The mainstream media is, without challenge, presenting claims from the Met Office saying that UK average temperatures in June were the warmest on record and that this is down to global warming. Does nobody interrogate the data behind these claims with any degree of scepticism?
The headline mean temperature of 15.8 degrees is well above previous highs of 14.9 degrees in 1976 and 1940. Oddly 1976 also saw a cricket match in June stopped by snow. It was an odd month, that summer really got cooking in July. But are we comparing apples with apples here.
The Met gets its data from 200 weather stations across the UK and the first thing you will note is that in 1976 and 1940 there were far fewer stations in operation and therefore you are not comparing like with like. Where are those weather stations? A disproportionate number ae situated at airports and RAF bases. The hottest UK daytime temperature ever was recorded in the UK this year at RAF Conningsby just as three jet fighter planes took off. If you cannot see rat in that data get down to Specsavers. But Conningsby is not alone. More than 30 of the 20 stations are at airports or RAF bases.
It goes without saying that the volume of jet traffic at, say, Heathrow is much greater than it was in 1976 and in 1940 there would have been none. This clearly distorts measurements. For what it is worth, Heathrow achieved its warmest June day in 1976 (25.5) versus 25.3 in 2023. The historic data the Met presents is on warmest days as opposed to average days. Heathrow is about 40 miles from Oxford. Its hottest June day in 1976 was 24.4 and 23.8 in 2023. I suggest that 35 odd airports might well distort the overall picture since the ambient affect of lots of planes landing and taking off adds, perhaps as much as 1 degree, to its recorded temperatures.
So how about we compare a like for like with a station old enough to have been around in 1940? Sadly there are very few in that category showing how fatuous this data comparison really is. One is Oxford where, as we have seen, 1976 seems to have seen greater heat than 2023. The hottest 1940 day in the City of my birth was, 22.6. However, here too something has changed. The oxford weather station is on the Woodstock Road right in the heart of the City of Lost causes. Back in 1940 Oxford was a much smaller place and there were relatively few cars. Clearly the number had gone up a lot by 1976. Since Oxford is run by green zealots there might actually be a bit less traffic on the Woodstock Road now but there are more people and so it is hard to know the exact background heat effect. The data really is skewed.
There are only about 15 stations that have been open since before 1940 and are still open and as we have seen at Oxford the data there is almost certainly skewed by locally produced man made heat.
The bottom line is that this data, which the Met claims goes back to 1884, really does not allow for any meaningful comparisons at all. Yet the Met claims that it does and then goes onto say that this is down to global warming. Oddly though in its commentary HERE the Met talks of how “June started with a good deal of high pressure and temperatures initially around average for many, but once that subsided, warm, humid air began to influence temperatures, with 32.2°C the highest temperatures reached.“
We all know how and why that record was set on the RAF base. But the point here is that the Met talks of weather systems just as it did in March which was incredibly wet here in the UK. Weather patterns change month on month but that is not the same as saying there is linear global warming.
Not that anyone on the media or political class GroupThink challenges any of this.