Guest essays by Eric Worrall
Imagine the horror of being able to swim at Blackpool beach without needing a resuscitation team with a hypothermia kit on standby.
Climate change: 40°C summer temperatures could be common in UK by 2100
July 1, 2020 1.46am AEST
Lisa Baldini
Lecturer in Environmental Science, Teesside UniversityA stark warning about the kind of summer that could become routine in the UK by the end of this century has been issued in a new study by the country’s Met Office.
Using temperature data and climate model simulations, the researchers tested the likelihood of UK temperatures exceeding 30°C, 35°C, and 40°C each summer over the next 80 years.
They found that if global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, temperatures exceeding 40°C could be reached somewhere in the UK every three-and-a-half years by 2100.
If you live or have travelled in a hot climate, you might know the stifling heat that envelops your body when the thermometer breaks 40°C. But there is a difference between experiencing that kind of heat from a pool or through the window of an air conditioned hotel room, and living in that heat for several days without reprieve.
In England alone, 2,000 people every year already die from heat related illnesses. While traditionally warmer climes have adapted over time to soaring summer temperatures, the UK is not prepared to handle these kinds of heatwaves.
…
The highest temperature ever recorded in the UK was broken on July 25 2019, when the mercury hit 38.7°C in Cambridge. That same summer, temperatures in France soared to 46°C and claimed 1,500 lives. Although devastating, this was nothing compared to the 15,000 victims who succumbed during France’s August 2003 heatwave.
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Read more: https://theconversation.com/climate-change-40-c-summer-temperatures-could-be-common-in-uk-by-2100-141479
The MET study is available here.
According to The Conversation author Lisa Baldini, the UK is not prepared to handle these kinds of heatwaves.
But even if global warming occurs as predicted, its not like 40C British heatwaves will become a common occurrence starting tomorrow. We’re talking about a gradual change. By the end of 80 years of slowly rising temperatures (or falling temperatures or whatever) UK people would be well and truly adapted to whatever climate they experience by the end of the century, just as British colonists in Australia quickly adapted to our much warmer climate.
The death of 1500 people in the 2019 heatwave, or the 15,000 who died in 2003, is a tragedy. But according to the UK Government, there were 49,410 excess deaths in the winter of 2017-18, and 23,200 deaths in the 2018-19 winter. Milder winters would likely reduce overall excess mortality. A few heatwaves seems a small price to pay, to reduce that dreadful winter excess mortality rate.
Imagine all those French Tourists traveling to the UK to hang out at the beach
Zut Alors !
We’ve been enduring the French for many hundreds of years before the first climate scientist.
“Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries” !
Sorry. It slipped out. Must be the heat.
I fart in your general direction!
The Cambridge Botanical Garden “record”, should be ignored for meteorological purposes, due to site contamination.
Reading Monty python quotes is perfect right now as the heating in my house has just clicked back on due to the very low temperature on this JULY morning!!!!!!!!!!
So a summer event that happens just over 20 miles away from the UK might become more common here, we have to give up our cars ,ban fossil fuels ban woodburners, just in case we MIGHT get a hot summer or two.
Northern France has weather very similar to that of the southern end of the UK, no great difference there.
Anyway, Here in Ireland we’ve had one of the best early summers in years, back to the wet stuff now.
Northern France summer temps are often 30c + the continent has different weather patterns to the UK that’s why its hotter and normal, 500 miles south it’s often 35c+ the UK will never see sustained 30+c temps because were a island
I was in the UK late last July and it exceeded 30C two days in a row. It even got up to 38C for about an hour one day. It was hot in the museums that don’t generally have AC. They may need to save up to get AC in the coming decades if this trend continues.
Two days is not a trend nor is it a heatwave , last week two days of 30c in the south, todate this week in the south average temps, in the west below average temps and wet,
But What is exactly a heat wave ? It is hot air transported by the jetstream from a place where these temperatures are normal to a place where these temperatures are not normal.
