Shock New Evidence Shows Unnatural 60-Second Heat Spikes Drive Many UK Met Office Temperature ‘Records’
Substantial evidence has emerged to suggest that the UK Met Office is promoting the political cause of Net Zero by using recently introduced sensitive thermometers to collect 60-second unnatural heat spikes. These pulses are used to promote constant clickbait ‘records’ and claim exaggerated atmospheric warming. Furthermore, it appears that these short-term ‘spikes’ are larger in junk sites with massive internationally recognised ‘uncertainties”. Almost eight in 10 of the Met Office’s nationwide temperature measuring stations are in junk CIMO Classes 4 and 5 with possible errors up to 2°C and 5°C respectively.
On May 1st, the Met Office claimed a station at Kew Gardens recorded a temperature at 2.59pm of 29.3°C. Promoted by the BBC, this was said to be the highest temperature ever recorded on this day in the UK. But the temperature was a massive 2.6°C higher than that recorded at 2pm and no less than 0.76°C above the figure recorded a minute later on the hour. In fact the one minute plunge is similar to that found on July 19th 2022 when a national record of 40.3°C at RAF Coningsby was set at a time when three typhoon jets were landing. This was later claimed to be a “milestone in UK climate history” by the Met Office.
Temperature recordings can move around from minute to minute; change, if it occurs, is generally around 0.1°C to 0.3°C. These changes do not affect old-style mercury thermometers but are picked up by the super-sensitive electronic devices used by the Met Office since the 1990s. It is for this reason that the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) recommends averaging readings over five minutes to standardise data and remove short-term ‘noise’. For some inexplicable reason, despite playing a significant role in WMO deliberations, the UK Met Office does not appear to want to follow this sensible scientific advice. At Kew on May 1st the hourly recordings showed a typical convex curve of temperature movement during the afternoon recording seven readings from noon to 6pm of 26.88°C, 26.93°C, 26.7°C, 28.54°C, 28.41°C, 26.09°C and 25.15°C. The 29.3°C record came out of the blue as did an earlier spike to 28°C at 1.28pm.
Shout out at this stage for a new citizen super sleuth on the block who is taking a keen interest in Met Office statistics. Dr Eric Huxter is a retired geography teacher of 40 years standing with a PhD in Earth Sciences gained as part of continued learning in his 50s. He has tracked the huge temperature spikes seen recently in many of the Met Office sites producing daily highs, or ‘extremes’ as the state meteorologist likes to call them. The differences provide shocking reading and make a mockery of any claim that the recordings supply a useful scientific purpose.
Huxter highlights the appearances of Heathrow airport, a supposed CIMO Class 3 site with uncertainties of 1°C, but on this evidence an obvious super junk Class 5. Kew is a puzzle since it is rated at Class 2 with no uncertainties. It frequently appears as an extreme temperature possibly due to short-lived gusts of wind blowing over a nearby tropical greenhouse, one of the largest structures of its kind in the world.
Why is all this important? Activists at the Met Office have weaponised an agricultural temperature database, accurate enough for seasonal guidance, to spread mass climate psychosis in support of the Net Zero fantasy. Claiming guidance on climate change by producing statistics that at times are said to be accurate to one hundredth of a degree centigrade does not stand up to detailed scrutiny. Nonsense about climate milestones also goes hand in hand with calls by the operation’s Chief Scientist Professor Stephen Belcher for Net Zero to “stabilise the climate”. Believing that humans can control the climate is not unknown in human history – ancient tribes prayed to a variety of gods for help in this matter. Presumably Belcher hopes that something can be done to “stabilise the climate” given that, according to his observations, between 2014-2023 the number of days recording 28°C in the UK had doubled, while those over 30°C had tripled compared to 1961-1990. Ordering a crackdown on obvious temperature outliers might be a more productive use of his time.
Dr Huxter does not deny the climate is changing and of late the temperatures have warmed. Nevertheless, his work is demonstrating that some of the claimed warming is caused by the use of electronic thermometers that record instant unnatural air temperature spikes. Since the 1990s, increases in recorded temperature are “consistent with the narrative of global warming, a.k.a. climate change”. To him it is becoming apparent that this recorded increase “is an artefact of the change in observation method rather than a real change in temperature”.
