The Met Office has been unable to back up a claim that storms in the U.K. are “more intense” due to the effects of climate change. The claim was made by senior Met Office meteorologist Claire Nasir on January 22nd on BBC 5 Live Breakfast in the aftermath of Storm Isha, and led to a freedom of information request for an explanation by investigative journalist Paul Homewood. The Met Office has replied that it is unable to answer the request due to the fact that the information “is not held”.
In fact the Met Office could have addressed the claim that storms are growing in intensity by referring to its own ‘State of the Climate 2022’ report:
The most recent two decades have seen fewer occurrences of maximum gust speeds above these thresholds [40/50/60 knots] than during previous decades, particularly comparing the period before and after 2000. This earlier period [before 2000] also included among the most severe storms experienced in the U.K. in the observational records including the ‘Burns Day Storm’ of January 25th 1990, the ‘Boxing Day Storm’ of December 26th 1998 and the ‘Great Storm’ of October 16th 1987. Any comparison of storms is complex as it depends on severity, spatial extent and duration. Storm Eunice [in 2022] was the most severe storm to affect England and Wales since February 2014, but even so, these storms of the 1980s and 1990s were much more severe.
An explanation for the remarks broadcast unchallenged on the BBC was provided by the Met Office, “in order to provide advice and assistance”. The statement about more intense storms being due to climate change was, the Met Office explains, in reference to “our published U.K. Climate Projections, looking at projections in the future”. This is straight out laughable, since it seeks to justify a statement firmly in the present with waffle about future modelled projections. Paul Homewood comments that it is “small wonder that so many have little confidence in the Met Office anymore”. Meanwhile, the Global Warming Policy Foundation has demanded that the Met Office retracts the “false ‘more intense storms’ claim”. The foundation notes that there is no compelling trend in maximum gust speeds recorded in the U.K. since 1969.
Of course these remarks by Claire Nasir are just the latest in a long line of scares that are being spread by state-funded operations promoting the collectivist Net Zero project. In the mainstream media there is little or no push back on often outrageous and improbable claims of climate collapse and potential future human misery.
In December, the headlines were full of the news that London could suffer an endemic dengue plague by 2060 due to changes in the climate. The claim from the Health Security Agency arose from a computer model fed with an implausible rise in temperature of 3-4°C within 80 years. Paul Reiter, retired Professor of Insects and Infectious Diseases at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, called the claims “entirely fictional” and “shameless”. Andrew Montford of Net Zero Watch commented that science is being misused to generate fear and to ‘nudge’ us in a desired direction. “This kind of shameful disinformation brings the Civil Service into disrepute,” he said.
The cynical might observe that climate Armageddonites know they are unlikely to be challenged on any claim on climate change, however improbable. In mainstream media, politics and academia, the science is ‘settled’. As a matter of policy, the BBC no longer gives airtime to anyone challenging the politicised narrative. As a result, many scientists seem to have lost the ability to engage in a rational debate with anyone taking a sceptical view of their work. Last December, the Daily Sceptic reported on a paper from the Met Office that proposed a radical new method of calculating climate temperature change. The scientific method of calculating trends over 30 years was to be ditched and replaced with 10 years of actual data merged with model projections for the next decade. The motive behind this controversial move was obvious since the hope would be to claim an earlier breach of the 1.5°C political threshold. The paper was led by Professor Richard Betts, Head of Climate Impacts at the Met Office, and this is what he tweeted as a rebuttal.
The only mainstream broadcast media outlets in the U.K. offering a platform for sceptical discussion of climate change and its role in promoting Net Zero are Talk TV and GB News. Almost all salaried academics working in ‘climate science’ subscribe to the ‘settled’ narrative and will not debate with people they frequently term ‘deniers’. In fact they hide behind this and similar abuse because they fear a forensic examination of much of their fearmongering. Not to put too fine a point on it, they are scared of what might happen in an uncontrolled debating environment. Perish the thought that Professor Betts might be asked to explain how he keeps a straight face when promoting the Met Office’s 40.3°C U.K. temperature ‘record’. The one recorded for 60 seconds on July 19th 2022 by a runway at RAF Coningsby as three Typhoon jets were landing.