For all the CO2 over Blackpool beach it will not be able to generate these temperatures by herself. The same happend in Siberia some weeks ago.
And the same happens with colder than normal weather.
B d Clark Sounds like the beautiful wet weather we had last august in Scotland and Ireland (3 weeks) while the people at home in Barcelona were baking on the beach .
The Cambridge record was a joke – constantly changing/disturbed garden environment, massive hard landscaping, concrete/glass building edifice, near a kitchen/cafeteria, near a massive climate controlled growing house, and enough industrial aircon extractors on the roof of the main building to serve a small city.
It was a hot day/period, but the record is junk, and in any other time, a different political environment, it would have been discarded .
To be accurate, southern Burgundy — which is where I am — is warmer, but not by any significant amount, than central UK. The highest temperature I have recorded in the 10 years we have been here (my thermometer is on a north-facing wall and never gets full sun — the sun trap by the garage has been known to hit 50°!) has been 37.5° in the last week of July last year. 30°+ is common from mid-June to late August; 35°+, at least as a shade temperature, isn’t.
There’s this new-fangled invention that Brits might discover, as the temperatures soar above 28 deg C, and they can even keep their wool sweaters on indoors as they like. It’s called air conditioning. This report is another example of Eric dumpster-diving, which I fear is not a successful mental health strategy.
I look forward to the day when every building in the UK has been retrofitted with central air conditioning, or even window or through-the-wall units. I look forward to the day that every building in the UK is actually warm in the winter. (I’m married to a lovely Welsh lass, and we visit Great Britain frequently, although not this year.)
REJ, like you, married to a lovely Welsh lass. We were over there (from Oz) this time last year. Who knew that 25deg C in South Wales would feel so warm? Who knew British houses aren’t built for heat? It could not escape… I guess not designed to. I came home with a tan!
True indeed REJ. Methinks maybe Eric has never been to Blackpool.
It could be a Yorkshire/Lancashire thing but some people might read:
“Imagine the horror of being able to swim at Blackpool beach”
…. and imagine dying and going to Hell.
Blackpool is a great place for birdwatching, as is the whole of the North West coast. Swimking is not obligatory. Vive La France.
Swimming Kings are raely seen.
Swimming Kings are rarely seen.
I have an even better invention … proper insulation … decent windows … weather stripping. It’s just as important in the summer as in the winter.
The always magical “could.” That English word has propelled many a scam through the centuries on the unsuspecting. But none so large, or even close to, the scale of the scam that is climate change alarmism
I can’t wait. Warm seas and long warm summers instead of the random summers we usually get.
Official “bat off” around Chrismas there in S-France 😀
Maybe the UK WILL be able to handle 40 degree heat in 80 years time. Maybe not as the wind farms and solar panels will have rusted out by then.
No doubt the Boris Johnson nuclear fusion facility will plug the energy gap.
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/boris-johnson-nuclear-fusion-1-6309123
Eric, from the link, why would it not be possible for other scientists in Europe to work on the fusion project at Culham?
I’m a fan of nuclear fusion research Gary, but I’m not expecting a breakthrough anytime soon, and it seems a little risky to plan ahead with the apparent assumption a technology like that will be available on schedule.
By then, they’ll be on their fourth replacement set of ¥ind Turbines and $olar PV
Refurbished and eplaced with newer more durable models, anyway all the FF stations would also need several boiler replacements during the same timeframe, they have more parts that wear out and need replacing.
Not according to this defector ,https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/06/29/schellenberger-on-behalf-of-environmentalists-i-apologize-for-the-climate-scare/
There are still 80 years to learn adapting, start installing air conditions, start producing some fans, build nice hotels near beaches, learn writing “siesta”, there is a lot do, better to start now 😀 😀
In my youth it was my choice to live in South of France, because of good weather, warmer temperatures, sunny beaches etc 😀
Will say, nothing to fear for Britains 😀
I too chose to live in the south of France in my youth, as a climate refugee from the UK. My only problem was keeping my eyes above neck level when talking to the girls bathing topless. Very difficult, but a nice problem to have.
