Serious Doubts Arise About Kew Temperature ‘Records’ as Recent UK Heatwave is Weaponised to Drive Net Zero

from THE DAILY SCEPTIC

by Chris Morrison

31 May 2026 9:00 AM

Kew Gardens is rapidly becoming the new Heathrow as the favoured Met Office site for producing unnatural heat spikes in place of true, uncorrupted ambient air temperatures. This is, of course, useful for suggesting climate collapse and catastrophe to back the Net Zero fantasy, but it is hardly meteorological science at its finest. Kew played a central role in the curated alarums that greeted the recent first heatwave of the British summer. Notable by its absence in the mainstream was the relevant information that Kew has shocking form in producing sudden spikes into record territory, displaying a recording pattern that would be highly unlikely to occur at a site that measured natural air properly.

The reaction across mainstream and social media was often hysterical. This effort from social commentator Matthew Todd was typical of countless bedwetting posts on X.

Last year, the Met Office claimed an all-time UK high May 1st temperature at Kew of 29.3°C. Analysis by citizen scientist Dr Eric Huxter showed the temperature was almost 2°C above that recorded in the hour before – well above what might be expected from such temperature rises seen during the day, with movements commonly around the plus or minus 0.2°C to 0.4°C mark.

The first record claimed last week was on Tuesday May 25th, when the temperature at the Kew site rose to 34.8°C – some 1.3°C above the previous hour. Dr Huxter has told the Daily Sceptic that some doubt remains over the figures for the next day, when the temperature hit 35.1°C. Since April last year, Huxter observes that Kew has provided no fewer than 13 daily UK extremes with an average heat spike of 1°C. By comparison, in the same period Heathrow supplied 35 temperature spikes averaging 1.2°C.

The main culprit in producing these heat spikes is the switch from liquid-in-bulb thermometers to PRT automatic electronic measuring devices during the last 30 years. These provide a more accurate reading every minute, but it is plain that they are picking up every passing heat spike – often unnatural – that were missed by slower-moving liquid in a glass bulb. Dr Huxter has calculated that in the glass-bulb era up to 1989, the 40 new records (0.3 a year) averaged steps from the previous high of 0.5°C, while from 1990 there have been 147 new records (four per year) with average steps of 1.5°C. This sudden change is used by alarmists – many of them employed by the Met Office – to suggest dramatic climate change. But an obvious and plausible explanation is provided by the switch to more accurate measuring devices.

One-minute heat spikes at the 24-hour maximum are used to calculate daily average temperatures, which eventually find their way into national and international databases. Taking an average of temperatures over five minutes or longer would help reduce the unnatural distortions, but the Met Office seems unwilling to make such an adjustment. By such measurements have flawed decisions on Net Zero been made around the world, costing untold sums of money and contributing to the ongoing destruction of the industrial base of many countries, including the UK.

The heat spikes at urban heat-ravaged Met Office sites are doing much of the heavy lifting in stoking the climate fear that is vital to promoting the political Net Zero cause. Nevertheless, are we sure that such spikes are largely unnatural? Can they occur, for instance, at an open-field site far from artificial influences, where there can be no doubt that the only substance being measured is uncontaminated natural air? Over the last year, Dr Huxter has provided dramatic proof that they cannot – at least not on the regular scale seen at the sites that enter the record books. In that period, he analysed 525,541 minute-by-minute recordings at the Class I site in open farmland at Rothamsted.

The graph above shows clearly that at a pristine site, the vast majority of the half a million readings vary from the previous hour within individual differences in a range between -0.15°C and 0.25°C. Most individual changes were to be found between -0.35°C and 0.45°C. As part of his year-long project, Huxter examined 340 daily maximum temperature highs recorded across 96 Met Office stations and discovered that these sites showed average short heat spikes of around 1.1°C – similar, of course, to the performance of both the Kew and Heathrow stations.

Comparing the Rothamsted control with the 360 heat spikes, a chi-square test showed a highly significant difference of p<0.0,001. This means that if there were truly no difference between the sites, the chances of observing such a large discrepancy in heat spikes would be less than one in 10,000 – in other words, more unlikely than one in 10,000 and quite possibly far smaller: one in 100,000, for example.

It is easy to understand why Kew is now giving Heathrow airport some competition in the heat spikes and ‘record’ temperatures stakes. Dr Huxter’s illustration below has been doing the rounds on social media. There are no jet aircraft on the move, but there are plenty of nearby sources of heat available to bump up the temperatures. Of interest is the plethora of large glasshouses that automatically vent hot air when temperatures climb above 28°C. Every little helps, the cynical might note, when new records are being chased.

It was always a mystery why Kew was a CIMO Class 2 site with no recording ‘uncertainties’. This designation now appears to have been withdrawn, and it is presumably in the junk classes of 3, 4 and 5 – where possible recording errors up to 1°C, 2°C and 5°C respectively are officially noted – that it now resides.

Paul Homewood has suggested that the early June heatwave of 1947 was every bit as intense as last week’s blast. Temperatures of 94°F were recorded on June 3rd at Waddington and in London at Camden Square and Kensington. Notes Homewood: “In contrast, 95°F at Kew probably includes three degrees of UHI [Urban Heat Island]… the evidence from June 1947 does more than undermine Met Office claims that this week’s heatwave is evidence of climate change. It raises the question why they are not giving the public all of the relevant facts by telling them we have had similar weather in the past.”

The last word must go to Dr Huxter: “The observed changes in temperature over the past 30 years therefore owe more to flaws in measurement… rather than any wider anthropogenic effect. The uncritical adoption of the PRT technology, which conveniently reinforced what the modellers believed, now drives the Net Zero Cult.”

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.