By Paul Homewood
It’s been a summer of record breaking hype, if little else.
We have been hearing for weeks that this summer has been unprecedented, how it “proves” global warming, and how it is a template for the future.
It turns out after all that it was none of these things, and was in fact no hotter than 1976:
Average mean temperatures were actually below those of 2003, 2006 and 2018:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-and-regional-series
Statistically, this summer tied with 1976. (The Met Office have previously stated that “Usually we will only quote statistics to the nearest 0.1C as differences smaller than this could result from small numerical differences arising from the statistical calculations”.) This summer finished at 15.72C, while 1976 was 15.70C
Summers like 1899, 1911, 1933, 1947 and 1983 were only a fraction of a degree cooler.
More significantly, daytime temperatures this summer were significantly below 1976. It is, of course, daytime temperatures which have dominated stories of the heatwave.
In contrast night time temperatures are artificially raised by the UHI effect, which is not taken into account by the Met Office.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-and-regional-series
There have of course also been a lot of overhyped claims about the drought, again with the intention of persuading the public that it was caused by climate change.
But as we can see below, there have been four drier summers in England & Wales – 1995 was the driest, followed in order by 1976, 1869 and 1983:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-and-regional-series
We have always had hot and dry summers from time to time in Britain. There is no evidence whatsoever summers are getting hotter or drier.
But, but, but, now it is due to Climate Change! Trust me!!!
LMAO. That will be the continued spin on the failings of the climate change cult’s ability to accurately predict just about everything re: climate, er, uh, weather.
The alphabet soup of letters behind the proponents names only serve to alert most of us to the idiocy of their proclamations. Well, it works for me anyway.
I have just checked the official C E T records for southern England, and this gives
1976 the warmest summer at 17.77 C 1826 at 17.60 C and 1995 at 17.37 C
In fact the total number of very warm summers above 16.5 C were fairly rare.
since records began in 1650.
Two were in 1666 and 1676 (1666 being the summer of Great fire of London)
There were Ten from 1719/1798
Seven between 1808/1898
Eight between 1911/1976
and 6 between 1983/2018
But to compare temperatures of the past to the present would be almost impossible
due to the Urban heating effect. Heathrow airport being always at least 2 C above surrounding areas.
Just a guess but the accuracy of the instruments used to measure those temps was …..
Well lets just say that there isn’t a thermometer built that can precisely measure a temperature to 2 significant digits – in fact somewhere between +/- 0.3-0.5 is the absolute best, even today.
Let’s not say that. There are, in fact, very high precision thermometers including RTDs, Themistors, specialty themocouples and mercury in glass thermometers. I had a glass thermometer that was about 24 inches long with a range of 10 to 40 C and graduations of 0.001 C which was read using an attached sliding microscope. Like many measurement instruments there is a trade-off between accuracy/resolution and range. An oral thermometer used to check for fevers has a range of about 94 – 106 F and can be read to 0.01 F.
I know you probably meant thermometers routinely used to measure air temperature which need a range of typically -40 to +50 C or more. Such thermometers do normally have an uncertainty of at least +/- 1.0 C. Most newer RTDs used for weather are a bit better (+/- 0.5 C), at least for up to a year after calibration, but they are also subject to calibration drift. Unfortunately adherence to prescribed calibration and verification procedures is something honored more in the breach than the observance. This was never a significant issue with mercury/glass thermometers which are generally verified at 5 year intervals and almost always are found to be acceptable. They’re generally replaced due to breakage long before they lose significant accuracy due to age.
Just because it has graduations of 0.001C does not mean it is accurate to that figure. I have an electronic thermometer which gives readings to .001C and it is still only accurate to about 0.5C. What is the stated instrument error (usually given in the manufacturers information) for that fine instrument?
It’s all getting a bit desperate in the face of crippling global energy cost’s.
But those hot dry summers were just weather.
Even though summer’s warmth is holding on, I already miss the longer daylight hours.
Here in Silicon Valley, it’s been the coolest Summer that I can recall over the last 60 years.
