Ian Duncan writes on Facebook:
‘France has its hottest recorded temperature ever’.
But they don’t mention that where it was recorded was next to a concrete drain, and a steel chain mesh fence close to a bitumen (asphalt) highway.
So much for only using correctly placed instruments in a Stevenson Screen in a open space away from unnatural heat source.
You can see the station here:
https://goo.gl/maps/hF4KbSoXTt6WZfLr6
Here is the fun part – it might be the “greenhouse effect” /sarc
Seriously though, who knows what effect those greenhouses might have had on the high temperature? What we do know is that greenhouses accumulate heat and raise the temperature. Depending on wind direction that day, they may have vented waste heat in the direction of the thermometer shelter. The same could be true for the asphalt highway.
As for the heat wave itself, Dr. Roy W. Spencer adds:
When Saharan air reaches Europe, it’s going to be hot. Regarding record-high measurements, it is legitimate to ask about the placement of temperature sensors, as well as the length of temperature records.
For a record length of, say, 100+ years and NO long term warming trend, it is still expected from random weather variations that new record high temperatures will be recorded from time to time.
The recent record high in Miami, FL was made in the middle of a vast concrete jungle that did not exist 100 years ago, and now averages 10 deg. F warmer at night than rural surroundings.
One other thing to consider – Stevenson screens that are easily accessible like that are prone to biases (or forcings, if you will) that “real climatologists” don’t usually consider – like vehicles being parked next to them. Look at the satellite view: (station circled in red)
Remember this fiasco in Scotland a couple of years ago? An ice-cream truck with generators constantly running was the cause of a “man-made climatological event”.
Friday Funny: Scottish “record high temperature” caused by Ice Cream Truck
So is the new French absolute all time high temperature record valid? I’m surmising it is not. There’s just too many influences to consider.
Certainly, the measurement environment there is far different than that of 100 years ago. And, who knows if somebody parked a vehicle next to that French station on June 28th? Maybe a lunch wagon/food truck frequents there to cater to the nursery workers.
UPDATE: 6/29/19 11:40AM From comments, there’s some question as to whether this is “the station” or not. Regardless, the station shown above is in fact poorly sited. I’ll do more checking this evening. -Anthony
UPDATE2: 6/29/19 11:56AM It seems that it may not even be an “all time record”.
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When this came on the French news I said to my wife “I didn’t know there was an airport near there”. It seems to be in the next best place.
I’ve seen references to UK temperatures and the summer of 1976. The summer of 1976 came after the warmest summer in 28 years (1975) and a warm dry winter. This heat wave is a few days long and has come after a not particularly notable spring.
Seems Climate Change is real right enough.
Google Dennis Howell the British politician to see how the Summer of 76 ended.
I remember him (the ‘rain’ minister) and the long sunny 76’s summer days.
Maybe some one Twitter would like to ask this joker why his record breaking “montpellier-aeroport” at Frejorgues is not in the Meteo France data?
http://www.meteofrance.com/recherche/resultats
Heatwaves in Europe are short. Tomorrow the temperature drops in France and England.
A five-day heatwave might be the technical definition of a Heatwave, but five hot days is not considered a Heatwave where I live, it’s just a few of days of warm weather.
When the high-pressure system moves out and the temperatures drop, how will the alarmists explain this behavior with all that CO2 still in the air?
BBC latest:
Today’s Uk’s highest temp 34C (no records broken)recorded at Heathrow.
No word ‘airport’ mention for purely ‘scientific’ reasons (Heathrow may be the busiest international airport). I think that the S-box is adjacent to the northern runway but I’m not certain.
Ah but of course you are dealing with unhomogenised data there !! We all know that Australia was hotter 100 years ago before you “correct” the data to show the correct warming we know we should find.
29,9 °C au Mont Aigoual (30, 1567m), ouverte en 1896. Ancien record : 29,4 °C le 09/08/1923;http://www.meteofrance.fr/actualites/73726667-record-absolu-de-chaleur-battu-45-9-c-dans-le-gard-du-jamais-vu-en-france
“Ah but of course you are dealing with unhomogenised data there !”