It might be expected that the lower the CIMO class (with junk Class 5 being the lowest) the greater the convenient spikes in temperature produced. Huxter has also provided some initial calculations, admittedly from a small sample, that indicates this supposition might be correct. From May 6th-12th he calculated the average temperature change per hour at the 25 record-setting stations shown in the table above along with a number in close proximity and plotted the results in the graph below.
In simple terms the graph demonstrates that the lower the CIMO class (with Class 5 being the lowest), and thus the greater the uncertainties in temperature measurement, the greater the average hourly temperature changes. The workings at the top right indicate the calculation for the linear rise across the CIMO classes. The only large outlier is caused by Heathrow at Class 3, whose average 1.48°C per hour change would place it as an extreme Class 5 station. “Who knew?” comments the author.
Dr Huxter suggests that the fact that poorer siting of temperature stations appears to produce spikier results illustrates the impact of the local environment over the regional. In other words, Class 1 sites with no nearby corruptions measure genuine air temperatures over a wide area, while Class 3, 4 and 5 stations do not. The Met Office has very few Class 1 sites and a very large number that fall into the junk categories. Even more to its discredit is a seeming inability (or disinterest) in improving the situation. In the last 30 years to 2024, the Met Office has opened 113 stations and over eight in 10 of these are in Classes 4 and 5. Even worse is the revelation that over the last 10 years the percentage of junk sites opened is 81.5%, while over the last five years no fewer than eight of the 13 opened are unfit for purpose – purpose, that is, other than scaring the British public about an imaginary climate crisis.
Dr Eric Huxter is raising some interesting questions about the Met Office and its use of flawed statistics to promote extremist New Zero aims. His examination of the bizarre record recently declared at Kew causes him to remark that the use of such data reinforces the climate change narrative and “is undoubtedly of use to those wedded to alarmism”.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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It does not enhance the scientific credibility of this website when a statement like this is made:
“… on July 19th 2022 when a national record of 40.3°C at RAF Coningsby was set at a time when three typhoon jets were landing ”
without mentioning that temperatures in excess of 40C were also recorded at several other stations.
It would also be nice to have a link to the website of Dr Huxter.
If I recall correctly, temps over 40 where noted at 3 sites, 2 of them where airports, the 3rd was a brief blip from recollection in a clear site, but not an averaged reading over 5 minutes I think the claim was it lasted 5 seconds.
The first two should have been disregarded out of hand, the third was not followed up on, the MET simply claimed they had “verified” the Conningsby reading, all three are now in the permenant record.
There is also the base assumption that 40 degrees is a new phenominon for this part of the world. The unaclimatised grapes that the Romans grew at Hadrians wall would beg to differ (champagne grapes grown in the UK now are cold adapted).
Point is, if the entire world is to shift focus, spend trillions, impoverish millions and reducate the masses, don’t you think we should have ultra accurate and transparent data across the board?
I don’t cut wood without measuring at least twice, why should we smash up civilisation based on a wonky data set?
Because your government appears to be under the spell of whoever pays them the most. It is always about the money.
Scientific credibility is irrelevant; it’s all about politics. I was by chance studying at UEA/CRU around 2009, which was the time when the scandal over faked evidence for “global warming” (as it was then known) was erupting. The only real “science” (and even that is debatable) we were dealing with was Applied Psychology, and certainly not physics, engineering, chemistry, biology. However, there was a move towards “post-normal science” in which “climate science” was at the forefront. The CRU were pressing the Education Department to incorporate “global warming” as “settled science” and to use the results of “Applied Psychology” to convince the populace generally, and children in particular, that it was essential to get children to believe right from primary school years that Man Was A Cancer On The Face Of The Planet, and that we were all going to die unless we recycled plastic and took holidays in our own garden. Anybody who dared question this, especially staff, were taken out and metaphorically shot. The way Applied Psychology was used built on the work of Asch on “conformity” and, IIRC, the Tavistock Institute regarding “nudging” social views. The Asch aspect was and still is manifest: if you can arrange that… Read more »
It has been about Politics from the very start. It all emanates from the UN and it’s Sustainable Development agenda. One important aspect of the politics is WEALTH. A Lead Author at the IPCC called Ottmar Edenhoffer in a rare moment of impartiality said “One has to free oneself from the illusion that climate policy is environmental policy any more. We redistribute the world’s wealth via climate policy”—–I now see various activists etc saying that wealthier people should pay more for their energy than poor people. In other words, money should be skimmed from the wealthier bill payers to pass on the poorer ones. Energy has become a kind of currency. Taking money from the wealthiest who emit the most CO2 and handing via government to poorer people who emit less is all part of the eco socialist agenda that pretends to be about the climate.
