Interest and concern continues to grow about the numerous retrospective adjustments that the U.K. Met Office has made to its global HadCRUT temperature database. Often the adjustments cool earlier periods going back to the 1930s and add warming in more recent times. The adjustments are of course most convenient in promoting the global warming narrative surrounding Net Zero fantasies. There is particular interest in the 0.15°C cooling inserted in the 1940s and the greater warming added in more recent decades. The scientific blog No Tricks Zone (NTZ) has recently returned to the story noting the state-controlled Met Office has “corrected” the data to “align with their narrative”.
In suggesting a narrative, NTZ traces the adjustments back to the 2009 leak of ‘Climategate’ emails from academic staff at the University of East Anglia working on the HadCRUT project. In one email speculating on ‘correcting’ sea surface temperatures to partly explain the 1940s ‘warming blip’, it is noted that “if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15°C, then this would be significant for the global mean”. It would be good to “remove at least part of the 1940s blip”, it is suggested. Just as they have said they would do, comments NTZ, 0.15°C of warmth has gradually been removed from the 1940s HadCRUT global temperature data over the last 15 years.
The block graph above is compiled and published on Professor Ole Humlum’s climate4you site. It shows the net changes made since February 28th 2008 in the global monthly surface air temperature prepared by the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research and the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit. The significant cooling adjustment in the 1930s and 40s is clearly shown in blue, but what really stands out is how much warming has been added in the 21st century.
In the hiatus years of 2000-2014, the third version of HadCRUT recorded just 0.03°C warming per decade. In fact at this time the Met Office published a paper looking into the causes of the ‘pause’, in which it referred to “little further warming” at the time. But the warming, or ‘heating’ as many in the mainstream media now like to call it, was increased to 0.08°C per decade in version 4. The recent HadCRUT5 provides no less than 0.14°C per decade of warming, using what NTZ describes as the “computer model-infilling method”.
As NTZ notes, within the last decade, a 15-year temperature trend has been changed from a pause to a strong warming. “After all, when the observations don’t fit the narrative, it is time to change the observations,” adds NTZ.
Nicola Scafetta is a research scientist at the University of Naples and he is a recognised authority on temperature datasets and climate models. He has compiled the above graph showing the ever increasing retrospectively-applied temperature anomalies from HadCRUT3 through to HadCRUT5.
As regular readers will recall, the Daily Sceptic recently broke the story that nearly 80% of the Met Office’s 380 U.K. temperature measuring stations had internationally recognised ‘uncertainties’ between 2-5°C. Specifically, almost one in three (29.2%) in ‘junk’ Class 5 had ‘uncertainties’ up to 5°C as defined by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). Nearly half (48.7%) were sited at ‘near junk’ Class 4 sites with ‘uncertainties’ of 2°C. Shockingly, only 52 stations, or just 13.7% of the total, came without any ‘uncertainty’ rating. Class 5 station are prone to pick up all manner of human and natural caused heat corruptions, while class 1 sites simply measure the surrounding air temperature.
These station class classifications, which the Daily Sceptic obtained under a freedom of information (FOI) request, cast substantial doubt on the accuracy of all ‘heat’ records recently claimed. The data might be useful for general local weather forecasting, showing, for instance, that it is warmer in cities than the surrounding countryside. A degree or more either way is not significant, and precision is not an absolute requirement for people deciding what clothing to wear. But the Met Office, a highly politicised state-funded operation devoted to pushing the Net Zero narrative, uses them to make observations down to one hundredth of a degree (0.01°) centigrade. Recently it made great play of its suggestion that last year was just 0.06°C cooler than 2022.
Having finished compiling U.K. temperatures that it can be argued have little overall statistical significance, the dataset is then inserted into the HadCRUT operation where a global temperature is announced. This, of course, is the go-to figure for any alarmist who claims global heating/boiling and the likelihood of climate collapse. It is the bedrock support for climate models claiming all manner of interesting stories such as the Arctic summer sea ice disappearing within a decade and severe air turbulence doubling in short order. Such is the fairy dust it bestows that some activists even claim they can link individual bad weather events to long-term changes in the climate caused by humans. This then percolates down to hysterical halfwits on mainstream media pointing outside the window to the weather and making unchallenged claims that the end is nigh.
Given the pivotal role the Met Office’s local and global figures play in the Net Zero narrative, it is a surprise that it has yet to make a statement, two months after the Daily Sceptic’s U.K. class revelations, explaining and justifying its temperature statistics. Can we deduce from this that its scientists are happy that they are using such poor data to scare populations over minuscule rises in temperature? Would it not be a wise use of public money to expand its class 1 network to provide data that are unadulterated with obvious heat corruptions?
The Met Office does not return the calls of the Daily Sceptic. Mainstream media and politicians ignore the story, hoping that it will go away. The temperature data are at the heart of their Net Zero goals. It appears there is too much to lose by asking a few obvious, and necessary, questions.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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