We don’t no what kind of “data” it is. All we have is that some Australian newspapers, which I have never heard of, claimed that a temperature of 122F was recorded somewhere in the Loire. Somewhere. It could have been on someone’s verandah.
Official weather stations in the same area provided similar readings:
45,9 °C à Gallargues-le-Montueux (30)
45,4 °C à Villevieille (30)
45,1 °C à Marsillargues (34)
44,6 °C à Saint-Chamas (13)
44,5 °C à Varages (83)
44,4 °C à Nîmes-Courbessac (30), battant de très loin son ancien record absolu historique (41,6 °C le 4 août 2017 et le 9 août 1923).
44,4 °C à Peyrolles-en-Provence (13)
44,3 °C à Moules-et-Baucels (34)
44,3 °C à Vinon-sur-Verdon (83)
44,3 °C à Carpentras (84)
44,3 °C à Istres (13)
44,3 °C à Moules-et-Baucels (34)
Also, 46.1° was recorded by a private (but high-quality) weather station in Le Triadou – in a field next to a forest.
Just because man-made global warming theory doesn’t explain what’s happening, doesn’t mean weather isn’t going to (relatively) new extremes.
I don’t think that is the actual location of the official weather station for the town of Gallargues-le-Montueux. It is near to a town named (perhaps appropriately) ‘Uchaud’.
I have searched Google Maps high and low all over Gallargues-le-Montueux and cannot find a proper weather-station anywhere.
Apologies. I should have read some of the above comments more thoroughly. In particular those excellent ones by “00ced”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/06/29/frances-new-hottest-recorded-temperature-ever-is-in-question-guess-where-it-was-measured/#comment-2733847
And “Writing Observer”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/06/29/frances-new-hottest-recorded-temperature-ever-is-in-question-guess-where-it-was-measured/#comment-2733954
As well as the many comments by “Greg” – all which were excellent.
The mystery is: why are jet streams having such extreme swings giving us extreme heat and cold. There seems to be a mystery frequency throughout the Solar System affecting not only Earth but Saturn also. The weird hexagonal pattern on the north pole of Saturn. There’s some very strange things goin’ on and it ain’t nothin’ to do with CO2.
https://electroverse.net/multiple-all-time-low-temperature-records-fall-in-minnesota-the-changing-jet-stream/
Anthony, to add with a bit more precision, as there seems to be at least two locations under the similar name in addition to the initial RN 113 location:
Here is the real location of the station and associated images:
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.7148759,4.171491,161m/data=!3m1!1e3
Google capture May 2018
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.7142812,4.1711834,3a,83.5y,46.76h,86.89t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1snKlUIxzoxS794jS_8y5DxQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
The station (in white) is located near the wine coop with big south facing walls and a major industrial zone to the north east with blacks roofs and to the south, a water canal.
Images of the station location can be found here:
https://www.infoclimat.fr/climatologie/normales-records/1981-2010/gallargues-le-montueux/valeurs/30123001.html
South facing walls of the wine coop.
Dirt road
D12 with bridge
Containers of the nearby industrial zone…
The initial Gator Google map showed the wrong location: https://www.google.com/maps/@43.7466067,4.2593928,3a,60y,356.2h,68.17t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sVxprvN6pCBEKNrXcEpMIEw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
But the infoclimat site also has some confusing information:
GALLARGUES LE MONTUEUX
Département 30 Gard
Altitude 17 mètres
Coordonnées 43,71°N | 4,17°E
AND
Gallargues-le-Montueux
• Département 30 Gard
• Altitude 30 mètres
• Coordonnées 43,72°N | 4,17°E
https://www.infoclimat.fr/observations-meteo/temps-reel/gallargues-le-montueux/000OZ.html
It shows some roof installed equipment
H/t to this comment on skyfall
http://www.skyfall.fr/2018/01/01/fil-info-de-sceptiques-2018/comment-page-78/#comment-246074
and this reply to it
http://www.skyfall.fr/2018/01/01/fil-info-de-sceptiques-2018/comment-page-78/#comment-246082
Regardless, either the rooftop, or this wine coop or the RN113 one, they look pretty poorly located.
