From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
The Met Office gleefully declared the hottest start to May on record last Thursday.
This is the usual “One Day = Climate” hooey we are used to seeing from the Met Office, which appears to think we have not worked out there are 364 other days in the year!
In fact a temperature of 29.3C in the London urban heat bubble is not remarkable at this time of year. It was not even as hot as the 16th April was in 1949.
Away from the urban heat island, temperatures only hit 26.1C at Rothamsted, the high quality Class 1 site, thirty miles north in the Hertfordshire countryside.
CET reached 25.4C that day, the sort of temperature not uncommon in the first week of May:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cet_info_max.html
But much more important than one day’s weather is what the long term trends tell us – and here we have a surprise.
Although average Spring temperatures have been on the rise in recent decades, there has been no upward movement in the highest temperatures set each year in any of the three months:
The chart for March includes this year. April, which is not in, hit a high of 24.5C, and as we have seen the highest so far this month is 25.4C, neither of which are records.
As we always seem to see when we do these sort of analyses, warmer weather tends to be more frequent, and colder weather less so. What we don’t see is an upward shift in all temperature bands.
In other words – WEATHER.
We can see this clearly in the temperatures so far for spring this year:
Virtually every day has been in the top half of the 1961-90 distribution, but none have broken through the ceiling.
It is a truth that the Met Office would rather suppress, as it destroys their “climate change” narrative.
Instead they would rather fool you selecting odd days at some of their junk sites, which should not be used for climatological purposes.
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To be fair, what I have notice vis-à-vis the 1950s – which is as far back as my memory goes – is that nights are not as cold. And there is a lot less fog.
Neither of which is explained by CO2.
That’s silly, everything is explained by CO2. Don’t believe me, just ask the Guardian.
Or the UK Met Office..
They state it IS. Period. It is no longer: scientist believe. Or even the old ‘97% of scientist think’.
No, it just is. And if ‘we’ continue as we are with the burning of ‘fossil’ fuels we WILL see a rise of 4 degrees Celsius by 2100. For that they produce the graph that still has the RCP 8.5 scenario on which they base that 4 degrees C but has been dismissed by just about everyone else. So, deliberate foul play by the official state troopers. We are not talking about the media here. We are talking official state institutions. They have fossilized their thinking and are truely a propaganda machine. Just visit their Climate Change section:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/climate-change/what-is-climate-change
An interesting contrast from the reported maxima and the hourly 1 minute temperature snapshots from weatherobs.com.
The BBC reported that at Kew it reached 28°C at 13:28 and 29.3°C at 17:40. The hourly temperatures were significantly below this, suggesting spiking.
The Meteorological Office enquiries confirmed that the hourly readings were correct and that the peak temperature of 29.3°C was at 14:59.
Given this fact 29.3°C was 2.6°C above the 14:00 temperature while at 15:00 it was 0.76°C lower.
This does not suggest “normal” temperature change.
Looking at wind directions this could well be explained by UHI effects.
May Day Madness – Frayedends Blog
As has been explained before: more modern equipment will register peaks more often compared to say thermometer readings.
Maybe someone can investigate..
The usual Homewood hysteria. Met Office mention when a minor record was broken. Homewood insists this is nothing to do with climate change, despite the fact that the Met Office made no mention of climate.
“there has been no upward movement in the highest temperatures set each year in any of the three months:”
Except the red lines on his graphs clearly show upward trends in March and April.
I can’t see any upward trend myself.
You don’t think increasing UHI may have something to do with this, assuming it is real?
I was talking about the red line Homewood uses on his graphs. In March it’s at a low around 1980, but then rises by around 2°C, levels of a bit, then rises by about another degree after 2010.
April is less distinct, but on the whole it’s been rising since 1980, and looks like it might currently be at it’s highest point.
May was also rising after 1980, but leveled off and possibly fell slightly after 2000.
Not that I read much into this. The warmest day in each month is a poor metric for climate.
Here are my own graphs for record maximum temperature by month. The blue line is a loess smoothing. Note, these include the most recent years (2025 for March and April, 2024 for May).
For completeness here are the other seasons.