Yeah, the beginning of the 70 was a nice time over all, where has you been ?
I was in Menton, later near Gorbio, half way to Menton.
It seems that the Romans grew wine in chilly Britain. link
There’s lots of evidence that the modern warm period isn’t as warm as previous times in the Holocene. I am very skeptical of the study covered in this WUWT story that the modern era is warmer than any previous time in the Holocene.
I have read something similiar before. that in the 1200’s it was still warm enough to grow wine grapes as far north as Newcastle upon Tyne. Not the case today. It is funny how written history has been usurped by gadgetry. What did Olaf say in Frozen II? “Technology is both our saviour and our downfall” or something like that.
Full of the old weasel words- could, by 2100, every 3 1/2 years, somewhere in the UK.
Was the study peer reviewed? It still relies on the assumption that the models are correct about a steady rise in temperatures. The models have thus far shown to be inaccurate, so basing one’s entire thesis on a flawed assumption from a flawed model makes the rest a load of gobbledygook when those models are found to be flawed.
British people flock to places for holidays that are hot. For Sydney, 40 degrees is commonplace, as it is for most of Australia. There would be few places in Australia that would not have a 40 degree day once in 3 1/2 years. A few alpine places and much of Tasmania. The rest of the continent has such days. We are not all dropping dead.
The British people would welcome the odd hot day.
40 degrees! Oh my! A stark warning yet! Whatever shall they do? Maybe they need to ask the people in all the world locations that cope with it on a regular basis what they do to survive…… if it ever materializes.
Topless beaches, etc.
We already have topless and full nude beaches in the UK.
Given the average Brit isn’t exactly Aphrodite / Adonis, it would be much better if we turned down the heat
Wouldn’t turning down the heat cause ‘shrinkage’?
Is it a promise that Brits won’t have to travel to the South of Spain to experience tolerable temperatures during their Holidays?
This sounds familiar. UK to have a mediterranean climate, farmland will turn to dust, rivers dry up, native flora and fauna to be displaced by cactus and lizards, palm trees in Newcastle. This was going around in the mid 90’s and predicted to happen by.. about 2010, if memory serves. I would look up the article, but I have to fight off this plague of imaginary locusts.
Please post if you find it, I love doing anniversaries of stupid predictions.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/06/30/30-year-anniversary-of-the-un-1989-10-years-to-save-the-world-climate-warning/
Eric, I found this from 2005:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4091068.stm#:~:text=BBC%20NEWS%20%7C%20UK%20%7C%20Climate%20may%20turn%20UK%20Mediterranean&text=Huge%20swathes%20of%20England%20could,%2C%20drier%20summers%2C%20say%20scientists.&text=By%202050%20summer%20temperatures%20in,warmer%20than%20they%20are%20now.
Maybe the old memory is playing tricks on me, but I’m sure there was a very similar article from about 10 yrs earlier, and I remember discussing it with an old colleague that I know for certain I haven’t seen since 1998. This article reads pretty much as I recall of the earlier one except for the 2050 timeline.
They seem to be getting wiser unfortunately, pushing the predictions at least 50 years into the future so they’re safely retired and forgotten by the time anyone works out what they predicted was nonsense.
I remember, not this article but the gist of, it being common currency. Also seeing maps of how the sea was going to invade as far inland as York. Here in South Kent, on the edge of Romney Marsh I began to worry seriously about rising seas as both my own and my parents’ houses were below sea level. Now, twenty-five years later, my parents are long gone and I have moved inland a few feet higher, but both houses are still there looking safer than ever.
As for the London parakeets, they have certainly undergone a population explosion, but that has little to do with temperatures, and more to do with being a successful invasive species finding an ecological niche.
