off for a dip
15 June The Express predicts the hottest June day ever – wrong
17 June The Telegraph predicts the hottest day for 176 years – wrong
21 June the BBC states it’s the hottest day since 1976 and that temperature at the side of the runway at Heathrow Airport (again) – what a disappointment that must be for them.
Excellent article thank you.
In Braudel’s long view of history nothing is happening with climate or weather patterns.
We are blessed and should give thanks to live in a world of such stability.
We really must be stupid as a collective to worry about plant food, rounding errors and fret over complex processes we don’t even understand.
$cientism = the plant food hater cult. Money, power, control, lots of fake data.
Ah yes but we are now being told we must not be selfish and must think of the rest of the world. There are various reports today of Himalayan glaciers disappearing with devastating effects on populations down stream;
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/6/20/himalayan-glaciers-may-lose-75-percent-of-ice-by-2100-report
There is an immediate assumption that it is human created climate change that is melting these glaciers and that therefore we must don sackcloth and ashes and immiserate ourselves on the sacred altar of net-zero. I am sure there are folk on here better able to comment on glaciers than me but is it not the case that over the aeons of time glaciers naturally come and go? Are they not a dynamic and always changing aspect of living on a planet with an active climate and geology?
Indeed – folks will be aware of reports of the retreating Alpine glaciers revealing mediaeval villages.
But we were also told we’d be wiped out if we didn’t stop using fossil fuels. Well the 5 year prediction deadline is only tomorrow FGS! Who is this ”top climate scientist”? They should be named and shamed as I’m feeling a bit short-changed actually.
https://twitter.com/DrLoupis/status/1670921206583685121?cxt=HHwWgsCz4YD_prAuAAAA
From a channel based in a place with the odd oilfield, ISTR. Not criticising it overall – I do watch Al Jazeera from time to time, where there is often real news that you won’t find on the likes of BBC News.
For nature lovers, the (to some of us well known) information above gives the lie to the constant appeal to “climate change” as the reason for the fluctuation in various species from ptarmigans to bees over the last 20 years. The effects are there, but appear to lack the cause.
At best, it means that the conservationists are missing the real causes by blaming a non-existent one, thereby wasting effort on campaigning when they could be conserving. Alternatively they have, to a large extent, just begun to notice the natural, cyclical, fluctuations in wildlife patterns that even Darwin noted in Origin of Species. Nobody recorded the numbers of swallows or jellyfish before a few decades ago, largely after the climate scare began.
But then the climatologists have also failed to notice the propensity for wide natural fluctuations in the climate, with no single cause.
Weather fluctuations are a normal phenomenon.
It is strange what weather we have had all this winter, no cold at all, but the ways are dusty and the flyes fly up and down, and the rosebushes are full of leaves; such a time of year as never was known in this world before here. Samuel Pepys, January 21st 1661.
Climate fluctuation happens naturally, climate change crisis is a man made phenomena.
The temperature record of earth is a dogs breakfast of manipulated data that has been fiddled about with more times than a hookers knickers. Out of that clutter of unreliable junk, government funded data adjusters can tell you which year was warmer by a hundredth of a degree globally than some other year and that it was humans caused that and we “must act now”.————- Despite the fact that the sparse coverage of thermometers in the last 180 years or so, where most were really in the wealthy western nations, were never designed for accuracies such as this, and the areas around the thermometers were continually changing over time, adding more tarmac, buildings etc around the site of the thermometers. If ever the general public get to realise the truth regarding this pseudo scientific fraud, that seeks to scare them into accepting “Sustainable Development” and a global economy run by social justice progressives at the WEF and UN attempting to control the worlds wealth and resources then they are going to be very very angry. ————Except they are NOT going to find out because most ordinary people busy with work and family life don’t have the time to investigate every issue properly and they rely on mainstream news on the likes of BBC and SKY for their information. They probably think BBC and SKY are investigating the issue on their behalf and keeping them up to date. ————–Nope. They investigate NOTHING. They regurgitate “Official Science”
Being a “fu***ng Grifter” is all the rage these days then?————Maybe we should have Harry and his smirking medieval curtsy wife in charge of the temperature record.