The Gallargues-le-Montueux is not a météo France station. To verify this, go to the météo France web site and search for the max temperature of June 28 in Gallargues-le-Montueux :
http://www.meteofrance.com/climat/meteo-date-passee
Lieu : ‘gall…’ (the full name will be found and filled)
Date : ‘Vendredi 28 Juin 2019’
– the answer will be of the closest météo France station, which is at Montpellier : 43,5°C
Of course, if you go to the forecast page, you can have a forecast for Gallargues, but this does not mean that there is an actual météo France weather station, and indeed, such a station does not exist, at least according to the météo France website.
The only referenced weather station in Gallargues-le-Montueux is on this French site :
https://www.infoclimat.fr/observations-meteo/temps-reel/gallargues-le-montueux/000OZ.html
The data are clear : there is a mismatch between the measured max temperature 44.1°C and the “feels-like” temperature which is 45.9°C, and météo France reported a fake data.
With respect to the other record breaking : no existing official météo France for :
45,9 °C à Gallargues-le-Montueux (30)
45,4 °C à Villevieille (30)
45,1 °C à Marsillargues (34)
44,6 °C à Saint-Chamas (13)
44,5 °C à Varages (83)
Here are the closest weather stations and the max recorded temperatures for the 28th of June 2019 :
– Villevieille (30) : closest station Montpellier 43,5°C,
– Marsillargues (34) : closest station Montpellier, 43,5°C,
– Saint-Chamas (13) : closest station Salon de Provence 43.4°C
– Varages (83) : closest station Le Luc : 41,1°C
It would be very very strange that Villevieille or Marsillargues could actually beat the city of Montpellier
and for Saint-Chamas near the Etang de Berre, to beat Salon de Provence !!
You can make your own search here :
http://www.meteofrance.com/climat/meteo-date-passee
I didn’t search for the those four weather stations not owned by météo France to verify if the data are correct and/or if these stations comply to quality criteria, but all those reported reocrds are dubious to say the least.
Petit_Barde
You are right indeed, I first thought Greg Goodman’s info would be correct, but I repeated your test with the same results.
It is a pity that only Montpellier-Aeroport is in the GHCN daily data set, Le Luc and Salon aren’t in.
What info did I give which was not correct ?
@petit-bard:
when you search in the historic data they do indeed return Mtp with a caveat at the bottom:
So in that context they are only returning data from their own “reference stations”. That does not mean that they do not have the station OOced pointed out the metadata for. It implies it is not a reference station.
Since the OMG bulletin did not give anything more that a town name and no site reference we are still in the dark about where the author got it numbers. Very unprofessional.
I will criticise him for being unscientific and unprofessional, but I do not think it is acceptable to accuse him of fraud until there is documentary evidence of where these number come from. I suspect you may be right, but I will not sling mud with out facts.
One thing for sure is that the Montpellier airport is not a valid climatological installation, it sits on the edge of a huge tarmac carpark which was build about 15-20 back.
Some of these rural sites would be more reliable.
Montpellier is not mentioned on this page: https://www.infoclimat.fr/observations-meteo/archives/28/juin/2019/gallargues-le-montueux/000OZ.html
“there is a mismatch between the measured max temperature 44.1°C and the “feels-like” temperature which is 45.9°C”
That was a theory that Tony Heller was promoting, along with the highway location featured here, before he disappeared his posts on that. It’s true that 45.9 was a recorded “feels like” temperature, so someone might have misread it, but it was not the maximum such; they went up to about 48°C. But in any case, there are all the other high temps that you list, eg 45.4 at Villevieille. Unlikely that they were all misreadings.