RHS, yes I remember that, I also recall a certain Mr Blair advising us all to paint our houses white and replant our gardens with drought resistant plants.
Btw, teeside university is a joke, ex polytechnic renowned around these parts for its excellent brick laying courses.
When the AMO flips you’ll need a wetsuit. And it will flip. Mikey Mann even has a paper showing it has been cycling for a thousand plus years in the paleodata.
Surely Scotland needs a wetsuit during the warm AMO phase?
“The UK summer temperature of 2018 was a joint record, estimated to have become 30 times more likely due to anthropogenic causes….”
And the 2003 summer was estimated to have become 5-10 times more likely due to global heating, but in reality these events would not even occur without their discrete solar forcing, they cause climate change. 2018, 2003, 1976, 1949, and 1934 heatwaves all occurred on the same type of Jovian T-square, these heat events are predictable for thousands of years ahead, as are major cold-waves. When a 1963 ~ 1784 type of Jovian configuration occurred during the Oort solar minimum in 1010 AD, the River Nile froze. I can show the orbital maths of why the cold event occurred in the same season in 1010 and 1963 too, it depends on the relative position of Earth and Venus to the Jovian bodies.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/major-heat-cold-waves-driven-key-heliocentric-alignments-ulric-lyons/
It’s amazing how people, animals and plants can adapt to changing temperatures.
Many from England could live through our winters (46km West of Sydney, Australia) in shorts and a short-sleeve T-shirt (typically 0 to 21C, daily average of min&max=12C). I went to school with them. We’ve got 2 long sleeve layers plus another T-shirt or singlet for the winter mornings. In summer the suffering was reversed. We enjoyed the 30C days but the Pom’s sweltered and lived in the pool and A/C to survive.
We frequently see animals & insects which have spread into areas outside of their previous ranges. Livestock and crops have been bread for warmer Australian conditions. Similarly, crops have been adapted for colder Canadian farms (shorter growing period). Climate chaos is far greater than adding 1 or 2C to a local averages and these things cope with the changes we’ve always had. Europe had more deaths during cold periods (frozen water, crop failures) than warm periods (greater GDP).
If I didn’t like my local weather, I could move 40km closer to the coast, head further north, South or West. Sydney’s temperature can be 35C when Penrith is 45C, and Sydney above 7C when Penrith has frosty -1C. There’s no single definition of ‘normal’.
Normal is 22-23C all day everyday all year round. Anything else is extreme. Welcome to the A/C generation.
Lol. When I was a resident of Perfidious Albion, and enough customers (mostly farmers) paid cash in that year, there was one certain response – stuff everyone in the Viva (Torana etc – 18 different names) take off to the south of France. If asked where we were from, the answer was “Pays de Galles” (Wales). Smiles and offers of refreshment (as compensation for being a subject people of the filthy English).
Eric, I was never tempted to swim off Blackpool Beach. Or eat Morecambe Bay cockles. The northern Irish Sea was a radio-active hotspot due to Windscale/Sellafield, whatever they call it these days. Eg plutonium in kids’ sand-castles on the nearby beach, and in a resident’s vacuum cleaner bag. Researchers finding this had to put it into one of those yellow barrels with the three-arc symbol on it, that was required to go back to Sellafield for reprocessing.
I guess I was wrong about Blackpool water being “cold” ;-).
I tried wading in the water once. I don’t want to diss it too much, I had really nice holiday the few times I visited Blackpool, very friendly people at the B&B and shops. The nightlife was a little less family friendly.
OK, scratch my comment about you never having been to Blackpool, but if there are bigger shitholes in England, I’ve yet to find one and I grew up there, in the North.
Dunno, there’s plenty of places in the UK who would dispute that.
Did you catch anything, Eric?
Martin Clark
Resurrecting the old GangGreen shroud waving about Windscale and Sellafield?
Yes, there was a fire at Windscale in 1957.
Yes Sellafield has had problems with minor coolant leaks.