Why is this considered to be some kind of shock revelation? The Met Office wrote way back in September last year that “the summer of 2022 was the fourth hottest summer for daily average temperature for the UK overall.” What was significant about last year was the heat wave in July. There were six stations in addition to Coningsby that went over 40C – so the idea it was some kind of freak due to the local conditions is clearly wrong. It was also a heat wave that was concentrated in the East. Wales, West of Scotland and Northern Ireland did not have record breaking temperatures.
As far as UK average temperatures are concerned. At less than 0.05% of the surface area of the globe it is pretty irrelevant to the overall global temperature.
While I agree ….. I feel like you answered your own comment….in reality it isn’t newsworthy or a shock revelation….it’s how this ‘hot weather in summer’ revelation was portrayed to the population by our Government, their entities and by the MSM …..
Last year…..’the record-breaking temperatures’ prompted the UK government to release its first-ever level-4 health alert, “indicating “illness and death may occur among the fit and healthy, and not just in high-risk groups”…
Friday 8 July, the UK government’s Health Security Agency and the Met Office issued a level3 health alert for London, as well as east and south-eastern England. (The Met Office describes a level 3 alert as a “heatwave action” alert, which “requires social and healthcare services to target specific actions at high-risk groups”.)
By Monday 11 July, the UK government had extended its level 3 health alert to cover the east midlands and south-west regions of England.
On the same day, the Met Office issued a “rare” amber weather warning…for much of England and Wales.
Later that same day, “senior government officials met for an emergency “Cobra” meeting inside 10 Downing Street to discuss the possibility of declaring a national emergency over the high temperatures expected from Sunday onwards….
This is besides all the ‘apocalypse now’ TV and Newpaper headlines….
I think we disagree about what is not newsworthy. Homewood’s article is not newsworthy because the core of it – UK average temperatures – was covered by the Met Office report back in Sept. But the Met Office report did include features of 2022 that were exceptional and newsworthy. The heat wave 16-19 July was record breaking. Whether such heat waves justify the alerts etc is another question not covered in either Homewood’s report or the Met Office report.
“record breaking” from a totally unreliable temperature record? ——So how does that work exactly? Records broken by hundredths of a degree when the thermometers that were measing the temperature (before satellites in 1979) in ever changing landscapes were never designed for such accuracies. Many people including politicians, the media, and possibly you, think that a record temperature is something that has exceeded temperatures being recorded for maybe a 150 years or so. Or for a very long time at least. But quite often the time scale is short. A temperature can be claimed as a record even when that data only goes back a short time. ———I think when we have seen deception of various kinds, exposed in climategate emails etc and the Hockey Stick Graph where the authors blatantly refused to provide data, methodology and computer code so other people could check it for themselves that claims of record temperature, hottest years etc need to be treated with caution, except ofcourse by people like yourself, who already decided what was true 20 years ago.
A national emergency in Summer because of Summer?
FFS!
Thanks Chris, for another interesting article…
I was pondering while reading it that absolutely everyone, yourself included, who doesn’t follow the agreed agenda..or as they would have it the ‘scientific consensus’…is identified as a climate denier..conspiracy theorist, or peddler of mis-information.
Many of the scientific articles and posts I read are labelled the same..as are many of the politicians, scientists, doctors, celebrities and lay-people posting them…
Much of the ‘consensus’..in all areas, is often disproved, or arguable…but everyone, no matter how scientifically credentialed or correct … are still labelled in the same way……
I’m curious as to how this will continue, as more and more people lose all trust in the ‘official’ promoters of the narrative….?
Hottest temperature ever recorded in Wales? 37.1C on 18th July 2022…… at Hawarden airport. What a coincidence….
Measured half way up the tailpipe of an air daffodil passenger jet!
Could have been. However 9 miles away on that same day I recorded a max temp of 30.9 deg C. It was definitely quite warm though!
