• Login
  • Register
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result

Met Office Should Put 2.5°C ‘Uncertainties’ Warning on All Future Temperature Claims

by Chris Morrison
30 May 2024 7:00 AM

It is “abundantly clear” that the Met Office cannot scientifically claim to know the current average temperature of the U.K. to a hundredth of a degree centigrade, given that it is using data that has a margin of error of up to 2.5°C, notes the climate journalist Paul Homewood. His comments follow recent disclosures in the Daily Sceptic that nearly eight out of ten of the Met’s 380 measuring stations come with official ‘uncertainties’ of between 2-5°C. In addition, given the poor siting of the stations now and possibly in the past, the Met Office has no means of knowing whether it is comparing like with like when it publishes temperature trends going back to 1884.

There are five classes of measuring stations identified by the World Meteorological Office (WMO). Classes 4 and 5 come with uncertainties of 2°C and 5°C respectively and account for an astonishing 77% of the Met Office station total. Class 3 has an uncertainty rating of 1°C and accounts for another 8.4% of the total. The Class ratings identify potential corruptions in recordings caused by both human and natural involvement. Homewood calculates that the average uncertainty across the entire database is 2.5°C. In the graph below, he then calculates the range of annual U.K. temperatures going back to 2010 incorporating the margins of error.

The blue blocks show the annual temperature announced by the Met Office, while the red bars take account of the WMO uncertainties. It is highly unlikely that the red bars show the more accurate temperature, and there is much evidence to suggest temperatures are nearer the blue trend. But the point of the exercise is to note that the Met Office, in the interests of scientific exactitude, should disclose what could be large measurement inaccuracies. This is particularly important when it is making highly politicised statements using rising temperatures to promote the Net Zero fantasy. As Homewood observes, the Met Office “cannot say with any degree of scientific certainty that the last two years were the warmest on record, nor quantify how much, if any, the climate has warmed since 1884”.

The U.K. figures are of course an important component of the Met Office’s global temperature dataset known as HadCRUT. As we noted recently, there is ongoing concern about the accuracy of HadCRUT with large retrospective adjustments of warming in recent times and cooling further back in the record. In fact, this concern has been ongoing for some time. The late Christopher Booker was a great champion of climate scepticism and in February 2015 he suggested that the “fiddling” with temperature data “is the biggest science scandal ever”. Writing in the Telegraph, he noted: “When future generations look back on the global warming scare of the past 30 years, nothing will shock them more than the extent to which official temperatures records – on which the entire panic rested – were systematically ‘adjusted’ to show the Earth as having warmed more than the actual data justified.”

Since that time, the Met Office has made further adjustments to its HadCRUT database and the effect can be seen in the graph below showing all the retrospective changes made since 2008.

HadCRUT is not the only global database to add warming and cooling in ways that conveniently emphasise the ‘hockey stick’ nature of recent temperature trends. The excellent climate4you site provides the graph above as well as the illustration below showing what is going on at NASA’s GISS database.

Even more than HadCRUT, large amounts of cooling has been added in the first 100 years of the record. It is noted that the net effect of adjustments made since 2008 is to generate a more smoothly increasing global temperatures since 1880. Compiler Emeritus Professor Ole Humlum concludes that “a temperature record that keeps on changing the past hardly can qualify as being correct”. Booker was more direct in his criticism, charging that that the “wholesale manipulation” of the official temperature record, “has become the real elephant in the room of the greatest and most costly scare the world has known”.

The Met Office does a good job in its core business of providing weather forecasting services. Helped by modern satellites and computers, it provides vital and improving information for the general public and specific groups like aviators, farmers, event organisers and the miliary. But its self-ordained Net Zero political role does it few favours. Using data, accurate enough to plan on sowing wheat, to warn of a climate crisis measured down to one hundredth of a degree centigrade is ridiculous, as our and other recent investigations have shown.