Yes, GangGreen likes to bandy about quotes from “experts” predicting a couple of hundred deaths “in future”.
OK, 63 years have now passed. Surely, time to name names?
The reality is that deaths from radiation from Windscale etc. are almost certainly zero point zero.
Like virtually every other nuclear power disaster except Chernobyl (where around 40 people died).
Low level radiation is likely beneficial to health.
If you don’t believe me, check out the Badgastein and Hofgastein spas in Austria.
How many people have died in the last 63 years for want of reliable, affordable electricity?
I’d rather think a nuclear power Station was to be built near me than a stupid bird mashing wind farm.
Instead of hmmm… that’s very interesting there’s always the same old BUT with these sad sacks and doomsters-
“Deep in the cold, dark water, on the seafloor west of Greenland, a quiet ecosystem thrives. For the first time, a garden of soft corals and sponges has been found in these waters, sprawling across an area a little bigger than the City of San Jose.
The discovery highlights not only how little we understand the deeper regions of the ocean, but how much damage we could be doing while unaware.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/a-vast-garden-of-soft-corals-has-been-discovered-off-the-coast-of-greenland/ar-BB165LnC
Meanwhile for our younger generation here’s a look back at funster time before the doomster plague-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/travel/tripideas/incredible-images-capture-100-years-of-youth-culture-at-the-british-seaside/ss-BB16du3t
Don’t kid yourself!
The world is getting cooler and my garden and fruit orchard say it is!
I trust nature’s honest plants far more than nature’s most dishonest, devious animals, which are humans!
I hear you. There may be a little warming from CO2, but the long term trend is down.
Eric Worrall July 1, 2020 at 6:47 pm
I hear you. There may be a little warming from CO2, but the long term trend is down
————
prove it please.
How? No one has ever proved that there is a little warming from CO2 at levels above preindustrial (generally accepted as 280ppm), or that any measurable climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 is something other than zero.
Find a graph that compares Holocene, Minoan, Roman, Medieval and current warm periods, and dispair…. Brief periods of prosperity and peace followed by long cold periods of darkness and famine.
In that case this will become a more regular sight in English parks and at the seaside.
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is” blah, blah, blah………
https://web.archive.org/web/20150912124604/http:/www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
The Brits will have to learn to drink cold beer.
You want mature Brits to become lager louts, like our younger generation?
Models and tree rings – forget it.
The other week in our heatwave the BBC touted the hottest day of the year using the temperature from Heathrow airport, which they do for every hottest day summer or warmest day winter.
…at a weather station in an urban heat island and in full reach of any member of the public with a cigarette lighter and a political agenda…
I was less than 20 miles from Cambridge on that day. The temperature never got much over 30 in the countryside.
We experienced 42 deg C and 47 deg C one week on the NSW south coast some years ago and we survived it. We had a strong westerly system and it brought very warm air from the land to the west. The poor old air conditioner only managed to reduce the temp to 27 deg C.
I really don’t know what they are worried about. 40 deg C has never stopped me going about my business.
John
“MET Office: Climate Change will Force the UK to Endure French Holiday Weather”
Yes, the same way that we were told that, by 2010, pineapples would be farmed in Scotland.
There’s a business opportunity in this. There are no houses in the UK fitted with what the French called volets. The best and most environmentally friendly way of keeping a house cool in summer, stop heat getting in. In France you can tl the Houses owned by Brits, the volets are always open except when the owners are away.
“A stark warning” LOL!
“by 2100 many areas in the north are likely to exceed 30 °C at least once per decade.”
My god those poor people.
More seriously though, I’d just like to point out that the 15,000 deaths in France due to the heatwave of 2003, which these alarmist’s love to trot out on a regular basis, was largely due to major socio-political problems that amplified the tragedy.
Just to put the numbers in perspective, of the nearly 32,000 excess deaths that have been observed in all 921 heat waves identified between 1974 and 2013 in France, half of them occurred in that one episode in 2003.
