From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
Climate change is causing a dramatic increase in the frequency of temperature extremes and number of temperature records the UK experiences.
New analysis of observations shows that extremes of temperature in the UK are most affected by human induced climate change. This means the UK is seeing, on average, more frequent periods of hot weather, bringing challenges for infrastructure, health and wellbeing.
Remember the Met Office’s recent claim that we seeing a dramatic increase in the frequency of temperature extremes?
As I pointed out at the time, while we might be experiencing an increasing number of hot days, we are also having fewer extreme cold days. The Met Office’s claim is therefore simply not true.
I have now had a chance to do a full analysis, which will be included in my GWPF State of the Climate report due out shortly.
I have taken the CET daily mean temperature data since 1961, and extracted the coldest and hottest 5% – ie days below the 5th percentile and above the 95th percentile.
As suspected, there has been an increase in the number of the hottest days, though interestingly, apart from 2018, years such as 1975, 1976, 1995 and 2006 were at similar levels to recent years. The last decade does not appear to be much different to the 1990s and 2000s, suggesting we won’t see any further significant increase. Ultimately hot days are the result of anti-cyclonic weather, and the UK’s variable, temperate climate tends to mitigate against summer long heatwaves.
But as well getting more hot days, we are also seeing a drastic reduction in the number of extreme cold days:
.
When we combine hot and cold together, there is no trend at all, either up or down:
The most extreme years were 1963, 1976, 1983, 1995, 2010 and 2018.
This analysis was easy to do, so why did the Met Office do something similar in their State of the UK Climate Report this year?
Instead they chose to deliberately deceive the public into believing that UK weather is becoming more extreme.
The ”increasing extreme temperature meme” is manufactured.
Yes but in this case you are forced into the trap of saying that the trend of both highs and lows are upwards….giving the climunist-types double the opportunity to declare they are correct about the climate“crisis”.
The had to replace “runaway greenhouse effect” with something new and improved.
If climate change is increasing warming then the extremes you would expect to see are in warm days, not cold days.
Do they really have to spell this out?
So the AMOC is not slowing down because of climate change, which would result in cooler winters in Britain?
There are far fewer days now where the Tyne, or the Severn or the Thames freeze over compared to pre-industrial times.
So the number of extreme cold days has decreased, just as predicted by climate change.
And this warming has had a big effect on winter mortality, compared to pre-industrial times.
I think this is a really important point. I wonder if PH or someone could do a similar analysis on seasonal data. I think it would be interesting to see if the increase in “warm” days and decrease in “cold” days is weighted towards the colder seasons. That;s the problem with averages, and even more so with anomalies, a lot of important information or context is lost.
Here is an example of what you are asking.
These are monthly temperatures. It is very apparent that temperatures in summer have actually declined while cold temperatures in winter have moderated. Not exactly catastrophic!
They ‘spell it out’ by calling it ‘alarming’ even though they also stated the fact of fewer extreme cold days which also has an effect albeit positive. By ignoring the positives and hyping the negatives by calling it ‘alarming’ they clearly are twisting the truth or any clear data analysis.
Do i really have to spell this out?
Apparently so..
And this happens across the board: focus and hype the – and ignore the +. Not my idea (or any idea of science) of balanced reporting and statistical data analysis. It is basically ‘messaging’. THAT is the issue.
But you clearly do not come to this site to be reasonable ( to put it mildly)..
So, if it’s minus 20C that’s not an extreme?
Do you have any evidence at all that humans have caused anything but urban warming ??
Or will you just slither away, like a slimy rotten eel… as usual.
btw, warming is good, basically anywhere… and the tropics are limited by weather and the atmosphere.
Your continued chicken-little routine is totally hilarious. 🙂
Not so – warming could equally be the result of higher night-time minima with no change in maxima.
The “Law of WUWT” – “The number of comments adding to critical discussion of posts is inversely proportional to how ‘skeptical’ the forum members see themselves and how ‘skeptical’ the site promotes itself”. What jumps out about the location of the trend line in the third graph?
A trend does not warrant the adjective ‘alarming’ stated in the article. That is emotive language in order to make us all feel guilty about Co2 emissions which is the narrative. You can rightly call it alarmist. And if put in perspective with extreme cold weather events in which more people die than in extreme hot weather events the whole story falls apart, as shown in the response.
By stating ‘alarming’ the Met Office is obviously not stating facts.
It could simply have stated: ‘currently extreme hot weather poses challenges to people and infrastructure’. Period. But no, The Message/ Credo/ is to alarm. Not their job i would say. But, apparently it is. A state body putting out the government’s message. It happens across the board..
“A trend does not warrant the adjective ‘alarming’ stated in the article. “
Could you please tell me where I can find the “adjective ‘alarming’” in the MetO article critiqued?