There goes the Stokes misdirection, I don’t see anyone claiming it wasn’t hot. They are just a bit of skeptical of the hottest ever claim because activists rarely care for the details as long as the narrative fits.
I appreciate the clarity that Nick adds to the discussion, stating clearly what is and isn’t know, and how he knows.
Shhh! Nobody tell Holthaus.
“I used to live in Tucson, Arizona. 112°F is also the hottest temperature I ever experienced there. It felt like the insides of my eyes were burning. This is June. In France. Quite simply, this shouldn’t be happening. We are in a climate emergency.”
https://twitter.com/EricHolthaus/status/1144589961288720384
“Quite simply, this shouldn’t be happening.”
No, absolutely, we should ban hot air migrating from Africa into Europe. If they carry on doing it we should nuke them. That is why France has an independent nuclear capability isn’t it? This is an emergency !!
Eric Hothaus is a total fool. He gets himself clinically depressed by believing his own BS then tries to force his stupidity onto others.
A record French maximum temperature of 111 degrees F ?
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/27/temperatures-in-france-hit-104-f-and-they-could-go-higher.html
122 degrees F was recorded in France in August 1930
[https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/115683578?searchTerm=%22france%20swelters%22&searchLimit
That was reported as beeing the hottest since 1870 but record keeping in 1870 was probably disrupted by an unwanted visit from the neighbours.
June 1858 was a bit warm in London
https://www.bbc.com/news/education-45009749
And it seems 1540 was fairly warm across Europe.
https://www.clim-past.net/9/41/2013/cp-9-41-2013.pdf
The closest meteo station to where I live in Southern Colorado is approximately 15 miles away. The “official” temperature records that are thaken there (however accurate or tempered with) are ALWAYS 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher that what is indicated by my two thermometers (one electronic, the other analog) in the shade.
Therefore, imput data used by the alarmist blackguards are always suspect.
Defund them now!
What’s the big deal with the media? One hot day doesn’t mean a thing. It’s just a hot day. In France, you slather on the sunscreen and hit the beach in a bikini. In a city like Chicago, you head to the lake shore in a bi – er, swimsuit! – swimsuit and slather on the sunscreen there. Plenty of places to get in out of the heat and get cold drinks and food, so just what IS the big deal about a high temperature?
I have my thermometer in the shade on my front steps. I check the temps against what I get from the local NWS station nearest to me. If they match, fine. If they don’t, I take what’s local. As long as it’s summer, we’re supposed to have HEAT. Someone tell those media mavens that it’s part of Nature’s way, and they should go back to choosing between the red pill or the blue pill.
It’s summer. It’s supposed to have heat. If I have to run my furnace in July, I am going to be annoyed.
I rarely watch TV, but a few minutes ago I saw a FOX report on France’s heat wave and said to Penelope, they will blame it on CO2, and sure enough, a minute later the announcer woman said scientists are linking it to emissions, and that 2019 was likely going to be the hottest year ever. So predictable.
The heat wave comes from the solar cycle influence on sea surface temperature related evaporation, where towards the solar minimum clearer skies prevail as the ocean cools, allowing more sunlight to reach the land surface, warming it up dramatically in the NH from high UV index especially within weeks of the NH summer solstice, and from the also low-solar activity induced slower jetstream, which allows the UVI driven heat to build over days.
The US 58 station forecast average UVI today is 8.8, the highest of this summer. Notice the highest heat index areas today are where the UVI is highest – the daily sunshine is driving the heat.
Watch the UVI links and heat index link throughout the day to see the sun warm up the US.
The difference for France is they also get North Africa’s UVI driven heat in their south wind, just like the US northern plains gets it from Texas & Mexico.
The same kind of thing happened in Australia during their last summer’s heat wave.
Since the ocean is not warming, 2019 will not be a record year overall but there will be records.
This is why there are so many record highs as well as lows during solar minimum years.
Think all that’s bad, cooking mussels in California at 100 degrees F, hypothetical (?), even if real won’t cook much, wonder if they know about scavengers, tidal fluctuations. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/28/california-mussels-cooked-heat
As mentioned before this sort of “”Heat Wave”” is common in South
Australians summer.
