At least three Typhoon fighter jets were landing at RAF Coningsby around the time when the brief U.K. temperature record was declared at 15:12 on July 19th last year from a measuring device situated halfway down the runway. Following a Freedom of Information request, the Daily Sceptic has obtained portions of the log books of four pilots flying from the base that afternoon, casting considerable doubt on the record that made headlines around the world.
The pilots’ log books record three of the four Typhoons landing at 15:10, 15:15 and 15:15. However, since these log books round off all times to the nearest five minutes, we can interpret this to mean the three jets landed between about 15:07:30 to 15:17:30 at the latest. But pilots want to rack up the most possible flying hours, so a landing at 15:12:30 would be written down as 15:15 and not 15:10, and there is always wiggle room.
In reality, it’s likely that the three jets actually landed in very quick succession, rather than over the space of several minutes. Many videos are available online showing operations at Coningsby, with Typhoons flying (and landing) close to each other, and a very recent video shows three jets landing within 30 seconds. The lead jet of the three landing on July 19th was ZJ914 – the RAF’s primary display aircraft – suggesting the others were experienced pilots who may well have landed in close formation. Taken in context with the log books, this points to the three aircraft landing together at some point very close to when the record was set at 15:12, and likely a little before.
At 15:10, the temperature suddenly jumped by 0.6°C to hit the 40.3°C record at 15.12. Within 60 seconds, the record temperature dropped back by 0.6°C. At the time, the Met Office claimed that verifying the record had been a “rigorous process” and that all data was accurate.
The Daily Sceptic has published a number of articles about the Coningsby incident and the general recording of surface temperatures by the Met Office. Last November, we asked the Met Office if its “rigorous process” confirming the validity of the 40.3°C record had ruled out all non-climatic causes such as jet aircraft operating near the measuring device, since RAF Coningsby is a major jet pilot training centre and home to two squadrons of Typhoons. We received no reply. Earlier, Lincolnshire Live was told the rise in temperature might have been due to a break in thin cloud. Last November, the Daily Sceptic published a satellite photo showing cloudless skies at 15:00 on July 19th across London and most of eastern England.
In the light of our latest revelations, it’s time the Met Office made a statement about its claimed record at RAF Coningsby. It should either withdraw it, or provide convincing evidence as to why the record should be retained. If it does not take public action, it risks the ‘record’ becoming a national joke.
Last year was a warm year in the U.K. and July 19th was undoubtedly a very hot day, although the mini-heatwave had broken by 22:00, with rain in London and a 20°C drop in temperature. Five English places declared temperatures over 40°C, but all have problems with non-climatic heat corruptions.
The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) grades weather stations and gives lower classifications to those surrounded by tarmac and buildings. An interesting article in the blog Climate Scepticism looked at the five U.K. 40°C sites and found problems at all of them. According to the WMO, the classification set for Coningsby suggests a temperature margin of error of up to 1°C. The second place at London’s St. James’s Park is sited next to a metalled path, suggesting a 2°C uncertainty. Heathrow and Northolt are busy London airports with the same problems as Coningsby. The last site in Kew Gardens is marginally better, but it is sited near one of the largest tropical greenhouses in the world, and breezes wafting over the vast glass structure could corrupt surrounding measurements.
For the purpose of taking temperature measurements to build a picture of long-term climate change, there are few places more unsuitable than an airport runway. But all airports measure temperature for operational purposes, and the easily-available data from numerous locations is embedded in both national and international datasets. In the U.K., the Met Office is fully signed up to the ‘climate crisis’ narrative. One-off weather events and measurements are fed to the unquestioning mainstream media by the Met Office and this helps promote alarm in the cause of the collectivist Net Zero agenda. The Met Office is particularly busy in the summer months where it seems to have decided to catastrophise what was once considered normal summer weather. Three balmy days of 25°C on the Cornish Riviera are now termed a ‘heatwave’, while national weather maps turn blood-red as temperatures climb through the 20s. On a global scale, the Met Office has retrospectively added over 30% warming to the last 20 years, removing a 2000-2012 pause clearly still seen in satellite data.
At the time of the claimed Coningsby record, Dr. Mark McCarthy from the Met Office told Lincolnshire Live 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 no way that McCarthy can know this since it is just an opinion, or to be more accurate, an opinion backed up by computer models. There is not a single science paper that would prove that claim conclusively.