Summer
Autumn
Winter
Those are some fine charts, and I’m not disputing them, but now tell me what you see in this one, which is daily Tmax at CET (in tenths of a degree C) since 1880:
I agreed with Bellman’s first observation – the three charts in the middle of the article communicated small upward trend. I also noted the 4C minor axis increment. Looking at stevekj’s chart back to 1880 relieves worry. “not a lot going on here”. But what is the Y-axis unit?? Post says tenths of a degree but Y range is -100 to +400. Explain?
KevinM, yes, it is in tenths of a degree, so the Y axis runs from -10.0 C to +40.0 C. (i.e. -100 corresponds to -100 tenths, or -10.0 actual degrees) This is how the data were supplied to me, so that is how I plotted them. There is no manipulation or calculation of any sort between the raw data and the chart.
(I agree with Bellman’s first observation too, for the record)
You have to slice and dice the data into ever smaller pieces, then select those pieces that are showing what you want to see.
Those pieces that don’t show what you want to see, are probably just under the influence of big oil.
“but now tell me what you see in this one”
I see someone trying to obscure any trend by showing the entire seasonal range.
Personally I prefer graphs that tease out the details rather than hiding them. For instance you can see what happens if you take a 12 month rolling average.
Still a lot of variability, but you can start to see the trend.
Or you can use a 360 month smooth to get a better sense of the changing climate.
“rather than hiding them.”
I’m not “hiding” anything, Bellman. Do you think anyone is scared by the entire data set? Should they be? Why?
Sunshine hours have increased.
So apart from some urban warming as well, there is no evidence that human CO2 has caused any of the slight BENEFICIAL warming
Thanks for showing the effect of urban population growth. on temperatures measured in urban areas..
The climate alarmist messaging is blatantly clear. That’s the beauty of the Climate Religion you people are so fond of. No mention of climate is required.
The funniest part is that people in the UK think they are living in a tropical zone. 29C is the same as 84 F, which, in the USA, is considerable a nice warm day. The Brittish doth protest too much, methinks.
The down votes you receive clearly show upward trends and that must be linked to your refusal to accept the consensus here. /sarc
The use of the word “hottest” instead of “warmest” is the tell. It is used for eliciting an emotional response and promoting the narrative as opposed to simply informing.
Normal trends, yes.
Climate science is such a mess of statistical malpractice that it simply can’t be trusted at all. Spiking temps are no more indicative of climate than are mid-range daily temperatures. “Averages” based on the mid-range temperatures are useless for *anything* related to climate. Not a single reference to variance, skewness, or kurtosis is ever seen when it comes to climate science let alone any reference to things like degree-day values, growing season length, heat accumulation values, etc. All of which are used in defining hardiness zones which *are* measures of climate as opposed to mid-range temperatures.
There is no degree in “Climate Science” that hours of research into universities and colleges has uncovered.
That nit aside, of course it is statistical malpractice.
My biggie is using mean (or average) in lieu of median.
Any actual increase in daily or monthly highs would have to be studied over a range of several centuries. An occasional spike, here and there, are just flukes, and not indicative of long term trends. Fact: it isn’t any hotter now than it was when I was a boy, many long years ago. Another fun fact; it is ALWAYS hotter in the Summer time. Live with it.
Well we could certainly do with some of that heat to came back. today the temperature here in central west of England is just 11 deg. C. Back into winter woollies. The wind turbines continue to have a torrid time too. With less than 3GW of output from the 30+GW fleet installed.
Well that is what weather does here in the UK. It varies, no wind, no sunshine here either and its cold.
Looking on the positive though, we must be in for some really sunny times here in the UK because that very nice Mr. Miliband has promised to put government funds and action into place to shield the nation from sunshine via Geo engineering. This latest option from Ed came just one day after he advised he was putting government money and effort into building endless solar panels over our car parks to generate solar energy….?
It would be funny if it was not so tragic.
It certainly isn’t funny, and it’s more than tragic, it’s insane! If he is even partially successful, it will be a tragedy for the entire northern hemisphere, if not more!
As I write, the temperature in the NW of England is 1 °c at 06:17 (a little above freezing)
Well the sun is closer to the NH this year From March thru June inclusive so you would expect it to be warmer. Attached is the seasonal matrix showing difference from 2024 to 2025.