Just like the Sahara affects parts of Europe, the desert North of South
Australia affects us.
A north wind can bring the moist air from the tropics North of Australia,
across the desert, and we suffer. But most of the time its dry air so that even
45 C is bearable.
As to the so called deaths from heat, yes if you don’t drink lots of liquids,
preferably just plain water, then you can get dehydrated . So just how many
deaths during the European heatwave can clearly be said to be due directly to
the heat.
As usual the Greens are desperate to keep the myth going, and for the
government grants to continue.
MJE VK5ELL
last I looked , four had died from water activity accidents in Germany.
a 17 y.o. had dies in southern Spain from hydrocution thermal shock.
A fitness cyclist dies in France after going out in afternoon heat.
Some old person died in Spain from what the Guardian simply assumes is heatstroke.
I see nothing but perfectly normal Darwinian selection going on here.
Compared to the 7000 premature deaths attributed to the 2003 ( real ) heatwave, it’s not even a peanut.
Strange. The latest I read (four days ago) about France’s current heatwave said temperatures “were approaching the previous ‘highest temperature’ record”, set in 1947. Now 2003 is given as the previous record. It’s getting harder and harder to believe anything…..
Meteo-France Station 30123001 “GALLARGUES LE MONTUEUX” is located in a field just south of the cooperative winery “Cave Cooperative”. The Meteo-France metadata includes a comment about it being 16m away from a canal (“Canal à 16 m”).
What the metadata doesn’t mention is that 50m away to the north-east is a large factory called “Smurfit-Kappa Sud-Est” – with all the usual vast expanses of asphalt and cladding/roofing.
No, it wasn’t this meteo station, Meteo Paris wrote it clearly, it was a secondary meteo station. Look at my first post (from what I found, this secondary station is private and located in the city)
1. I love the way skeptics use un verified newspaper accounts to establish a past record. too funny
2. The current “record” will be scruntinized more than any past “record” ever was.
3. The effect of being close to a road is de minimus– field tests trump your opinions
Pay attention to #3.
There is only one field test of the HYPOTHESIS that being close to a road will bias the measurement.
https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/sola/9/0/9_2013-013/_pdf
meh, at 1.5m high… 0.1C
Here is how real scientists look at the issues of siting.
http://bibliotheek.knmi.nl/knmipubDIV/HISKLIM/HISKLIM_7.pdf
get busy
Only one published test on this in 2013 ? Ridiculous, like they never even looked into this before?
I did a field test two days ago. Forced ventilation by waving the thermometer back and forth at 1.5m from the ground. First I did this over the (Tarmac) road in an area which does not get direct sunlight. I then measured 10m away still in the shade but on a part of the road that had been in the sun for about an hour.
There was a full degree C of difference in the two readings.
You do not even need a thermometer to know this , you can feel the air is hotter as you move around.
Maybe we need more than one check on this before we redesign the world economy.
The main problem here is not siting but that they seem to have taken “feels like” temperature not the measured one !
“Only one published test on this in 2013 ? Ridiculous, like they never even looked into this before?
I did a field test two days ago. ”
Thats funny. too bad you did not pre register your test. Then it would have been valid.
I spent a dozen years looking at the literature on this and even visiting the “pavement science”
lab at berkeley.
most the the studies are as “rigorous” as yours.. in other words, worthless
” I love the way skeptics use un verified newspaper accounts to establish a past record.”
No one said that “established” as record. Maybe the press was as alarmist in 1920 and rounded 45 deg up to 50 to make better copy and sell more paper.
However, the fact that was published is a good indication that there was a similarly hot event back then and this needs checking out. Why does that not figure against the current claims of “never seen in France” ?