To ‘balance’ their coverage, and seemingly to keep the state regulator Ofcom happy, Talk TV and GB News are forced to give a platform to people inhabiting the more colourful end of the climate spectrum. Step forward Jim Dale, one time Royal Navy weather observer, who can be relied upon to point to any bad weather event or natural disaster such a wildfires and claim it is all due to a human-caused collapsing climate. Any reference to actual data is met with shouty denial and frequent abuse. The regular brawls on Nana Akua’s GB News Sunday show with retired hydrologist Paul Burgess are a classic of their kind.
Let’s call it the Daleification of climate science, and as we can see it is not just confined to our eponymous hero.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
The simple answer is communists have taken over most institutions in the “free west”. Let’s check their 10 commandments written by the drunk rapist Marx (raped his prol maid) who is their prophet, read them then ask yrself how many have already been achieved or partially achieved? Whilst some have been fully realised like the mass theft of income through sky high taxes, all have been partially achieved through state regulation.
https://heidelblog.net/2014/02/the-ten-points-of-marxism/
The answer is 2) and 10). But income taxes existed before Marx and free education for children in public schools seems about to be unachieved as public schools are increasingly dedicated to added-value-free political preaching of the planet savers and world improvers no one else wants to listen to for very good reasons. Abolishing child labour also surely isn’t a bad thing.
We need child labour to bring in the cobalt in order to save the planet!
I have never known it to be so wet in NE England. Farmers fields are quagmires with lakes of pooling water.
It has not stopped raining for weeks and this region is much drier than the west of the country.
The dune restoration measures at Tynemouth have all been washed away by about 20 metres. The seas have been the stormiest I can remember and I am a surfer.
The fences on my street have all turned bright green with algae blooming because of the damp.
They are desperate for us to blame climate change.
The chem trails have been sprayed relentlessly though. On blue sky mornings you can watch the planes spraying back and forth. Unlike condensation trails, their trails persist then spread then leave a haze for the rest of the day. The next day it will be a solid thick grey cloud and rain.
Their intention is simple. Cause crop blight. Blame ‘unsustainable’ farming practices. Cause food shortages. Force farmers to foreclose. Compulsorily purchase farm land. Grow GM crops. Ration meat and dairy consumption.
I’m not doubting your testimony but pretty sure you’ve known many wet winters similar to this one in your life. Humans have in general terrible memories, as there is no need to retain such information. Now any bad weather, such as a few days heavy rain, is pointed out as the fulfillment of their “last days” climate change prophecy.
To my mind a very wet winter is not climate change it is just climate. Altogether the phrase ‘climate change’ could be thought to be tautology as the word climate is supposed to describe how the weather changes.
Human memory is fickle indeed but I can remember the hot summers of 1959 and 1976 and the very cold winter of 1963. On the basis of those memories, for my three score years and ten on this good earth, the climate has been the climate and nothing to get worked up about.
Peculiar how we both nearly posted more or less the very same comment simultaneously.
Just weather?
You will often hear friends and relations say “I never remember so much rain, or when I was young the tar used to melt on the road. We used to have 5 feet of snow etc etc.”——–They seem to think that because they remember a few hot summers or a few cold winters when they were young that if they don’t see the same thing every year after that then this must be “Climate Change”. —Nope —–It is “Climate”.
They also conveniently ignore the fact that they are one small data point in a large world.
Not to mention a small data point in the geological history of our planet.
Tar melting may possibly have been due to it’s composition. Quite possible that it’s now a better, stronger product than it used to be…just a thought.
Actually, not much tar is spread these days it seems anyway, judging by the appalling state of many roads.
Excellent point varmint.
A “weather” event is measured over a period of minutes, hours, days, weeks and maybe longer.
A climate event is measured over decades, the standard being 30 years, so any weather event is just transitory.
If every summer got hotter, and hot spells of longer duration, with less rain (droughts), over a decade or longer, that could point to a climatic trend.