Would that apply to the entire NH? Here in the Intermountain West (USA) it’s been the coldest-wettest-snowiest May (so far) since IDK-when. Or perhaps that’s your other longer term forecast, snowfall-enhancement across all Nordica?
The Most Hyped Start To May
Kew Gardens is termed a class 2 site, although it is very close to one of the largest tropical glasshouses in the world. So, make that a class 4, then. At least it does exist.
In the shade in urban London where I live it didn’t go over 25.1C and yet they are claiming 29.3C. What’s the error margin at Kew? Probably two or three degrees. From actual observation I would say they have made it up, and I think we know why.
The last week has been a lot cooler, barely getting up to 15C. That comes under their ‘a lot chillier than usual, but normal’ heading. But that doesn’t cut it anymore like it once did. People have far more pressing issues to deal with in their lives rather than worry about >=30 year averages in trends in weather patterns, starting years and cherrypicking etc. This leads to ever more doomloop hype to reinforce the message and that’s exactly what we get served up by censoring tech bros and the media.
Doublethink
We will grow the economy
We will reach clean energy by 2030
Immensely challenging” and pushing the limits “of what is feasibly deliverable”. – National Energy System Operator (Neso)
No kidding
“Ill winds are blowing for Labour’s 2030 deadline for clean energy”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2025/may/07/ill-winds-are-blowing-for-labours-2030-deadline-for-clean-energy
Rising costs? But renewables are dirt cheap, right?
I suspect you are close with your error margin.
Kew is less than ten miles away from Tooting, it cannot be that different. Check Google Earth
Over here in Western Washington, I’ve seen a 27F difference between two locations just 13 miles apart.
Temperature is a function of numerous factors. Elevation, pressure, humidity, terrain, geography among others. It’s why homogenization and infilling is a joke. It requires the implicit and unstated assumption that none of these other factors apply. Climate science assumes that a station on the east side of a mountain will have the same temp and anomaly as a station in the west side of the mountain. It’s a joke of monumental proortions.
While I agree, I also know that barefoot with one foot on the asphalt driveway and the other on the grass, there is a robust difference in sensible heat energy.
Can I take it that the reason this happens is because the MetOffice was taken over many years ago by a religious cult?
Someone is very upset and is frantically down voting. Such bravery…
I upvote when agree with something or find it well written and something to learn from. It has nothing to do with being upset or not, for me. Projecting much?
Can I take it that the reason this happens is because the MetOffice was taken over many years ago by a religious cult?
“The chart for March includes this year. April, which is not in, hit a high of 24.5C, and as we have seen the highest so far this month is 25.4C, neither of which are records.”
Actually, all the graphs only go up to 2020.
If I weren’t so busy today, I would take advantage of the fresh mountain snow here in Colorado.
“Virtually every day has been in the top half of the 1961-90 distribution, but none have broken through the ceiling.”
I’m not sure what he means by “the ceiling”. By my reckoning, 7 days have set a record for the year day.
Here’s my graph, the red line is the average for the 1991-2020 period, the gray area shows the range of values up to 2025.
Note, this is based on day of year, rather than calendar date, so there may be some differences caused by leap years.
Whereas for the UK 3 daily records have been set:
Cool start of the year, warming up in spring.
In other words, nothing unusual whatsoever.
The MET is, as usual, making mountains out of molehills.
Well, i see this as simply the excitement that comes with ‘record’ temperatures. Something to report which is then spread. A good friend of mine ALWAYS reports a record temperature. To my question of: ‘and’? He shrugs and states:”just saying”.
I’d say there had been quite a lot of unusual weather so far this year. But this is the UK, so unusual weather isn’t that unusual.
For one thing it was exceptionally sunny for most of March and April. Smashed the record for total sunshine, with records going back to 1910.
Even more dramatic over East Anglia
It was also quite dry over that period, though not record breaking.
“CET reached 25.4C that day, the sort of temperature not uncommon in the first week of May:”
So “not uncommon” it’s only been reached twice before in records going back to 1878.
Top ten warmest daily maximum in first week of May:
2025 was equal second and only 0.1°C below the record.
Yet the earliest the UK reached 29.3°C was the 29.4°C on 16th April 1949 which was equalled on the 19th April that year, two weeks earlier than this year
I was talking about CET, as was Homewood. The warmest April CET in 1949 was 23.4°C on the 15th.
