From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
The Met Office were given a right of reply to this GB News story. Instead of actually responding to the specific points raised, they merely regurgitated their Press Release:
However, according to the Met Office, the UK has warmed by 0.25C per decade since the 1980s, with the past three years among the five warmest on record.
Last year saw the warmest spring, the warmest May, and the wettest winter half-year in over 250 years, the report says.
It also states that days with temperatures 10°C above average have quadrupled since the 1960s, and months of double-average rainfall have risen by 50 per cent.
They could, of course, added that the wettest year was in 1872!
Their waffle about higher temperatures is meaningless without the corresponding data on extreme cold days.
Worst of all is the fact that they still make claims of extreme rainfall against a baseline of 1961-90. This is what the Press Release stated:
“the number of months where counties are recording monthly rainfall totals of at least twice the 1991-2020 monthly average has increased by over 50% compared to the number in 1961-1990”
They know full well that 1961-90 was a much drier interlude compared with both what preceded it and also what followed it.
They have all the data back into the 19thC, so why don’t they show the long term trends? Is it because it would not tell the story they want to tell?
The long term monthly data for the England & Wales Precipitation Series, for example, shows absolutely no evidence to support the Met Office’s claims:
KNMI Climate Explorer
The KNMI chart only runs to 2021, but since then the wettest month was 177.5mm in October 2023. Nothing, in other words, that alters the trends shown.
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The Met Office’s recent propaganda about Climate Change and the so-called extreme heat in the UK, gave Chanel4 TV News the opportunity and reason last evening to spout so much more propaganda about the “climate crisis” and how immediate action is required, “if not too late” they said. Said more extreme heat, extreme rainfall, rising sea levels, flooding, … all backed up by dramatic background video. And so many “experts” to say all this.
Hopefully few watching Chanel4 TV News.
C4 is owned by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport – the government.
That’s why it is far left.
I think its more than just the left. I think the globalist elite have an agenda and the primarily white left middle classes eagerly run with it as they seem to be the most gullible class layer in human history. The civil service run UKMO and they are controlled by the WEF as were the conservatives and Labour Party Fabian leadership. This is ALL political
They’ve been indoctrinated not educated – middle class, angst-ridden and self-loathing…
They always show the highest daily temperature located in the center of London. An urban heat sink. This should be removed from the weather forecast. Temperatures should all be taken from countryside locations, at least 2 meters above ground and in the shade.
This would show an immediate reduction in temperatures. The temperature of the planet is actually unknown. It’s not possible to record it accurately, especially in micro measurements as is the fashion. Half the world doesn’t record temperatures. In Toronto Canada, they haven’t seen an increase in temperatures for over 100 years. If the whole world is warming, how can that be?
When I was a child in the 1960’s invariably the warmest place in the U.K. was Heathrow.
“the number of months where counties are recording monthly rainfall totals of at least twice the 1991-2020 monthly average has increased by over 50% compared to the number in 1961-1990”
Is it just me or do these long sentences filled with cherry picking sound like a colour commentator for a baseball game?
Well he’s hitting .375 versus left hand pitchers with more than one runner on base in afternoon games with the score tied and clear skies but on cloudy days against right handed pitchers with the bases empty and an evening game he’s only hitting .225 and blah blah blah
2 months to 3 months? Does that include water that falls in its solid state?
I am absoluterly amazed at how deep in the weeds they dig at times to come of with some arcane statistic that they can fill air time with.
The other data set that is often referred to is the Central England Temperature as this goes back to the 17th century, but that is the Little Ice Age, thus you cannot draw any meaningful conclusions.
One other piece of shenanigans in the report is when it switches from referring to the U.K. to referring to England for some of the comparisons. This would be equivalent of specifying Washington DC for some data, compared with D.C., Maryland and the eastern part of Virginia up to and including the Shenandoah national park (possibly a very poor analogy, my knowledge of US geography is limited and is not to scale) for the rest of the data.
“The other data set that is often referred to is the Central England Temperature as this goes back to the 17th century, but that is the Little Ice Age, thus you cannot draw any meaningful conclusions.”
Of course you can !!!
Look at the trend lines
You can see the gradual warming from 1659-2025 [366yrs] (0.028°C/decade).
And the rapid acceleration (attributed to CO2 ) from 1966-2025 (0.197°C/decade).
SO… What caused the even more rapid acceleration from 1695-1734 (0.45°C/decade).??
Clue – It’s Not CO2
I know it’s not carbon dioxide or methane.
I am aware of the various warm periods including the Roman and medieval ones. In fact, the increase in carbon dioxide measured currently could be the result of the latter warm period, if carbon dioxide levels lag temperature by 800-1200 years.