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/news-and-media/media-centre/weather-and-climate-news/2024/temperature-extremes-and-records-most-affected-by-uks-changing-climate
Apologies. You are right. In fact the Met Office actually uses the word ‘dramatic’ which is a higher grade. With ‘alarming’ you can go from ‘somewhat to greatly alarmed’. In using ‘dramatic’ you have no such options. It is what it is so basically worse than i presented it..let that sink in..
Ah, bless a WUWT denizen who reckons he’s “got one” over a “Warmunist”.
Fraid not ….
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/
dramatic adjective
/drəˈmætɪk/
/drəˈmætɪk/
(of a change, an event, etc.) sudden, very great and often surprising
From the noun Drama
alarming adjective
/əˈlɑːmɪŋ/
/əˈlɑːrmɪŋ/.causing worry and fear
From the noun/verb Alarm:
Now the common sense …
What does an “Alarm” do?
Signal coming danger.
So we have the UK MetO saying that there has been a sudden change in warming event frequency (the interpretation you say is worse).
And something that is cause for worry.
As you say …. “let that sink in..”
I don’t see how you can judge the given statistics as ‘sudden’. When i think of ‘dramatic’ i see well, drama! Like a sudden fall or collision in sports. An earthquake etc.
Neither ‘dramatic’ nor ‘alarm’ belong in a conversation about science. I dont mind people using the term. Just not state institutions. I don’t consider those words helpful because they create an image and perception. And the statistics do not warrant their use. That was actually my main point..
AGW is all about “drama”…..
Ha ha ha ha ha, that’s even worse than Nick. At least the guy tries to connect it with something or other.
Alarming is worser than dramatic …. further proof that CO2 does something or other. The Met Office sez so, ner ner …..
Oh good. So nothing to be alarmed about.Probably not exactly dramatic either.
He thinks he’s being clever.
You really do scrape the intellectual barrel.
That you might be yet another ruler monkey?
What jumps out about the trend in this graph?
That’s if you believe their temperatures in the first place considering where they take the data from and how they adjust it, it’s plain old fraud.
This is my favourite bit:
‘Bringing challenges for infrastructure, health and wellbeing’
I thought that was the hundreds of thousands of economic immigrant’s they’re foisting on us every year; no housing for the young, you can’t get a GP’s appointment for love nor money, no dentists even for children now (funny how the economic migrants get assigned one when they get here) people are on 2 year waiting lists to see a consultant, parts of the country are literally no go areas for the police and people who have lived in those areas for generations have been forced to move out, we are pretty much broken as a country and I can’t see an end to it.
I’m happy we’re at the age we are, but fear for our 12 Grandchildren, plus another on the way in December🤰. At least we’ve done our part in helping to keep the indigenous population up and running!
“That’s if you believe their temperatures in the first place considering where they take the data from and how they adjust it, it’s plain old fraud.”
Good point.
Any study based on England’s CET is worthless unless you are studying the efficiency of the Gulf Stream at warming an island in a frigid ocean. It is decoupled from the rest of the world as far as climate is concerned.
It’s part of the rest of the world as far as climate is concerned. Or are England’s temperatures not included in global average datasets?
“It is decoupled from the rest of the world as far as climate is concerned.”
That’s my opinion, too. The UK has a unique climate.
The UK’s only “claim to fame” is the length of the temperature record. But the length doesn’t mean it applies to the whole world. It applies to the UK only.
The Met Office study wasn’t based on the CET, it covered the whole of the British Isles, Homewood chose to focus on the CET.
He knows that most of the rest of the surface data is totally corrupted by bad sites.
CET is still affected but ‘maybe’ not as much.
Having the data in the hands of the rabid activists at Hadley, doesn’t help its credibility.
The article states:
“Climate change is causing a dramatic increase in the frequency of temperature extremes and number of temperature records the UK experiences.
And:
“New analysis of observations shows that extremes of temperature in the UK are most affected by human induced climate change. This means the UK is seeing, on average, more frequent periods of hot weather, bringing challenges for infrastructure, health and wellbeing”.
ok so, the emphasis is on DRAMATIC. That is not a statistical fact but a judgement. That judgement is alarmists in nature and of course tied to our ‘sin’ of producing Co2 which is of course an unproven assumption.
I do agree that higher frequency of extreme weather bring challenges, as everyone would. However, it is built upon a linear idea of both temperature rises (caused by higher Co2 emissions) and extreme weather events.
That is also not a fact or even a theory based on data. It is a hypothesis and that hypothesis is the standard alarmist narrative. In conclusion: the Met Office is not stating scientific facts and uses emotive language to get a particular message across.
It is not that hard to analyse..
‘This means the UK is seeing, on average, more frequent periods of hot weather….’