The Santa Clara Valley was a beautiful place to live 60 years ago much like Jack London described it. Most houses did not have air conditioning or central heat.
A very mild climate.
AKA silicon valley is not all roofs and freeways.
After my dad retired to the Sierra foothills I asked why he did move Southern Califonia instead.
He said it was an awful place and he would never live there. It was the late 80s and I said I could tell the difference. He went back only once and then told me I was right.
I queation recall about how things were when you were a kid.
Your dad was right.
Paul Homewood is evidence that climate science needs a lot more retired accountants and far fewer Ph.D. scientists. His website is the best in Europe.
His focus on the UK is useful as the “canary in the coalmine” for what could happen in the US if we continue the Nut Zero delusion to solve a non-existent climate crisis.:
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT | “We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. – J Robert Oppenheimer. (wordpress.com)
Oppenheimer sounds ultra MAGA.
One more enemy of Democracy…according to Der BrandonFuhrer.
April solar EMR at 54N was 302W/m^2 5,000 years ago. It is presently 313W/m^2. In 5,000 years from now, the EMR will be 323W/m^2.
April is important for what occurs in summer in the UK because the response of the surrounding water has a thermal lag of about 2 months while the land has a response of 1 month.
September is getting cooler with 333W/m^2 4,000 years ago; 321W/m^2 now and 299W/m^2 in 6,000 years. September insolation is important for UK winters due to thermal lags.
The current rate of change in Solar EMR at 54N in these months is close to their maximum in approximately a sinusoidal function.
So good records that show trend over noise for the past 500 years since temperature has been measured, should identify that summers are getting warmer and winters cooler.
Given that land responds faster to insolation than oceans, the convergence of moist air from oceans to land will reduce during UK summers. Likewise there will be increasing moist air convergence in winter. Ultimately these changing conditions will lead to snow accumulation on land surrounding the North Atlantic; probably within the current millennium.
There is considerable noise that can make these trends difficult to detect but it is inevitable that the UK will get hotter, drier summers and cooler, wetter winters with more snowfall. The orbital precession cycle guarantees this.
This year was undoubtedly weather associated with ocean oscillations but there is a solid underlying trend driving warmer, drier summers in the UK.
The really sad part of the whole climate con is that CO2 is being blamed. It is horribly wasteful diverting limited resources to reducing CO2 to fix the weather when CO2 has no direct influence on the weather.
Here in the US too, every weather event they tell us it never happened before, hell it happens every year! Whether it is hot or cold or wet or dry, they say it never happens, but it happens every year.
Here as well. Nothing happened this summer that hasn’t happened dozens of times before. Except that it all cost 8% more than it did last year. I certainly hope the corrupt and subsidized Climate Nutters at NOAA down in Boulder don’t get a cost-of-living increase.
Hotter and drier? I keep seeing someone on here proclaim England is 6% wetter
Tsk tsk, Matt! That was last year’s meme. The grifftard has moved on.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia
In some places they shut down the thermostat in buildings designed to operate with air conditioning, no large windows and high ceilings. Then while people are sweltering in their homes they tell you how hot it is and you caused it.
Not the first time that this trick has been pulled. It ‘even’ fooled the US Congress.
Wirthless Tim and Huckster Hansen. At some point, though, deceiving government becomes the only moral course of action. Biden’s illegal student loan forgiveness just “gifted” debt in the amount of $2,500 to every US citizen.
The central Texas coast has been in a (various adjectives) drought that almost made it to a year. It’s over for now. Texas must deal with both the AMO and ENSO, cold blizzards from the north, warm cyclones from the south. Historical records from early explorers show this. Its climate varies!
“Warmer than average weather…”
Do people not understand the concept of average?
As George Carlin put it: ‘Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.’
Remember, the average person has one testicle and one breast.
Transgender!
That would be the bi-genders. Aren’t they included in the LGBTQ+ category?
Soon enough they will run out of letters and will need to start adding emojis or something.
Add a few more letters to LBGT … at random.
Then don’t tell your leftist friends what they mean if they ask. Good for a laugh. They will be upset at not being up to date.
No wonder they are so darn confused.