Perhaps I didn’t explain myself very well. Using the complete CET dataset to obtain trends is good, using the early part of the CET as a black box (pre industrial period) as referred to by various sources which also overlook that there was a little ice age, is bad. That is what I meant to suggest.
Without a doubt there were changes in solar output of various kinds that caused the LIA to end. Which may also be responsible for the current situation as our sun has been particularly active over the past 18 months or so and could be for a further 18 months. What will be interesting is if the temperature trend falls, however that will undoubtedly be attributed to the nett carbon policies rather than the sun.
It was much warmer in Roman times. It goes up, it goes down, according to the Sun or volcanic eruptions.
Heap big warmy warmy! then cold.
Paul here is the data from the Hastings Sussex seafront UKMO weather station that runs from 1870 to 2024 and was recently updated. The evidence of serious warming and sever weather is under whelming
Well well, I live in Rother.
You can go and view it. A Dr who police telephone box size booth almost opposite warrior square on the promenade
Beam me up Scotty
Ed Miliband, warned MPs about the climate crisis on Monday, saying he would explicitly call out politicians who rejected net zero policies for betraying future generations in an unprecedented “state of the climate” address to parliament.
In what is planned to be an annual event, the energy security and net zero secretary will set out the findings of a new Met Office-led report that says the UK is already facing extreme weather and its effects.
Reform-run councils once known for green policies expected to scrap climate pledges – The Guardian
Lol…. The Met Office report…
Lunatics running the asylum was never more true.
I woke up the other morning to a TalkSport news bulletin proclaiming the MO report and then playing a clip of the nauseating Miliband spouting his net-zero b*llocks. Not a good way to start the day.
And another one from the East Sussex sea front UKMO weather station -this time rainfall
How about wind speeds
UKMO once Captain/Admiral Fitzroy’s baby for nautical weather conditions is nothing more now than a pravda type shill for the jet/yacht davos globalist elite. Most off their PC staff seem to be kids with a social axe to grind and to be honest are obsolete and their ridiculous post code forecasts are hopeless even on the same day on occasions.
We can see the obvious, it’s the green scam in full flow, supported by the WEF, the UN and many Western governments. The Met Orifice are one of the government’s mouthpieces, along with the BBC. There to promote the lies to the sheep. No mention of the record cold in Antarctica, minus 80 Centigrade. Record cold and snow in Australia and India.
Some years ago when we had a lot of rain in the UK and Somerset suffered badly mainly because they were no longer dredging the rivers because of some EU regulations, the then head of the Met Office called an emergency meeting though not to address the dredging problems.
The BBC reports:
Dame Julia Slingo, Met Office Chief Scientist, said the variable UK climate meant there was “no definitive answer” to what caused the storms. “But all the evidence suggests there is a link to climate change,” she added. “There is no evidence to counter the basic premise that a warmer world will lead to more intense daily and hourly rain events.”
So I took a look at the historical records using control charts and funnily enough it showed that the rainfall was not unusual except for that one year. You can see my analysis here.
https://adriankerton.wordpress.com/has-the-uk-had-exceptional-winter-rainfall-or-is-it-just-weather-as-normal/
The KNMI rainfall chart shown does not refer to the claim the UKMO is making.
The UKMO report summary states:
A “winter half-year” is defined as running from October in one year to March the next:
Almost 260-years of rainfall data in England and Wales, even averaged over 6-month periods, will look noisy on any chart. The obvious way to counter this is to use anomalies. Paul Homewood doesn’t like the 1961-1990 base, so let’s use 1991-2010, per the WMO and UAH, etc.
Even so, as you can clearly see, the UKMO summary statement is correct.
Now do it with just rural stations that still exist.
You want me to use data that neither the UKMO nor Paul Homewood are referring to?
There aren’t any juicy ripe cherries to pick on those stations.
I will add, now that I think about it, that the projection for the UK was drier winters until the record contradicted it, at which point the projection became wetter winters. Now they’re talking about global warming making the UK cooler and drier and wetter and warmer with more droughts and more floods in the coming decades. Truly they know what they’re talking about.
By keeping all options open they’ll always be able to claim ‘just as we predicted!’ and use this to justify why they really need an even more expensive new super computer.
Right, but where did they “keep their options open”?
I can’t find any UKMO projections for drier UK winters. I’ve identified a 2009 source below that clearly projects wetter winters.
Perhaps you have an official source that contradicts this?
Do you have a reference for that, please? I’ve checked the usual search engines and can’t find a UKMO projection for drier winters.
