From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
After three months of apocalyptic media stories, flood warnings and amber alerts, you would be excused for thinking we have just had the wettest winter in the UK since Noah slipped anchor! Even now the Met Office are describing it as “among the wettest on record”.
But the Met Office numbers tell a different story. In reality, it turns out to have been no different to many other winters in the past.
Over the country as a whole, it was only the 20th wettest on record since 1836. As always, some parts have been wetter than others.
Weeks on end of bitter, polar air over much of the US pushed the jetstream far south of its usual track, while at the same time firing it up. As a result, storms have homed in on the southern half of Britain rather than further north. But even then, no region broke any rainfall records, nor even came close.
Desperate to keep up the alarm however, the Met Office have decided that the West Midlands, Cornwall and Leicestershire all experienced their wettest winter since records began in 1837. There’s only one problem here – there are no current stations in any of these regions which have data as far back as 1837, or even the 19th century for that matter. In Leicestershire, for example, they have just one official weather station – Market Bosworth, which has only been open since 2002! There is no data at all to support their assertions, which only originate from their dodgy computer models.
We do however have a long-term record at Radcliffe College, Oxford, which has been keeping meticulous records every day since 1767. The Met Office database, which begins in 1853, confirms that there was nothing at all unusual about this winter’s rainfall there.
This totally contradicts their claim that this particular area of the country had one of its wettest winters on record.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/stationdata/oxforddata.txt
There are in fact very few long running weather stations in the UK. Four others have data going back to the 1800s, and none back up the Met Office claims that the winter was one of the wettest on record – Armagh, Durham, Sheffield and Cambridge ranked 14th, 35th, 19th and 24th wettest respectively.
The Met Office continue to claim that climate change is making rainfall more extreme:
While this winter’s weather has been heavily influenced by natural variability and atmospheric patterns, climate change provides important context.
A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, approximately 7% more for every degree Celsius of warming. This means that when it does rain, downpours can be heavier and more intense.
But their own data fails to bear this out. For instance, if we look at the wettest months in England & Wales, those with more than 170mm of rain, they are not occurring more often than they used. Nor are they becoming wetter.
The wettest month this winter was January, with 144.3mm, not an unusually high monthly total at all. In fact, it is more than two years since we had a month with more than 170mm.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadukp/data/download.html
Last year, we had a dry, sunny start to the year. This year, it has been dank and miserable.
But neither have anything to do with climate change. It is just weather.