Yes, it does seem quite wet at the moment, but in reality it is an irrelevant transitory weather event.
In February 1987 I lived in Leeds and the temperature never rose above 0C, but that did not lead to an Ice Age, and the following February – no idea, so it was not memorable in any way!
Here in the east mids, water table high, arable fields have lying water following a few days rain after the last bout several weeks ago had dried up well…IOW it’s winter. Trip to east coast today confirmed the “olde” saying ( pertaining to geographical features mind you ) “February fill dyke” and they have been doing that very clearly, bursting banks full..
Funny thing , weather…
Memories are terrible – quite. This time last year we had one of the driest (if not, the driest) Februaries on record in England, and there was chest beating and hair pulling about drought, climate change, blah blah, ad infinitum. In Cornwall they introduced a hosepipe ban before April. Fortunately for keen Cornish gardeners, it then turned out to be a wet and cool summer. It always seems to me that the climate has a way of evening things out.
Quite right, the 1970’s in general were very wet, and some heavy bouts of rain since. However people have forgotten the Pacific volcano of two years ago, that threw 10 cubic kilometre (ish) of water into the atmosphere, that water has to come down sometime, and Judith Curry thinks it could take five years to do so. More rain on the way.
Yes I think the water vapour will also affect the climate marginally. My gran used to say the summers in the 1930s were much better. The testimony is backed up by the dust bowl which implies a warmer period than the present.
A farmer once told me we go through periods of warm, wet and cold weather. He said the trick is to judge in which period you are currently in.
Yes listening to farmers in weather trends is far wise than heading the met office.
I keep mentioning the Huanga Tonga Hunga Ha’api volcanic eruption to people Tonga Eruption Blasted Unprecedented Amount of Water Into Stratosphere – NASA
I hope the good news is that it is fresh water falling and replenishing aquifiers. It will take years for the effects to be observed and fully understood but any human activity pales into insignificance faced with the forces of nature.
Yet to find anyone who can prove that any current “weather phenomenon” (it’s been endless rain here in Somerset for months as well, or Mudshire as we call it) has not happened before, and indeed, more than once. What we see out of oiur window is irrelevant.
The BBC is very good at predicting what the “weather” will be in 20, 50 or 100 years time, which is unprovable, but in the short term is rubbish.
Yesterday, at 10:00 the BBC weather near me said 0% chance of rain, and yet it was raining! So many years hence, they are very confident they know, but the actual here and now, not so much!
And before I’m accused of being ridiculous, they started it!
I agree. The consistency with which el Beeb gets the weather wrong is truly a wonder to behold.
I deleted the weather app from my phone, no idea who provided it because it was so consistently wrong.
When the forecasters say x% chance of rain, WTF does that mean?
It is the most useless description of what is to be expected. After all, it either rains where you are – 100% chance or it does not – 0% chance.
What counts as rain? One drop? One hundred drops? More?
Does it mean x% geographically of the country will get wet sometime that day even if it is just one drop for one instant?
Does it mean x% of the time that day there will be rain somewhere?
So it is the chemtrails wot dun it.
Tell me what the chemicals are, where they are stored and also reference the regular flight paths on Flight Radar or similar tracking and then I will give some credence to the chemtrail insanity.
Don’t just downtick. You are missing achance to convert me to the cause! Or is it that you realsie your fears are irrational and have no basis in fact?
It seems odd that so many governments and NGOs are seeking to regulate something that doesn’t exist?
https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/17/climate-geoengineering-must-be-regulated-says-former-wto-head
It says in the article that ‘none of these possibilities have been tried’ (re geo engineering).
To my observations, vapour trails from jets vary according to the weather conditions at the time. sometimes they spread across the sky, sometimes they disappear in minutes, sometimes they are totally absent. Flight tracking apps are also available – I have one, and I have yet to see a plane in the sky that hasn’t actually appeared on the app. That said, I have seen it suggested that the Lynton flood in the early 50s was due to cloud seeding, and sometimes I am curious about the Boscastle flood as well. For me, the jury is out on this one.