And the post is about the UK maximum temperature on May Day.
Take your pick.
The one I take is the one Homewood was talking about when he said it was common for CET to be 25.4 in the first week of May.
If you want to talk about an individual temperature during April, then it’s up to you to show 29.3 is common during April.
Not at all.
29.3 was exceeded twice in the middle of April in 1949 therefore nothing unusual about 29.3 at the start of May.
Once in 100 years seems pretty unusual to me.
Also, this record was set in Camden Square, and the MO state there are resevations about the station.
In exactly the same way there are reservations about the CIMO 3/4/5 stations that are setting the current records.
Once in 100 years sounds about right for natural variability.
The Met Office says there are reservations about the British Hydrological Society’s weather station in Camden Square – quelle surprise.
For my little spot on the globe, Columbus Ohio, I got a list of the record highs and lows for each calendar day of the year.
I got the list “real” time in 2007 and 2012 and compared them.
Odd that about 10% of the record highs and lows had been changed. (A date’s record high on the 2012 list was lower than the record high on the 2007 list, for example. Sometimes year the record was set was changed.)
I also used TheWayBackMachine to get the 2002 list. (The oldest they had.) No changes between the 2002 list and the 2007 list.
Have you tried finding the record highs for the day on previous years list via TheWayBackMachine?
Just asking.
PS The list were NOAA’s via the National Weather Service site.
Nothing more malleable that past temperature data,
Sorry but i will only except a change if the conditions of the observations have been the same. And they clearly haven’t as has been pointed out many times.
Maybe somebody can investigate the Kew conditions..Edit:This is what i got through the Brave browser which includes AI: ‘Kew Station Temperature MeasurementsThe temperature measurements at Kew Gardens are based on simulations rather than direct measurements, as the data is not compared to measured data from a weather station.’
Somebody please enlighten me..
Since Feb 1st l have been recording the daily Max and Min temps here in Scunthorpe with a Six’s thermometer in open shade.
Here is the highest Max temps l have recorded for the months of spring so far this year.
March 27th 17C
April 30th 22.8C
(for the first 7 days) May 1st 25C
After its very warm start the Max temps for May have taken quite a dip.
1st 25C
2nd 17.7C
3rd 15.7C
4th 11.1C
5th 12.1C
6th 15.3C
7th 14.1C
Oh, noes! A 13.9 deg C drop in temp in three days! My calculator tells me that at that rate, it will take 64.34892086330935 days to get us down to absolute zero. Perhaps Bellman or Izaak Walton can explain why we shouldn’t worry about this alarming cooling? Or tell us that it’s simply because of switching off the blast furnaces?
Yep! it’s looking like climate boiling has been put on hold. 😉
A max temp of 11.1C is well below the May average max temp, even February recorded 4 days warmer then that.
“We can see this clearly in the temperatures so far for spring this year:
Virtually every day has been in the top half of the 1961-90 distribution, but none have broken through the ceiling.”
Which is almost the textbook definition of global warming and climate change. Warmer temperatures on average day after day after day.
UK finally gets some sunshine to go along with urban expansion/densification.
And trying to pass of UK temps as “global” is just… ..
There is no evidence human released CO2 has anything to do with it.
The temperature sensor at Kew gardens is behind a toilet block and closely surrounded by metal cabinets. It’s not 2 meters above ground either.
Surely they use the one in the middle of the grassed area
51°28’55.43″ N 0°17’38.40″ W (Copy paste to Google Earth.)
Hottest start to May in a year when Cambridge won the men’s race in the annual Boat Race contest with Oxford and the bow seat was occupied by a right-handed American over 6 feet 3 inches tall studying for a Master’s degree in nuclear engineering. Otherwise, just another May.
Nobody cares what MET says, they lie and cheat. They have no credibility.
Past Met workers have let the surface sites get to a stage where a large proportion of them are too urban and bad site corrupted to have any “climate” relevance whatsoever.
As for Kew Gardens site, all that is needed is a NW breeze and all the heat from the large expanse of greenhouses and other buildings will waft across the site and get trapped by the surrounding tree.
This could easily affect a single day weather event.