Garbage. The UK has cut CO2 emissions by over 50 percent. The science is clear. Cut CO2 emissions and global warming will cease.
chuckle.. 🙂
I made a similar comment above, but i think it’s just as important, if not more important, to see when (seasonally) the UK is seeing more frequent periods of hot weather. If the warming is occurring more during the colder months than the warmer months, I think British citizens would like to know that. A lot of important information or context is lost when they only look at averages (annual, global, etc.).
The Met Office article was about hot weather defined as >=28ºC and heavy rainfall (average >=95th percentile).
the UK is seeing, on average, more frequent periods of hot weather,
Please can we have some of that in Scotland. We’re not even half way through August and the temperature at the moment (11am) is only 15 degrees C.
Is there a scientific definition of “hot” weather?
Hot weather = anything that keeps the masses alarmed.
When talking about climate in terms of temperature you always have to consider location. Top of Scotland vs south of England. Huge difference. I guess that London trumps everything. And in fairness, heat waves do impact London way more than say..Inverness. I presume most alarmists live in the London metropolitan area. Also, cold waves have less impact on London, temperature wise. Retained heat by buildings obviously.
That’s what the Met Office did, they covered the whole of the British Isles.
See above.
For some perspective, the top of Scotland is the same latitude as Churchill Manitoba where they have an ongoing polar bear problem whereas Cornwall is the same latitude as my home on Vancouver Island where temperatures have been in the high 20s to low 30s for the past two weeks, lovely weather. Not extreme, although weather Canada has caught the Met Office disease and issues heat warnings at the drop of a hat.
From the article: “As suspected, there has been an increase in the number of the hottest days, though interestingly, apart from 2018, years such as 1975, 1976, 1995 and 2006 were at similar levels to recent years. The last decade does not appear to be much different to the 1990s and 2000s”
So it is not any different than the recent past. There’s nothing unprecedented going on with the weather in the UK.
Hotter than what? Not hotter than in the past. Not more frequent hot days. This is much ado about nothing. Typical Climate Alarmist BS (Bad Science).
“Not more frequent hot days”
From the UKMO article …….
” …… the proportional increase across all counties over time is much more pronounced as the temperature threshold gets higher. The number of ‘pleasant’ days (daily maximum 20°C) has increased by 41% for the most recent decade (2014-2023) compared to 1961-1990. The number of ‘warm’ days (25°C) has increased by 63%, ‘hot’ days (28°C) have more than doubled and ‘very hot’ days (30°C) have more than trebled over the same period.
So FI, 3 times as many 30C days is “not more frequent hot days” ?
Would it be the case that there be “not more” cold days (in your mind) if there were 3x as many cold days?
I suspect not (sarc) ?
Amazing to see cognitive dissonance in play and a constant source of wonder at the lengths gone to keep the precious denial.
A warming climate produces more hot days and fewer cold days shock!!
Who’da thunk it?
Serious question: How well does the CET dataset manage station siting and UHI ? If these matters aren’t handled well, any historical comparison of temperatures is pretty much pointless. Apples do not equal oranges.
Discretely solar driven heatwaves, predictable centuries ahead. 1934, 1949, 1976, 2003, 2018 were the same type, 1936 and 2006 were another type:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQemMt_PNwwBKNOS7GSP7gbWDmcDBJ80UJzkqDIQ75_Sctjn89VoM5MIYHQWHkpn88cMQXkKjXznM-u/pub
The rise in number of weather stations, data adjustments and the cherry picking of data for political purpose is causing…..
“a dramatic increase in the frequency of temperature extremes and number of temperature records the UK experiences.”
All you need to create a trend line from a set of data is the set of data. All you need to determine whether the slope of the trend is up, down or zero is to have either a relatively short data set which will be dominated by the values at the beginning or end of the data period. That is just to do with the maths of calculating the trend. If the sixties were a bit cooler than to 2020’s then you will likely get an uptrend. I have seen such data selection in sea level rise papers, temperature trends etc and that ignores the sort of data Mannipulation we are otherwise familiar with.
The other factors of course regarding surface temperatures are the increase in UHI over the decades as populations and urban areas grow with more and more concrete and bitumen surface cover and fewer trees etc.
Then there is the changes over time to temperature measurement technologies ranging from buckets of water scooped up by ships on trade routes by their engineers to evidence pushing the engines hard (i.e. understate the logged temperature) to make port on time for a booked berth slot, i.e. inferring a water surface uptrend as independent technology is adopted.
And there is more as ANthony has written about and many others. Yeah CO2 may have some warming effect but there are plenty of other factors that may also be material bu then quantifying the real warming from statistical inaccuracy is perhaps the real problem. The ultimate caveat? a) Never get between a research scientist and a bucket of money b) never trust pal reviews and c) observe the key factor of true science, be skeptical until proven probable.