If anything, it would seem that much of the claimed urban heat should be removed, rather than increased. In recent ground-breaking work, two American scientists – Dr Roy Spencer and Professor John Christy – working out of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, have started to separate out the effect of urbanisation on temperature measurements. Over the last 50 years, it was discovered that warming could have been exaggerated by up to 50% across the eastern United States. Interestingly, the largest exaggerations were found at airports. At Orlando International Airport in Florida, the local data showed massive warming of 0.3°C per decade, a figure that fell to just 0.07°C when adjusted for urban heat.
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A search the British Library’s newspaper archive using the terms ‘heatwave’ and ‘great heat’ for the last decades of the 19th century produces some interesting reports.
And Flaming June, is not called that because it snows.
Well done on being persistent in getting to the bottom of this incident.
40.3°C Record’ Temperature achieved by cheating. What a surprise.
I met an Australian gentleman yesterday who said somebody put in a freedom of information request in Australia and it was revealed that they used digital thermometers reading to make the increase the temperature reading.
Thursday 29th June 11am to 12pm
Yellow Freedom Boards
Junction A3095 Warfield Road &
Harvest Ride Warfield
Bracknell RG42 2QH
There was an article on Sceptic a few months back about Australia’s temperature measurements. Seemingly their digital thermometers are all set 0.7 degrees too high. I wonder why that could be?
Colour me surprised.
Meanwhile 5 miles away in the countryside the temp was 34C…..we are in Sussex and on that day we were at 35C – hot but in the long duration of ‘weather’, not that superlative.
I see the EU Reich will start geoengineering to blot out the Sun. Am I in a Matrix movie? Are the retards really this stupid? Does it not echo the US halfwits called scientists who in 1974 screamed in a letter to Nixon to nuke the arctic to stop cooling?
https://www.rt.com/news/578817-eu-blocking-out-sun-bloomberg/
The age of the retard in full swing.
Oh great! What could possibly go wrong? The sooner these idiots are neutralised the better.
That will do wonders for their solar panels.
Don’t expect joined up thinking.
It’ll lower the crop yield too.. just thinking out loud..
And, if “neutralised” in the way I would propose, it would raise the quality of the ‘gene-pool’.
I can see Whitless and Bank Ballance on the TV proclaiming that blocking out the sun is perfectly safe.
They’ve been geoengineering our skies from 1946, and in earnest from the mid 90s..
What a laugh! Thanks Chris for persisting to wring the truth out of them.
The temperature “record” of earth is a dogs breakfast of manipulated and adjusted data. It has been fiddled about with more times than a hookers knickers. The keepers of the temperature “record” are government funded data adjusters providing the excuses for public policy that wants rid of your car, your gas central heating, your beef, your holidays, your freedom and your prosperity. Climate Change dogma can only be defended by a barrage of lies and misinformation, adjusted data and fabricated graphs. ——–Science is built on trust. The general public trusts that scientific research results are an honest reflection of observations. Scientists should be able to trust that other scientists have gathered data and used appropriate techniques and reported their results accurately. It is hoped that scientists are recruited from within the ranks of honest professionals genuinely seeking objective truth. In that respect climate science has mostly FAILED. This is always the danger when something becomes as heavily politicised as climate. It is hard to get a person to agree when their ability to pay their mortgage and feed their family depends on not agreeing.
Come on. Mr Rons, you are slipping. it is clearly the fault of the Russian invasion.
“Oh no! We are all going to be incinerated and here is the evidence!”. Well, yes, if you insist on standing behind a Typhoon jets engines you will be incinerated but Global Warming it is not and it has bugger all to do with CO2.
This reminds me of 1st July 2015 when three jets landed in quick succession at Heathrow Airport and then blasted their exhausts over the temperature sensor when they turned off on to the taxiway. There is a reason that climatic monitoring stations are located in open countryside while weather monitoring stations are located at airport runways!
Here is a plan of the site, showing the locations of the meteorological station and the landing aircraft. https://imgur.com/PU2zXbV
I think a detailed study of all these airport-based weather stations is called for.
At least a study into the validity of including their data into the Met Office records. They are not weather stations they are airfield condition monitors, and their instantaneous readings are meaningless. All their output should be integrated (or averaged) over a longer period than a few seconds.
The Met Office is bought and paid for, just like so many of our tax payer funded institutions..
As aircrew, we need to know the temperature at the runway in order to accurately input the data for our take off performance. The higher the temperature, the lower the density of the air resulting in reduced engine thrust, which is important to know when we are calculating the length of the runway required to get airborne.
As any schoolboy will tell you, tarmac radiates heat, making any temperature readings taken next to a runway unrepresentative of the overall local temperature, but they do represent the temperature of the air during our take off roll, which is the temperature that we need to know.