The land around that part of Devon has deep gulleys making the area susceptible to flash floods when lots of water is dumped on the fields up top.
I did read that they used that technique to cause a monsoon during the Vietnam War.
Please provide evidence (any) of changes that are made to aircraft for them to make ‘chem-trails’? As all supposedly ‘chem-trail’ flights originate from a civil airport how are the ‘chemicals’ pumped into the aircraft and where are they stored in the aircraft? If these ‘chemicals’ come out of the engines then how do these engines produce thrust if ‘chemicals’ are being added, or how do the ‘chemicals’ survive being burnt in temperatures over 1,700C? Why does no one that is getting on a plane notice anything as planes being refueled can be observed from the terminals? Why don’t all the pilots say anything? Why don’t all the plane spotters including all the plane enthusiasts that take thousands and thousands of photos notice anything? Why do crop dusters get as low as possible when they are spraying, perhaps as low as 1 foot above the crops? If an airliner sprays at 30,000ft where do you think the ‘chemicals’ will end up? – directly below?
Photos of cloud seeding aircraft are not evidence. Photos of aircraft with water tanks for performance testing are not evidence. Photos of aircraft modified for fire bombing are not evidence. Photos of aircraft modified to spray insecticide are not evidence (and they spray low down).
I would suspect the deep state has teams inventing so called conspiracy theories creating some semi plausible evidence. The ppl doing this may even be unaware it’s their job. Creating disinformation is a great tool to divide sceptical ppl up. I think chem trails are one such example but I do need to look in to it more.
The particular problem with the Chem-Trail nonsense is that there are scientists, scientific journals and ‘fact-checkers’ that have waded in to debunk this blatant nonsense which then gives the impression that the same people can have legitimacy ‘fact checking’ anyone critical of lockdowns, masks, mass testing, experimental ‘vaccines’, ULEZ, 15 min cities, Net-Zero etc.
Oh it’s true…
https://youtu.be/V1SsTcNQgQs?si=5x-4Yvp2p7j7D8-Y
There is an old quote, “A lie spreads half way around the world while the truth is still tying its show laces”———On the highly politicised issue of climate change, this most certainly applies. ——We get endless streams of misinformation and climate models full of speculation and assumption will little predictive value all masquerading as science. We get a smidgeon of the truth elevated into a planetary emergency with little in the way of evidence. We get stories of storms, floods, droughts and wild fires all getting worse because of climate change, when infact there is no increase in the frequency or intensity of any type of weather event. ——–So the public are getting an impression of a crisis even though in reality there is NONE.—— People are too busy with work and family life and will mostly only hear the headlines. They will see all manner of extreme weather events from all corners of the globe, beamed to their living rooms on mainstream news and will have this perception that everything is getting worse. —–But that is all it is. A “perception”. —–This is really all that governments with an agenda require. That you perceive something to be true, and the lie can “spread half way around the world” ———Truth is an inconvenience they can do without. —The ends justify the means. A pack of lies is apparently all for our own good.
It’s exactly the same as the covid death count which was trotted out every night during the scamdemic. I was called a liar for pointing out that nearly 900 people a day die of cancer and/or heart disease anyway (in the UK), so there was nothing unusual in that amount of people dying each day. But no, I was a ‘denier’ cos the papers and the BBC said otherwise.
You can’t argue with stupid unfortunately they bring you down to their level.
Word play I can’t resist here:
On telly, the covid death c**t presented the daily covid death count.
Meterology, now based as the DS posted in Dec on ‘models’…..
If I want a weather forecast I will ask a farmer not a sociologist.
Climatology, Virology, Immunology, Meterology, Cosmology….jesus christ. A world of fake ologies and faker experts. All using models, assumptions, preconceived philosophical starting points etc etc
Not a scrap of real science in any of it.
Astrology is actually more respectable than all the above ologies.
Professor Richard Betts?
‘….maybe they had to get a grown-up to help’
Sounds like someone else could do with putting on big boy trousers……
He’s a graduate of Bristol University so that won’t have helped……..