I did find this June 2009 report (pdf) from the UK Government’s DEFRA that addresses UKMO Climate Projections with the UKMO listed as the primary contributor and which summarises winter precipitation forecasts as follows:
[Adapting to climate change, UK Climate Projections, UKMO, June 2009]
That’s a ~16-year-old source from the UK Government, informed by the UKMO, projecting increased UK winter precipitation of +14 to +23%, based on the then regional averages.
So I’d be interested to see an older UKMO source projecting “drier winters” for the UK.
Plenty of down-votes but apparently no one can find an official UKMO projection for dryer winters.
Even so, as you can clearly see, the UKMO summary statement is correct.
Your graph is not based on the same criteria. It is up to you to explain why the values of a 6 month average of anomalies show a growth pattern that is not displayed when actual monthly values are examined.
You are dealing with time series information. Be careful how you smooth and play with data. You can end up with spurious correlations and trends that are not apparent in the actual detailed data.
I suggest that instead of smoothing by six month periods, try no smoothing but plot individual months over the entire time. In other words, does October show any trend over the entire period. The same November, etc. If you can not find the same trend as your anomaly trend, you need to explain why the smoothed data is different. Have you heard of differencing with various lags?
My graph shows HadEWP, which is the same data used in the KNMI chart, only updated. What data would you suggest I use?
I used the Microsoft Excel ‘linest’ function to generate the trend and, as I explained, unlike Paul Homewood, I filtered out the periods that the UKMO was actually referring too; i.e. October to March.
They didn’t hide this in the small print, either. They stated it up-front on the summary of their report. It’s there on the first page with its own bullet-point. So your question might be better directed at the person who chose to ignore this and selected all the months instead.
That is not the claim that is being made by the UKMO! They couldn’t be more clear. They are referring explicitly to six-month averages, October to March, which they call “winter half-years”.
Why do you want to test for claims that aren’t being made?
These two sentences actually “jumped out at me” as well, but apparently not for the same reasons.
The MET Office is usually very good at updating monthly weather data, before midday on the 1st of the following month in my experience, so data is now available up to June 2025.
Why highlight the “2023-4 winter half-year” when the “2024-5” numbers are available ?
OK, let’s plot the data from HadEWP and the MET Office for “England & Wales”, and add in the MET Office’s “UK” numbers for comparison.
NB : For “seasonal” rainfall data it makes more sense, IMNSHO, to use “cumulative sums” than the “averages / anomalies” normally used for temperatures.
All three “Maximum” values occur after 2013, so let’s “zoom in” and start at the “nice, round” year of 2010, so we can can more clearly see how things “are getting” (present tense) with respect to England & Wales — and UK — rainfall.
…
Well, well, well ! Would you just look at what happened this “winter half-year”, 2024-5, compared to the “record breaking” 2023-4 set of numbers highlighted in the MET Office’s press release …
I hate to ruin a good conspiracy theory, but there’s an important clue in the title of the report: “State of the UK Climate in 2024.”
They publish a “State of the UK Climate” report each July, in the International Journal of Climatology, covering events that occurred during the previous year. The winter half-year they mention in the report just published ended in March 2024, which is why it is featured in the 2024 report.
Note that in July 2024 the same people published “State of the UK Climate in 2023” in the same journal, covering events that occurred in 2023.
By July 2024, when they wrote the 2023 report, they would have known about the record precipitation for the winter half-year that ended in March 2024, but they didn’t highlight it, since technically it didn’t occur in 2023, but in 2024.
Whether they highlight the reduced rainfall in the 2025 report remains to be seen; but I think it’s unlikely, since non-records tend to get less coverage than records in 260-year old data sets.
They have the data — or so they say. Publish it and move on.
If the data is gone, admit it and move on.
The truth will set you free …
They publish it freely, updated monthly.
Here are the UK data. (Select ‘year ordered statistics’ and select your parameters.)
Here are the England and Wales precipitation data (HadEWP).
Set yourself free!
Multiple down-votes by people who, presumably, are really cross that the UKMO is publishing the data they are demanding it publishes!
Odd indeed
Who was it who said “Why should I turn over my data to you, when your only goal is to find something wrong with it?”
Markw:
IIRC Phil Jones to Steven McIntyre over at Climate Audit.
Humorously, I asked Copilot your question [to verify my memory] and it first said “Edward Snowden”.
It then admitted to the hallucination, and gave the correct answer after I menetioned the Climategate emails. Google’s Gemini did not find the statement even after I mentioned McIntyre’s name.
The Left “belives in science” but the climate scientists don’t believe in the scientific method –unless it comports with their ideology. LOL
[ Enter “extreme pedant” mode … ]
It was actually in an E-mail to Warwick Hughes, way back in February 2005.
No, Copilot actually had a second “hallucination”, which would appear to have been influenced by your “prompting” (?).
.
Steve McIntyre wrote a post at the end of 2005 about the infamous response from Phil Jones.