By using readings from airports around the country the Met Office are using temperature information that is distorted by radiant heat from the associated runways, of which they must be aware and if not, they should not be in the job. In purposely distorting the truth to appease their political masters they are bringing the discipline of climatology into disrepute. They should be ashamed of themselves.
It does seem the Met Office isn’t interested in looking into this. No need to speculate why.
Ian.. I actually agree with you on this.. 😉
I saved a screen cap of July 19th 2022 at 5pm which shows that the highest listed temp was 37C in Lincolnshire. Most other temps in the UK were below that figure, especially the costal areas that never get a mention. The problem with ‘record’ high temperatures is that it implies that EVERYWHERE is experiencing that record temp, when in fact, places like North Wales were as low as 18C. It should be an AVERAGE temp, not just cherry picking one place.
This is nuts. In the global scheme of things a single day (or even a single year) in the UK is just a symbol not a significant measurement. However, by any reasonable standard July 19th was the hottest since records began and by a large margin – no amount of nitpicking over the location of some stations is going to change that.
A total of 46 stations across the UK exceeded the previous UK record of 38.7°C. Many long-running stations with 100+ year records recorded their highest ever temperature, some by extraordinary margins of 3 to 4°C
According to the Met Office, there are 435 weather measurement stations in the UK. This means the previous UK record wasn’t exceeded by about 90% of them. And the second sentence is just a string of important sounding words without any real content.
The 90% didn’t exceed 38.7C but that doesn’t mean they didn’t exceed the highest temperature for their location. Clearly only the stations in the warmest locations are going to be candidates for breaking the UK record. For 46 stations to do so is extraordinary.
The second sentence is important because it shows the significance of highest temperature since records began.
The 90% didn’t exceed 38.7C but that doesn’t mean they didn’t exceed the highest temperature for their location.
It also doesn’t mean they didn’t exceed the lowest recorded temperature ever. That’s a bit improbable in summer, but in absence of other information, we don’t know this.
The second sentence is important because it shows the significance of highest temperature since records began
This second sentence contains zero actual information. It’s pure handwaiving.
You are arguing with someone who likely decided what was true 20 years ago. Once people decide to be certain about things where no certainty exists then you are probably wasting your time. But actually you aren’t wasting your time because lots of other people are reading both of your comments. ————What happens with a lot of those people is that a high temperature anywhere in the world is “global warming” but a low temperature is simply weather, and you get told that that cold temperature is “not the globe” de da de da. ——Yep it isn’t easy discussing things with people who have a severe dose of confirmation bias.
If you can’t stand the fictitious heat get off the tarmac..
Most of the temperature differences can be accounted for by increased urbanisation. I think a study is required to discover the best position of recording sites to get accurate air temperatures not impacted by irrelevant factors such as aircraft and hot tarmac.
Yes but once you do that you would need to wait 30 years to collect all of the results and even then if something warms it does not mean humans warmed it. But as someone pointed out from the Climate Industry “We are not basing things on the data we are basing them on the models”. So, no matter what the data ends up saying, it is models full of assumptions and speculations that get used as the excuse for the eco socialist policies that all western governments are putting in place. Except the Trump one ofcourse, and in time Trump will be seen for what he really was. Not a misogynist, racist, bigot, but someone who wanted to protect his own people from the pretend to save the planet globalists.
Ground temperature is of little importance anyway: air temperature is what matters and that is essentially static. England’s grey, unpleasant land that most of us live in – as opposed to the the glorious countryside – is a mix if concrete and tarmac and now-unkempt grassy areas that are increasingly a fire hazard. Last summer, looking at the overgrown, waist high grass verges and grassy areas I played in as a child 40 years ago, brown from a normal summer’s heat, all I could see was neglect in the name of the eco-cult and a tinderbox that a stray cigarette could ignite.
According to global warming theory if it is warming caused by greenhouse gasses then most of the warming should be seen about 10 kilometres up in the troposphere. Otherwise known as the hotspot. But no such warming has been observed. Infact most of the alleged warming is seen at the surface. Which tends to indicate that this alleged warming is not due to greenhouse gasses.
If they took a reading alongside Westminster the reading would be off the charts with the hot air that comes out of that place..
It’s been known by those who bother to investigate that the Met Office have been fiddling temperature values for years. The question I would like answered is; do they correct their distorted values for the data they put into their computers to forecast weather. I know when they moved from Bracknell to Exeter they had new computers at multimillion pounds cost, although I haven’t detected an improvement in their forecasting.
Correct most of the warming is actually only seen in the adjustments. ——-Or as they like to call their fiddling——Homogenisation.
Thanks for these excellent articles showing that even our own Met Office is in on this complete scam/hoax its all about control and the great reset.