It recently proposed to ditch the scientific method of calculating temperature trends over at least 30 years in favour of just a decade of past data merged with future 10 year computer model projections. The reason for this was to enable it to quickly point to the passing of the 1.5°C target. Pure politics is behind this move since the 1.5°C warming from the pre-industrial age is a political fear mongering mark used to focus global efforts to push the Net Zero collectivisation. Professor Richard Betts, the Head of Climate Impacts at the Met Office, admitted as much when he said breaching 1.5°C would “trigger questions” about what needed to be done to meet the goals of the 2016 Paris climate agreement. Professor Betts later took exception to our coverage of his novel idea which was published three weeks after it was announced. “Are they just slow readers? he asked. “I suppose our paper does use big words like ‘temperature’ so maybe they had to get grown-ups to help,” he added.

In reply, it is accepted that the Met Office knows what an air temperature is. It just ought to get better at taking accurate recordings of them.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor

Tags: Bad ScienceClimate AlarmismMet OfficeTemperature Record

Donate

We depend on your donations to keep this site going. Please give what you can.

Donate Today

Comment on this Article

You’ll need to set up an account to comment if you don’t already have one. We ask for a minimum donation of £5 if you'd like to make a comment or post in our Forums.

Sign Up
Previous Post

News Round-Up

Next Post

The ICC Defends One False Moral Equivalence by Making Another

Subscribe
Login
Notify of
Please log in to comment

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.

24 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

NEWSLETTER

View today’s newsletter

To receive our latest news in the form of a daily email, enter your details here:

DONATE

PODCAST

Episode 36 of the Sceptic: Karl Williams on Starmer’s Phoney Immigration Crackdown, Dan Hitchens on the Assisted Suicide Bill and Tom Jones on Reform’s Local Council Challenge

by Richard Eldred
16 May 2025
0

LISTED ARTICLES

  • Most Read
  • Most Commented
  • Editor’s Picks

Chinese ‘Kill Switches’ Found in US Solar Farms

15 May 2025
by Will Jones

News Round-Up

16 May 2025
by Richard Eldred

Spy Agency Report on the Alleged “Extremism” of AfD Turns Out to Be So Stupid That it Destroys all Momentum for Banning the Party

16 May 2025
by Eugyppius

The Folly of Solar – a Dot on the Horizon Versus a Blight on the Land

16 May 2025
by Ben Pile

Civil Servants Threaten to Strike Over Trans Ban in Women’s Lavatories

16 May 2025
by Will Jones

The Folly of Solar – a Dot on the Horizon Versus a Blight on the Land

29

Civil Servants Threaten to Strike Over Trans Ban in Women’s Lavatories

25

Spy Agency Report on the Alleged “Extremism” of AfD Turns Out to Be So Stupid That it Destroys all Momentum for Banning the Party

19

News Round-Up

18

Chinese ‘Kill Switches’ Found in US Solar Farms

27

Trump’s Lesson in Remedial Education

16 May 2025
by Dr James Allan

Spy Agency Report on the Alleged “Extremism” of AfD Turns Out to Be So Stupid That it Destroys all Momentum for Banning the Party

16 May 2025
by Eugyppius

The Folly of Solar – a Dot on the Horizon Versus a Blight on the Land

16 May 2025
by Ben Pile

Renaud Camus on the Destruction of Western Education

15 May 2025
by Dr Nicholas Tate

‘Why Can’t We Talk About This?’

15 May 2025
by Richard Eldred

POSTS BY DATE

May 2024
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  
« Apr   Jun »

SOCIAL LINKS

Free Speech Union
  • Home
  • About us
  • Donate
  • Privacy Policy

Facebook

  • X

Instagram

RSS

Subscribe to our newsletter

© Skeptics Ltd.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password? Sign Up

Create New Account!

Fill the forms below to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In

© Skeptics Ltd.

wpDiscuz
You are going to send email to

Move Comment
Perfecty
Do you wish to receive notifications of new articles?
Notifications preferences