“We have always had hot and dry summers from time to time in Britain.”
True, and I wouldn’t use UK summer temperatures in preference to actual global temperatures, but it does seem that hotter summers are becoming more frequent. This article says “Summers like 1899, 1911, 1933, 1947 and 1983 were only a fraction of a degree cooler.” which are just 5 hot summers in the 100 years up to the 1990. Not mentioned are the 5 summers warmer than 1983 that have happened in the last 20 years.
Top warmest UK summers (mean temperature)
Looking at a graph of mean temperatures, it’s remarkable how close in temperature all the hottest summers have been, and how rare cold summers have been since the 1990s.
I suspect the UK summer warming trend has largely been down to changes in the weather patterning over the last 50 years.With a trend towards the wind blowing more often between the West to SE rather then between the West to the NE during fine weather.
Measured at increasingly urban affected stations and at airports..
Yes.. urban areas cause local warming..
Thanks, but we knew that
15 degrees isn’t mean at all.
It’s when the temp gets to around 40 that days are decidedly mean.
“Dog days” in fact.
I’ve sweated through more than my fair share of them for most of my life.
15 degrees – “LOOOXURY!”
What are the uncertainty ranges on those figures Bellman? And, no, I don’t mean the mathematically derived probability range, I mean the true uncertainties derived from the original temperature data set, please?
The same as they were when Paul Homewood used them in this article. When he says “Average mean temperatures were actually below those of 2003, 2006 and 2018″, we are talking about a difference of around 0.01°C.
I’d say that all top 5 years are in a statistical tie. Especially as I notice my averages are fractionally different to the Met Offices. (Either there is a rounding error or they are not weighing months by number of days.) It doesn’t alter my point that hot summers are becoming more common in recent years.
I specifically asked you NOT to give me the mathematically derived probability range and so, that is exactly what you gave me. I specifically asked for the actual temperature uncertainty range of the data set that you, yes you, posted figures for and you ignored me completely. I just want to know what the temperature uncertainty range is for the data set that you got those averages from – not a difficult task, surely?
I didn’t give you any uncertainty range. I just pointed out the inconsistency of worrying about uncertainty when you don’t like the argument, but ignoring it when you think the data tells you what you want to believe.
I don’t think you know me at all – I’ve challenged both sides of the argument when they fail to state the full information necessary and dug deeper into both alarmist and sceptical arguments where there were problems with what was being presented at face value. As for my take on the figures you put up – all 15 are easily within instrument error range and could quite easily be measuring the same temperature for all we know; this idea that a mathematical precision of 2 decimal places can ‘place’ years in order is complete hogwash.
Sorry. I didn’t necessarily mean you personally. It’s just a common issue I’ve had over the last few years commenting here. I post some statistic that disagrees with the main post, and am immediately told the data is corrupt or I’m not quoting the uncertainty ranges, or I’m cherry-picking the start date, or whatever – when I’ve used eactly the same data, or exactly the same time period as the post I’m replying to. It’s almost as if people only use these issues when they don’t agree with the claim.
As to the point about these hot summers. I was not trying to make an issue about which summer might be warmer than another, I’m pointing out that within all the hottest summers we are seeing a greater number of them in recent years, and this is contrary to the claim in this article. That is all.
I don’t think it makes any sense to compare 2022 with 1976, just on their average mean temperatures. They were very different summers. I just noted that it’s odd that all of the hottest summers are so close to each other in terms of mean temperature, despite being so different in character.
” It doesn’t alter my point that hot summers are becoming more common in recent years.”
Depends on location.
East of the Rockies,US summer high temps have been decreasing for 80 years.
This whole post is about the UK.
From about 1900 the climate warmed in the UK. until a cooling around the 1940/ 1980 Summers during the 1930s as warm as they are now, mean summer temperature were on average 15.70 C and in the 1940s 15.69 C
The average mean CET for the last 30 years have been on average 15.84 C
Allowing for Urban warming, not something to get excited about.
As regards winter temperatures. the three winters 2009/ 2011 were on a par with
the most severe winters of the last 100 years. December 2010 was one of the coldest on record.