Strange ad hominem attack from the Prof. This kind of elitist just gets my back up. No justification for what they have done in changing method, just ‘We’re so much more than you. Go back to picking potatoes with the scum’. What an arrogant twat. I suppose if it keep giving the ‘right answer’ for their wealthy patrons, then none is required. Grown up.? Grown up, my arse.
How does Nasir keep her job after such an obvious lie? Was she paid to say it for the sake of the bbc agenda? Was she safe in the knowledge that, nowadays you can say what you like without facts or consequences?
If any of us prols in our day to day jobs had made such a professional blunder we’d be sacked instantly!
As the met office says there are two aspects of the storm intensity – wind speed and rainfall. There is no evidence for an increase in max wind speed but there is an increasing trend in rainfall. Homewood, Morrison, GWPF ignore this.
Coningsby was just the highest of many places round the country to record their highest temperature by a considerable margin that day. So it wasn’t just the typhoons. Morrison knows this but he has a political campaign to conduct so he doesn’t mentions it.
Two aspects? Wind speed and rainfall?
What about duration, area, frequency?
Our main weapon is surprise…
Yes – for both wind and rain we can investigate duration, area and frequency. Morrison etc don’t take any notice of that either.
He did mention it in past articles. One I remember was another 40⁰ C in London close to a giant highly reflective artificial structure. This is also besides the point because the statement about the Coningsby temperature record doesn’t become less true because something else happened elsewhere.
Your first paragraph doesn’t make more sense, either. The claim was storms becoming more severe and not rainfall. And when people hear storms they think of strong wind, because that’s what makes them different from heavy rain alone. Hence, even assuming the Meteorolüge¹ really meant rainfall just because this conveniently happens to be true (until summer, when the UK’s becoming a desert! howling is going to be restarted once more than three sunny days occurred in a row), the statement would still be misleading.
¹ English meteorologist is German Meteorologe. Meteorolüge could be rendered as meteorolieist in English. The German word actually exists, I didn’t make it up. It’s used to allude to the highly unreliable nature of weather predictions.
There is a some confusion about the significance of these records. There will always be places round the UK that typically have higher temperatures than others for many reasons: local buildings, UHI, airports, Southern location whatever. Inevitably if a day is hot enough to break records these will be the hottest and therefore the ones to break UK records.The point is whether they are hotter than they have ever been before not whether they are hotter than other places. On that day many locations were hotter than they have ever been since records began by a considerable margin.
“hotter than they have ever been before”? ——-This statement is totally absurd considering the thermometer was only invented in the 1700’s. —-But then absurdity is par for the course in climate politics that tries pretending it is science.
Temperatures throughout the UK will always vary, eg, at the moment, the Met Office claims that it’s 14⁰ C in London but only 7⁰ C in Aberdeen. And as most of the UK is not a RAF airbase where 3 jet fighters are currently landing, temperature records measured at such a location while thas was happening are meaningless for the UK at a large. A more sensible way to assess temperatures in a region would be to create frequency distribution table of them. But that’s never being done. Whether this is due to the outcome not being to the liking of the people who want temperature records or because two dimensions instead of one are too much for them is open to speculation.
Reductio ad absurdum of your argument: Let’s assume there’s a blast furnace which has never been operating so far. On a particularly hot summer day, it’s turned on for the first time, becomes hotter than it was ever before and breaks all UK temperature records by margin beyond the wildest of dreams of the climate emergencycists.
Of course, they wouldn’t ever really publish temperatures in blast furnace for this purpose as everyone would immediately see through their trick in this case. But that there temperature record fudging is designed to be somewhat less obvious doesn’t mean its of a different nature.
Your blast furnace argument would make sense if planes landing at airports was unusual and/or no other sites had shown a similar spike in temperature. As it is – it seems almost certain that from time to time temperature readings at airports coincide with aircraft landing – until the 19th July 2022 this had failed to produce a temperature even close to Coningsby that day. Even more important – many other stations reported the highest temperature ever for that station and for the UK prior to that day.