Well, well, well.. The highest temperature ever recorded in Scotland is 34.8C at a place called Charterhall near the Scottish Borders. I found a map of where it is located: https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2754908 – it’s on an airfield (admitedly rarely used now, but no doubt acres of asphalt). So all 3 mainland UK temp records are at weather stations on airfields.
Although the average man in the street could easily identify a potential cause for these temperature spikes, the CO2 catastrophists still seem incapable of considering other possibilities.
The Met Office has reports from more than 330 land surface stations during the heatwave of 2022 across the UK. Of these,109 have at least 50 years of observations, which therefore capture past heatwaves, including 1976 …. of these 109 stations, 58 recorded their highest temperature on record during July 2022.
Or to put it graphically – see attached chart.
I am sorry but the “it is all about airports” meme just doesn’t add up.
Just because something warms does not mean humans warmed it. Even the IPCC admit they cannot tell the difference between warming that is natural and warming alleged to be caused by human activity. There is nothing unusual about current temperatures (or climate) Recently I see that Australia may have to discard it’s temperature record as it is unfit for purpose. Nothing unusual I suppose since the entire temperature record of earth is a clutter of adjusted and manipulated data presented as if someone had just stuck a thermometer under the earths armpit and taken a reading.
I do outdoor stuff down on’t moor a Tuesday. 3 weeks ago – cloudy and cold, requiring plenty of layers. 2 weeks ago – sunny, but bitterly cold wind still requiring plenty of layers. 1 week ago – sunny and hot, bringing work to a premature end. This week: cool and rainy to start, now sunshine and showers. Typical English summer then.
Could I ask where you are based?
My car had a punctured tyre this morning. Climate emergency, I’m led to believe…
But headlines and click-bait science papers designed to promote the collectivist Net Zero project dumb down on weather stories, even attempting to attribute individual events to long-term climatic changes.
Chris appears to be struggling with the idea that an event can have more than one cause. E.g. An accident may be caused by a driver going off the road but that may be caused by a badly maintained road which in turn may be caused cuts in the council budget and so on. Climate change may change the underlying conditions so that certain types of weather event are more likely and in that sense is the cause. There will also be more immediate causes that spark of that specific event. And the mainstream media usually report it that way.
Perhaps this is not surprising, since many take their lead from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that holds the implausible view that all changes in the climate since 1900 have been caused by humans.
This is not true. The IPCC estimates other causes of climate change such as volcanic and solar intensity – although the combined effect is small.
So solar intensity has a small effect but a tiny increase in a trace gas has a large one? Are you sure it is science you’re interested in? Because it seems people like you cannot tell the difference between “science” and “official science”
It is not a tiny increase. CO2 has gone from from between 170 and 300 ppm over the last 10,000 years to over 400 ppm in the last 200 years. The fact that it is a low concentration is utterly irrelevant. That only shows there are is humongous amounts of other gasses up there. After this “trace” gas is essential to support plant life on earth – right?
But there is no evidence that CO2 is causing or will cause dangerous changes to climate. The idea that it will comes from modelling full of assumptions, where the most basic parameters are either not understood or simply guessed at. It is not even known how much climate will warm if CO2 doubles (Known as ECS, Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity)—– CO2 has existed in the atmosphere in concentrations 10 and even 20 times higher in the past with no dangerous changes or runaway global warming. —-Sure CO2 is necessary to support life and it is also something else. It is the one gas that can be tied to Industrial Capitalism, and that is in my opinion what this “science” is the excuse for. An anti capitalist agenda called Sustainable Development and control of the worlds wealth and resources. Some very naive people like yourself think it is all about science with climate scientists running around all day studying the climate with barely time for a cheese roll, and then passing their findings on to government. But the opposite is true. It is government who massively increased spending on climate change and everyone and his dog who previously had no interest in climate came running after the easy money with everything that happens in the world now “likely due to climate change”.
..you seem to be struggling with the fact that nothing much is happening at all..other than lurid headlines and an agenda….
UK Temperatures Two Decades No Change- but a week of warm weather is enough proof for the BBC to say we should close down the economy
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