Substantial evidence has emerged to suggest that the UK Met Office is promoting the political cause of Net Zero by using recently introduced sensitive thermometers to collect 60-second unnatural heat spikes. These pulses are used to promote constant clickbait ‘records’ and claim exaggerated atmospheric warming. Furthermore, it appears that these short-term ‘spikes’ are larger in junk sites with massive internationally recognised ‘uncertainties”. Almost eight in 10 of the Met Office’s nationwide temperature measuring stations are in junk CIMO Classes 4 and 5 with possible errors up to 2°C and 5°C respectively.
On May 1st, the Met Office claimed a station at Kew Gardens recorded a temperature at 2.59pm of 29.3°C. Promoted by the BBC, this was said to be the highest temperature ever recorded on this day in the UK. But the temperature was a massive 2.6°C higher than that recorded at 2pm and no less than 0.76°C above the figure recorded a minute later on the hour. In fact the one minute plunge is similar to that found on July 19th 2022 when a national record of 40.3°C at RAF Coningsby was set at a time when three typhoon jets were landing. This was later claimed to be a “milestone in UK climate history” by the Met Office.
Temperature recordings can move around from minute to minute; change, if it occurs, is generally around 0.1°C to 0.3°C. These changes do not affect old-style mercury thermometers but are picked up by the super-sensitive electronic devices used by the Met Office since the 1990s. It is for this reason that the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) recommends averaging readings over five minutes to standardise data and remove short-term ‘noise’. For some inexplicable reason, despite playing a significant role in WMO deliberations, the UK Met Office does not appear to want to follow this sensible scientific advice. At Kew on May 1st the hourly recordings showed a typical convex curve of temperature movement during the afternoon recording seven readings from noon to 6pm of 26.88°C, 26.93°C, 26.7°C, 28.54°C, 28.41°C, 26.09°C and 25.15°C. The 29.3°C record came out of the blue as did an earlier spike to 28°C at 1.28pm.
Shout out at this stage for a new citizen super sleuth on the block who is taking a keen interest in Met Office statistics. Dr Eric Huxter is a retired geography teacher of 40 years standing with a PhD in Earth Sciences gained as part of continued learning in his 50s. He has tracked the huge temperature spikes seen recently in many of the Met Office sites producing daily highs, or ‘extremes’ as the state meteorologist likes to call them. The differences provide shocking reading and make a mockery of any claim that the recordings supply a useful scientific purpose.
Huxter highlights the appearances of Heathrow airport, a supposed CIMO Class 3 site with uncertainties of 1°C, but on this evidence an obvious super junk Class 5. Kew is a puzzle since it is rated at Class 2 with no uncertainties. It frequently appears as an extreme temperature possibly due to short-lived gusts of wind blowing over a nearby tropical greenhouse, one of the largest structures of its kind in the world.
Why is all this important? Activists at the Met Office have weaponised an agricultural temperature database, accurate enough for seasonal guidance, to spread mass climate psychosis in support of the Net Zero fantasy. Claiming guidance on climate change by producing statistics that at times are said to be accurate to one hundredth of a degree centigrade does not stand up to detailed scrutiny. Nonsense about climate milestones also goes hand in hand with calls by the operation’s Chief Scientist Professor Stephen Belcher for Net Zero to “stabilise the climate”. Believing that humans can control the climate is not unknown in human history – ancient tribes prayed to a variety of gods for help in this matter. Presumably Belcher hopes that something can be done to “stabilise the climate” given that, according to his observations, between 2014-2023 the number of days recording 28°C in the UK had doubled, while those over 30°C had tripled compared to 1961-1990. Ordering a crackdown on obvious temperature outliers might be a more productive use of his time.
Dr Huxter does not deny the climate is changing and of late the temperatures have warmed. Nevertheless, his work is demonstrating that some of the claimed warming is caused by the use of electronic thermometers that record instant unnatural air temperature spikes. Since the 1990s, increases in recorded temperature are “consistent with the narrative of global warming, a.k.a. climate change”. To him it is becoming apparent that this recorded increase “is an artefact of the change in observation method rather than a real change in temperature”.
It might be expected that the lower the CIMO class (with junk Class 5 being the lowest) the greater the convenient spikes in temperature produced. Huxter has also provided some initial calculations, admittedly from a small sample, that indicates this supposition might be correct. From May 6th-12th he calculated the average temperature change per hour at the 25 record-setting stations shown in the table above along with a number in close proximity and plotted the results in the graph below.
In simple terms the graph demonstrates that the lower the CIMO class (with Class 5 being the lowest), and thus the greater the uncertainties in temperature measurement, the greater the average hourly temperature changes. The workings at the top right indicate the calculation for the linear rise across the CIMO classes. The only large outlier is caused by Heathrow at Class 3, whose average 1.48°C per hour change would place it as an extreme Class 5 station. “Who knew?” comments the author.
Dr Huxter suggests that the fact that poorer siting of temperature stations appears to produce spikier results illustrates the impact of the local environment over the regional. In other words, Class 1 sites with no nearby corruptions measure genuine air temperatures over a wide area, while Class 3, 4 and 5 stations do not. The Met Office has very few Class 1 sites and a very large number that fall into the junk categories. Even more to its discredit is a seeming inability (or disinterest) in improving the situation. In the last 30 years to 2024, the Met Office has opened 113 stations and over eight in 10 of these are in Classes 4 and 5. Even worse is the revelation that over the last 10 years the percentage of junk sites opened is 81.5%, while over the last five years no fewer than eight of the 13 opened are unfit for purpose – purpose, that is, other than scaring the British public about an imaginary climate crisis.
Dr Eric Huxter is raising some interesting questions about the Met Office and its use of flawed statistics to promote extremist New Zero aims. His examination of the bizarre record recently declared at Kew causes him to remark that the use of such data reinforces the climate change narrative and “is undoubtedly of use to those wedded to alarmism”.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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