Planes landing at airports is unusual for the UK as most of the UK is not an airport. Didn’t I just write that?
You wrote “ And as most of the UK is not a RAF airbase where 3 jet fighters are currently landing, ” which is not the same thing. But that is not the point – many thermometers are positioned on or close to airports. Measurements are taken every day. There must be many thousands of summer temperature recordings which coincide with an aeroplane landing close by.
Anyhow – the bigger point is – ignore Coningsby – there are many other places where planes are not landing which had higher temperatures than ever recorded before in the UK.
This text was specifically about the so-called UK temperature record measured at RAF Coningsby. That you keep plastering that with Ignore! Ignore! Ignore! like some malfunctioning Dalek suggests you’re absolutely not happy about the reported circumstances. Which – in turn – suggests that the point Morrison made about it is valid.
“A Political Campaign to Conduct”? ———Well it seems like you finally realise this is and always has been about politics and not science after all. ——Making all manner of claims about climate backed up but no evidence is according to you “science”, but challenging those claims is “Politics? —–I think you suffer from a severe dose of confirmation bias.
Misinformation is shouted, corrections whispered.
Standard tactic by the BBC when it is outed.
Or anything contrary to preferred narratives omitted.
In many jobs it is a breach of employment terms to bring the employer into disrepute. In most professions there is a code of conduct requiring members not to deceive.
will anything be done about this dishonest or ill informed or incompetent Met Office employee
The most estimable Mr. Paul Homewood, bane of the BBC and their endless climate hysteria…
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2024/02/13/calls-for-met-office-to-retract-false-more-intense-storms-claim/
“Met Office: Recent trends and future projections of UK storm activity: “This report found that there is no compelling trend in maximum gust speeds recorded in the UK since 1969, measured as the number of days more than 20 weather stations recorded gust speeds above 40, 50 or 60 knots.”
Met Office: State of the UK Climate 2022 (page 47): “Storm Eunice [in 2022] was the most severe storm to affect England and Wales since February 2014, but even so, these storms of the 1980s and 1990s were very much more severe.”
Paul Homewood: Met Office cannot provide evidence for “more intense storms” claim“
Is there a good reason why storms that occur close together are given different names? I couldn’t understand why we were in the grip of storm Isha on a Tuesday and just a couple of days later it was storm J- somethingorother (Jocelyn?)
Wasn’t it just the same one? Are we seeing them rebranded to make it seem more scary or is there a solid scientific reason that they were different phenomena?
I am waiting for “Storm Muhammed”. ——-After all isn’t that the most common baby name now in the UK? ——-Surely storms should be more inclusive.
The reason they want to shift to using observations and model predictions is to delay for as long as possible observations of the cooling that will soon start as the earth enters the cooling phase of the well established 90 year warming/cooling cycles
A lie is heard twice around the world before the truth gets its shoes on. And that’s why they control the media.
Thank you again Chris for your repeated take-downs of the smug consensus peddled by Betts and his mates.
Yes, Chris’s articles are always, always worth a read. So much sense in a mad world. Thank you Chris.
So, the claim is Despite nearly 35 years of global warming, storms have become less severe in the UK BUT we prophesize this trend will certainly be reversed in future! consistent with global-warmists always telling scary stories about the future which end up being quietly shelved whenever they didn’t become true again.
There is a grand solar minimum approaching, lasting about 20-50 years, we are past the cycle 25 solar maximum so the energy reaching the earth is reducing now.
The jet stream is becoming less strong and its west to east flow is becoming increasingly meridional. The effect for the UK and Europe is a tendency for more Atlantic low pressure systems to arrive here instead of being deflected to the north.
That’s pretty much it, just be thankful that we probably won’t see the same cold as during the Maunder minimum in the 17th to early 18th centuries. Frozen Thames, frost fairs and so on. Meteorology needs to learn some solar science.
Reading an article the other day about the fact that insurance companies were hiking premiums on thatched housing stock because there of the increase in severe storms…Well, it does rather suit the insurance companies to hike their premiums on the back of the “science”. Another one on the bandwagon perhaps?