Rather than finding this interesting and checking it out , you dismiss it. That reveals your own biased and unscientific mindset.
here
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.7145242,4.1708637,3a,15y,67.33h,86.81t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1svS8NNz-f-FvImHFB0vO1Fw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
https://www.google.com/maps/place/43%C2%B042'53.4%22N+4%C2%B010'18.0%22E/@43.714801,4.1587563,2756m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d43.714833!4d4.171667
Biggest potential issue with this site is Advection from the small urban area adjacent.
I always get my climate science from English lit graduate layman … call me biased but I don’t really care what you think. The reading is what it is a piece of data subject to scrutiny by real scientists not wannabees.
When I read this yesterday at the SMH here in Australia, I tried finding Gallargues-le-Montueux on my Google Earth application to see if I could find a weather station but could not. So this was a “feels like” temperature from private device? And alarmists everywhere jumped on this as proof CO2 is causing more heatwaves. 16 years ago in 2003, France also suffered a heatwave.
I pointed out in comments that there is/was a large high pressure air mass over north Africa which causes a southerly flow of hot air over southern Europe which is not uncommon. I was told that if the air was flowing southerly it would flow down to South Africa. I guess that person does not understand what a southerly flow is in the northern hemisphere flows from the south.
westerly winds come from the west. That is counter intuitive but established usage. You should probably not extend that to everything ending in -ly. In fact “on-shore” winds blow on to the shore ! Would you say and upwardly flow is coming down?
There was large weather system out in the Atlantic to the west of Europe and a blocking high over the continent. This stalled the weather system off the coast for about a week bringing up warm air from the south. By Thursday this was drawing hot Saharan air directly north into the whole of continental Europe. This event had absolutely NOTHING to do with AGW. It was a weather event.
Westerly winds blow east from the west. Southerly winds blow north from the south. Northerly winds blow south form the north and so on. Winds from North Africa blow from the south across southern Europe.
A couple of days maximum for hot days in France and the International MSM goes wild about global warming.
As far as I can see no MSM international reports were made of —
The SNOW in the Italian Dolomites. June 22 and intense snowfall on the Marmolada with -2 ° C . At the beginning of summer. http://www.meteoweb.eu/2019/06/neve-dolomiti-nevicata-marmolada-2c/1276991/
or
June 26 Kenyan farmers have to contend with high cost of production as a biting cold weather hits several parts of the east African nation.
The cold weather, which normally kicks off in July, started in late May, …
Over the years, the cold weather initially affected mainly the capital Nairobi and the central and Rift Valley highlands, but has now hit most parts of the county, pushing hundreds of farmers to the edge…
From: http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-06/26/c_138173308.htm
or
June 28 Unexpected summer snow hits western Mongolia. An “abnormal” summer snowfall has hit a western Mongolian province, a local meteorological department said Friday, Xinhua reports.
“An unexpected summer snow hit the southwestern mountainous parts of our province on Tuesday and Wednesday, with an average precipitation of 2-3 mm,” said Jagsalag Khulibek, expert of Bayan-Ulgii Province’s meteorological bureau, calling the snowfall an unusual weather condition.
The meteorologist explained that the unseasonal snow was brought by a strong cyclone from the Siberia.
Bayan-Ulgii Province is located in the west of Mongolia and shares borders with both China and Russia.
From: https://akipress.com/news:621339:Unexpected_summer_snow_hits_western_Mongolia/
Or maybe I just failed to notice.
“The SNOW in the Italian Dolomites. June 22 and intense snowfall on the Marmolada with -2 ° C . At the beginning of summer. ”
Yep at 3300m above sea level in the European Alps not a surprise. There will be more snowfall during this summer.
Maybe they actually read the thermometer from inside one of the greenhouses….
The cool front will bring a drop in temperature in the UK and France.
http://oi65.tinypic.com/f354d4.jpg
Yes, the saharan air flow ended in Friday. We’ve been cooling off since. I expect some hail-storms later this week.
Could someone try the contact page for Meteo France. I have tried with Firefox and Opera and just get a dumb error message that “something” is wrong.
“Une erreur est survenue lors de l’envoi du message”
http://www.meteofrance.fr/accueil/contact