In 2018, the Met Office published its ‘UK Climate Projections’ report (UKCP18) forecasting several weather extremes including a suggestion that summer temperatures could be 5.1°C higher by 2070. Needless to say, the forecast captured mainstream media headlines at the time, and to this day the report is a foundational source for most UK governmental and private company climate change regulation and spending. Just one problem – it is now officially junk. The Met Office only ran a RCP8.5 set of assumptions through its super-computer, the results of which it then proceeded to highlight. To retain scientific integrity, the Met Office must remove this deeply flawed work with a notification that any policies arising from its discredited figures should be re-examined.
The recent dismissal of the RCP8.5 pathway assumptions by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as “implausible” has sent shock waves through mainstream media and science. It has effectively destroyed trust in mainstream climate reporting since journalists for nearly two decades have been faithfully promoting BS arising from RCP8.5 findings. But it also casts doubt on much of the underlying science work that has whipped up a convenient Net Zero climate crisis psychosis. Among the ridiculous RCP8.5 assumptions was global population hitting 12 billion by 2100 (it is currently forecast to stabilise at around 9-10 billion) and more coal used than current proven reserves.
The Met Office’s UKCP18 is a real shocker. Bold type was used to highlight all the extreme findings based on RCP8.5 including massive rises in temperature within 50 years (5.1°C in summer and 3.8°C in winter) and significant drops and increases in summer and winter rainfall respectively. Sea-level rises in London up to 1.15 metres were forecast by 2100, and this compares with a current annual uplift of three thousandths of a metre today – less than a quarter of the rate. Given the recent “implausible” finding, it is ironic that the Met Office terms its bold-type numbers as “plausible”. That alone should be grounds to remove these hopeless guesses immediately.
There are a number of RCP pathways suggesting lower greenhouse gas emissions, but the Met Office used just RCP8.5 for its computer modelling. The high-resolution global modelling down to 60 km, the regional down to 12 km and local to 2.2 km used only RCP8.5 directly due to computational costs. Other results were available – not in bold type of course – and these were said to be statistically derived from the RCP8.5 runs. The phrase ‘garbage in, garbage out’ comes immediately to mind.
At the time, the Met Office noted: “The Government will make use of UKCP18 to inform its adaptation and mitigation planning and decision-making.” Of course, this is precisely what happened. Net Zero-crazed politicians leapt on the findings to pump new rules, requirements and regulations across both the productive (private) economy and the already inefficient public sector. In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that since its publication, UKCP18 has become one of the most important climate tools shaping UK climate adaptation policy. It is often used by local government to assess risks on urban and rural infrastructure. It is of course wise to take future weather conditions into account, but exaggerated weather claims lead to higher than necessary expenditure. Money diverted to protecting new homes from 5°C higher temperatures is a colossal waste based on nothing more than a guess.
Infrastructure and engineering standards have been reshaped by UKCP18 findings. The Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) has highlighted how the projections are changing the way civil engineers approach long-term infrastructure design. They increasingly factor projected rainfall extremes, heat stresses and sea-level rise into the design of roads, railways, drainage systems and buildings. ICE has described UKCP18 as using “cutting-edge climate science” and promoting “a new way of thinking” in civil engineering practice. If all this is true, one can barely imagine the money being wasted on over-engineered projects awaiting an imagined British climate that exists only on the computer drives of the Met Office.
Private sector insurers and financial institutions have also integrated UKCP18 into risk modelling. Insurance companies increasingly use climate projection data when assessing future exposure to flood damage and bad weather losses. This affects pricing, investment decisions and corporate climate disclosures. Next time an insurance company jacks up your premiums, do remember to thank the Met Office for its help in boosting insurance company profits. It is perhaps no accident that general, or non-life, insurance in the UK has recently become more profitable.
One of the clearest links between UKCP18 and government regulation is through the UK statutory Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA). Under the Climate Change Act, the Government must periodically assess climate risks and produce adaptation policies. The third CCRA, published in 2022, relied heavily on UKCP18 climate projections to evaluate future risks from heat, flooding, drought and sea-level requirements across infrastructure, housing and transport. The resulting National Adaptation Programme (NAP3) uses UKCP18 findings to justify stronger resilience measures for what is usually described as climate resilience. Again, one can only despair at the vast sums of public money likely to have been thrown at a computer-invented problem drummed up by activist Met Office wonks.
Not to put too fine a point on it, the Met Office is heavily screwed up by its attempts to promote the Net Zero fantasy. UKCP18 might be regarded as a foundational source of climate ‘evidence’ by influencers and governing elites, but the IPCC “implausible” ruling renders it largely junk. It must be withdrawn as soon as possible before it causes more financial damage in the wider economy. Junk, of course, is a word that also comes to mind when assessing the Met Office’s unnaturally heat-ravaged nationwide temperature measuring network. This is getting worse, not better, and the network is obviously overestimating the rate of current warming. Similar concerns surrounded the US weather service NOAA while Democrats held government sway. However, a recent Trump-inspired budget cut of 25% seems to have concentrated minds and persuaded employees to forget the Net Zero wind-up and return to basic meteorological science.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.