A national early warning system was rolled out after that, “le plan national canicule”, which has helped enormously in avoiding a repeat of that awful event.
I lived in the south of France for 20 years, 44C was th hottest. You get used to it. Oh, and there are lots of old people about, in fact they live longer and healthier than we do in the UK.
The MetOffice really are so full of BS it is extraordinary.
South France climate is a good one, where I lived, the Sea Alpes are in the backyard, with some snow in winter, nice to see cactacea coverd with snow. 😀
OMG this will mean that the small colony of scorpions at one of our outer London tube stations will multiply and the scorpions grow to horrendous sizes before spreading throughout the London tube system and making central London uninhabitable.
Is there no end to the horror of warmer temperatures…now where did I leave my sunglasses?
“A stark warning about the kind of summer that could become routine in the UK by the end of this century has been issued in a new study by the country’s Met Office.”
There are many beaches I would not swim in in the UK not least Blackpool.
80 years from now? I actually like a 40+ degree summer day (And I used to live in the UK/Ireland), as we get in Australia usually, but with humidity down to 15%-ish. It’s hot but it is dry! Sheesh, anything above 50% humidity (Water) and all you want to do is stay inside in an air conditioned space, anywhere!
Fortunately for those making these predictions they won’t be around.
Hey, what’s going on ? We were promised Mediterranean summers by 2050. It must be true because they said so on the Bullshit Broadcasting Corporation. Now we have to wait until 2100.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4091068.stm
Oops ! I see that Right-Handed Shark has already posted this link.
I got caught by Right-Handed shark’s post and link. I thought the link would be an article I recall sometime ago which concluded that sharks were in danger as CO2 level rises in the oceans were rendering sharks Left Handed so could have difficulties catching their prey. I had a good giggle at the time. Can anyone else remember this?
I was at Blackpool yesterday, and I can assure you that not one person was swimming.
And then the tide went out.
(At Blackpool – Lytham, you have to be a marathon runner to catch up with the receding tide….!
R
Oh the pain the pain.
Where’s the evidence for all these claims? The Met Office can’t even tell us how much warmth a doubling of CO2 will add to the atmosphere, yet they are making these predictions as if they can.
Be skeptical. Be very skeptical. Don’t accept unsubstantiated speculation as facts.
Because this study hasn’t to be taken as warning but as enjoyable statement….
😀
Exactly two hot days in June and its global warming, they dont even tell people they use Heathrow’s airport to take the hottest temps ,= tarmac, concrete and jets, nor do they state it’s mainly the south that sees the warmest temps. How about the west today rain all morning ,mist, only now has the sun come out ,and the next 3 days forcast rain, + below average temps.
From the paper
“By the end of the century…crossing the 35C becomes common in the South East under RCP4.5 and over most of England under RCP8.5.The highest threshold of 40C is to be exceeded at least once a century in the London area under RCP4.5 and several times a century over most of South East England under RCP8.5”
I guess by that time most people will have adapted to or taken steps to mitigate the effects!
Digital Technology Group has a weather station “on its roof” .Not a pristine weather station! It is about 2km from the Botanic Garden. On that day in July,it was 2 degrees cooler according to their measuring device. ( Measured in real time). The NIAB weather station ( Met Office) also shows a lower temperature(still shown as raw data)and about the same distance from the BG.
Plus, of course, RCP8.5 is a fantasy scenario disbelieved by even devoted climate alarmists!
The above attempt at doom and gloom leaves me not breathless, and every bit as concerned as I am about the starving, oops I mean thriving polar bears.
Good riddance prophets of dumb-I mean doom!
Been there. Seen it. Done it. When I was five years old. Never again.
But lets imagine the rise of the British currency when so many UK residents spend their holidays and retirement at home rather than in the Mediterranean. Being diplomatic, the Spaniards, in particular, may regret the loss of earnings, but not miss some of the visitors.