not many people know
Paul Homewood
As promised, I'm back to the Met Office's UK Climate Report:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/news-and-media/media-centre/weather-and-climate-news/2024/Temperature-extremes-and-records-most-affected-by- UK climate change
The press release made this statement:
Climate change is causing a dramatic increase in the frequency of extreme temperatures and the number of temperature records in the UK.
New observational analysis shows that extreme temperatures in the UK are most affected by human-induced climate change. This means the UK is experiencing more frequent hot days on average, creating challenges for infrastructure, health and wellbeing.
Taking 28°C as an example, the frequency of days reaching this threshold is increasing almost everywhere in the UK. During the average period from 1961 to 1990, only London and Hampshire had six or more days with temperatures above 28°C, and by the latest decade (2014 to 2023) this has spread to England and Wales In most areas of the Southeast, the frequency increases to more than 12 days per year in many counties.
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Their method of counting the number of days a location recorded a temperature of 28 degrees Celsius doesn't make any statistical sense because locations change all the time. We know they have brought in dozens of poorly located weather stations in recent years that regularly hit daily record highs, often two to three degrees warmer than nearby stations. We also know how urban heat islands (UHI) have increased temperature readings in recent years.
For this method to be reliable, it needs to be based on a fixed set of sites. So I analyzed the temperatures at Oxford's Radcliffe Observatory. The figure below counts the number of days when the temperature exceeds 28°C:
https://climexp.knmi.nl/data/xgdcnUK000056225.dat
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On the surface, I don't see anything to worry about.
The summer of 2018 lasted 23 days, the same as in 1911 and 1995.
Most summers, we might get about five or so days of hot weather; why should this be cause for alarm?
Additionally, Oxford is getting hotter than it was a century ago thanks to the Urban Heat Island Initiative. I can't claim any scientific basis for what follows, but if we count the number of days with >27C in the years to 1970, and then add the number of days with >28C since 1970, we get:
Of course, this assumes that temperatures in Oxford have increased by 1 degree Celsius since 1970 due to urban heat islands. This is an extremely simple assumption! But I think this is not unreasonable in principle. My guess is that the UHI effect since 1911 is probably much larger than 1C.
The graph shows that there has been no trend in hot weather, especially since the mid-19th century.
“1911” topped the list, corroborating news reports of the time that vividly described the severity of the long summer heatwaves in Britain and France.
But other years in the past stand out, such as 1826 and 1868.
But even if there is no UHI in Oxford (which would be a ridiculous claim), the worst case scenario is that we are at 28 degrees Celsius now, whereas 150 years ago it might have been 27 degrees Celsius.
of course not Bringing challenges to infrastructure, health and well-being.
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