The media is going berserk over the Western heat dome. I will admit it is really hot but it’s so annoying how they always try to blame it on climate change. To them it’s as if there were no bad heat waves before 1960.
In about a week or so it will cool off and drenching rains will come and they will be going berserk over flooding.
The weather changes constantly so it is a perfect instrument for scam artists to utilize for fame and profit.
It’s all well and good to show with data that nothing extraordinary is occurring but, it doesn’t appeal to the emotions.
This winter, when millions are broke, cold, and hungry, we need to appeal to people’s emotions to the reality of why it is happening.
It may be that Sri Lanka will prove to be a moderate response to government malfeasance.
NOAA forecasters say that G1 (minor) to G2-class (moderate) geomagnetic storms are possible on Sept. 4th when a stream of solar wind is expected to hit Earth’s magnetic field. The gaseous material is flowing from a large hole in the sun’s atmosphere:
https://www.spaceweather.com
refresh to follow here:
http://www.n3kl.org/sun/images/noaa_kp_3d.gif
There’s a launch window for Artemis 1 on the 3rd, wonder if this will affect it?
That’s what I get for not looking at the date before posting! Already not happened if you get my meaning.
Yes, it looks like Artemis is growing roots.
I hope the mission eventually succeeds. But if the SpaceX Starship system succeeds, then Artemis and the SLS will look like a very expensive white elephant.
Chris
SpaceX looks set to become the vehicle of choice for earth-orbit missions, but I still think there is huge value in Artemis, beyond just the obvious political game of beating the Chinese to the first lunar base!
The European summer of 2022 was great! millions of people soaking up the Vit D before winter, and tried to live their lives normally again after surviving through the Early Covidienne Era.
The media did their utmost to ruin it for everybody of course, with their wall to wall fire and brimstone climate propaganda, but they try and ruin most things anyway.
… and let’s not forget the wheat harvest is nearly 8% up on 2020 and they got it in on record time too.
The headline next to this image from the cultists at the BBC:
“Summer heatwave ‘death spike‘ seen in UK – BBC News”
Says it all really.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/top-climate-adviser-gina-mccarthy-leaving-white-house-john-podesta-joining
Haha – the good news is…. but the bad news is…..
John Podesta joining the Biden administration is entirely appropriate, given the BrandonFuhrer’s warlike political positioning, and his attack on anyone who believes in making America great again. Podesta is another criminal from the Clinton Crime Family.
You could not find a speck of knowledge about weather, climate, or industrial emissions in John Podesta’s brain using an electron microscope. But he is an expert at distributing political payola. And the democrats have over 300 million in climate change money to distribute to their major donors. That is Podesta’s job.
A very wet August here in Alaska.
https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/weather/2022/08/19/anchorages-shift-from-drought-to-an-onslaught-of-rain-brings-weather-whiplash-extraordinaire/
Getting a signal out of red noise is adult male bovine excrement, but our so called “climate scientist” do it all the time. When on God’s green earth will we get some sanity for a change.
Since the clean air acts reduced sulphates, and especially since the closing of the coal power plants., the clouds should have reduced over the UK. This would have been masked by contrails from planes but (post-Covid) these have reduced recently.
So we would expect warmer summers.
Yes, the data does show a reduction in UK cloudiness over the last few decades. This could have provided quite a significant amount of warming.
What an irony: that the warming which, according to the greenies, is a catastrophe, may have been caused by the very environmental policies that they demanded!
Chris
Paul says this but there’s a clear upward trend in the frequency of mean summer UK temperatures in excess of 15C. It’s clearly visible in the first chart he shows.
The UK record starts in 1884 and, pre 1975, 91 years, there were a grand total of 4 UK summers with mean temperatures above 15C. Since 1975, the past 48 years, there have been 12, 5 of which occurred in the past 10 years and 4 in the past 5 years, including this year.
Sorry, but if that isn’t evidence that UK summers are getting hotter then I don’t know what is.
Three little words for you : U H I.
Connigsburg? RAF Coningsby surely!