URL 1 : https://climateaudit.org/2005/10/15/we-have-25-years-invested-in-this-work/
Warwick Hughes didn’t get round to writing up the entire “timeline” until 2016, prodded by someone pointing out to him a comment at Climate Etc (Judith Curry’s website) reminiscing about “the most famous of all climate emails”.
URL 2 : http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=4203
[ Exit “extreme pedant” mode … if possible … ]
If there is a long-term trend, it would be unlikely that the “past three years” wouldn’t be “among the 5 warmest on record.” Considering that they had to hedge their claim by stating that they were only “among the five warmest,” instead of being the 3 warmest, it appears that the warming is not as strong as they would like us to believe. The claim might have been more concerning if they had evidence that the rate of warming was increasing. However, that claim is conspicuous by its absence.
I wonder if anyone has ever looked at control charts a(or something similar) nd seen whether they would be applicable or appropriate for comparing recent or current data points to historical data.
Full disclosure, I am not an engineer, mathematician, statistician, etc., and nor am i any expert on control charts. However, I have had the occasion to use them in the past in laboratory quality control assessments. Basically (if I understand and remember correctly-it has been about 30 years) control charts are used to assess when a process is “in control” or ” out of control.” You take all your historical (or process) measurements and calculate statistical parameters, and then compare your current data to all of the past data, not just some recent subset of the data.
I think for the purposes of a working definition (outside of “climate science”) of the climate as the thirty-year average of the weather in a certain locality or region is fine. However, moving the 30-year average every 10 years conveniently ignores and dismisses all of the historical data that has been collected prior.
This is a simple matter the Met is not doing it’s job, let the firing begin starting at the top. Lying and cheating is not okay and should not be tolerated. Get rid of the managers.
“The long term monthly data for the England & Wales Precipitation Series, for example, shows absolutely no evidence to support the Met Office’s claims:”
Homewood has a knack for drawing graphs that make it impossible to see any pattern.
Here for instance is the same data source but showing annual data, along with a loess smoothing.
and here’s the same for the winter half-year
This last one confirms the claim that last year was the wettest winter half-year in over 250 years.
… and for completeness here’s a similar plot for the summer half-year (April to September) of the HadEWP dataset, but with “30-year (trailing) averages” instead of “loess smoothing” and a trend line added.
.
The first three paragraphs from the Wikipedia page on “Data dredging” :
NB : Different people will have different definitions / thresholds for the word “significant” in the phrase “significant results”.
Follow-up post (I can only attach one image file from my local hard disk per WUWT post).
The results of some “data dredging” of my own on the HadEWP dataset.
Note that my “Conditional formatting …” criteria to highlight “significant” results were
1) “Year maximum occurred > 2019”, and
2) “Trend > 0”.
An overall “October to April (/ winters) wetter, May to September (/ summers) drier, slightly wetter overall for 12 month periods” pattern appears to be present here, though its “significance” would need further work (by a competent statistician, which excludes me …) to quantify.
It is true that UK is experiencing a very dry spring and summer. There has been a run of hot, dry summers the past 10 years. Three or four in a decade.
OK, that’s some local data, but if we look at the world right now, we’ll see some pretty strong extremes in different directions. The Upper Mid West and North-Eastern Rockies are experiencing very unusual cold right now. In fact, most of the US west of the Mississippi is cooler than average. That’s a land area 10 times greater than that of little old Britain.
We’ve got a media wittering on about ‘global’ warming, but constantly reporting only on ‘local warming’ or occasionally extreme events like flash floods, hurricanes, life-threatening droughts elsewhere.
There is no reporting on ‘cooler than average’, ‘wetter than average’, weather over large areas. There’s been no reporting on the abnormally, almost record cold temperatures in many parts of Antarctica.
The first requirement for a media that wants to use the word ‘global’ when talking about climate, weather, climate change etc etc is to actually have an even-handed approach to weather reporting.
So ask if a bit of warmth in the UK is mirrored by warmth all over Russia: you may find that even within Russia, there is a cell of warmer than average, a cell of cooler than average etc etc.
The second thing that needs to be talked about is interfering with weather: weather engineering. It’s far more cogent to suggest that 40 years of ‘weather engineering’ has an effect on global climate than the trace gas carbon dioxide. Ooh, don’t want to do that because it might harm ‘commercial interests’. Big deal: oil interests are affected by talking about carbon dioxide if it leads to legislation.
So talk about chemtrails, talk about why toxic metals like barium, strontium, aluminium are being used in atmospheric spraying.
Talk about who is flying those planes, who is paying them and who gave authorisation for that spraying.
I certainly never did, there’s never bee a single election I’ve voted in that ever even talked about it.