This is a factually accurate statement about an event in 2022 which serves as context/ background information for the claim that the Met office habitually records dubious temperature records. It doesn’t become any less dubious because some other temperature was recorded in a different location.
I stopped off at a friends house at Monkton Wyld in 1976 at the beginning of that summer. The following day was exceedingly hot and the thermometer that was nearly 2 meters off the ground and in the shade of a tree was showing 110F. None of us thought a disaster was happening and only that it was a really really hot day and we all slept the afternoon away. That summer I slept with only a sheet or no cover for nearly 2 months and it was possible to walk into the sea at Bournemouth without any acclimatisation, every day. We have yet to have a year as hot as that. My markers for hot years are the number of nights that are hot and difficult to sleep and how easy it is to walk into the sea. The hot sleepless nights have not increased and we get at least 2 weeks a year like that, and I have yet to experience sea temperatures or hot nights like they were in 1976.
If the climate zealots were to show some rigour in their determinations of their climate scam I would agree with you. But they don’t, they continually hold others to high standards that they themselves don’t observe. Their deliberations do not stand up, so the employ stupid little girls to promote their deranged ideas.
The temperature record is unreliable. It is also highly politicised. You need to understand, assuming you are interested in truth, that the thermometers used to record temperature were many times in fields and over time the area around them has been built up with concrete, tarmac and assorted buildings. It is well known that an area in an empty field will record a lower temperature than the same thermometer stuck in a town or city. Often there will be a 4 or 5 degree C difference. Another important thig to know is that global warming theory does not predict lots of hot days or heatwaves etc. It says that temperatures will increase a little in winter and at night. You may well be barking up the wrong tree.
Some of the Met Office junk weather stations are at major airports like Heathrow that are covered in hot concrete and tarmac with hot jet exhausts. They are also at RAF bases next to the runway and some of these temperature spikes have been shown to correspond to aircraft taking off down the runway.
Yes, as the article comments, “the last five years no fewer than eight of the 13 opened are unfit for purpose – purpose, that is, other than scaring the British public about an imaginary climate crisis”
Junk $cience.
Follow the money….
The use of “record high temperatures” is a complete deception anyway, and is useful only to sell newspapers and scare stories. The arithmetical fact is that records, by definition, can evolve in only one way, regardless of what the underlying (i.e. average) trend is. To take a simple example: consider an endless sequence of random numbers generated uniformly in the range 000 to 999. Then the rolling average of that sequence will most likely fluctuate somewhere around 500, the fluctuations being smaller the greater the number in the rolling average. However, the “record high” will start with the first number, and then be occasionally nudged higher as, by chance, a bigger number comes along. The “record” will inevitably go up, or at least until 999 turns up, which eventually it almost certainly will! A similar argument applies to “record lows”, ultimately bottoming out at 000. Yet throughout, the average will be around 500 and, crucially, will not show a statistically significant drift in either direction. In another field, records for, say, the Olympic Marathon can only ever get faster. This would happen even if the average running speed of the general populace decreases over time. “Records” are made by exceptions… Read more »
It’s hardly “shock, new” evidence, or at least only the new sensor technology is new! Ten year ago, back at 2:13 pm on 1st July 2015 the temperature recorded by a minute-by-minute sensor at Heathrow Airport recorded a clear blip lasting some fifteen minutes peaking at around 1.5 degrees above the average around that hour. The peak temperature, of 36.7° C was widely reported. What was not widely reported was that (i) this happened immediately after three large jets landed on runway 09L (ii) this was unusual, as nearly all flights that day did not use that runway (iii) the turn out from that runway on to the taxiway is near the temperature sensor for the airport (iv) in turning out, the jet blast of all three, coupled with the very light wind, would have drifted over the sensor in a sort of “heat bubble”. Instead, the Met Office referred us to the Kew Gardens sensor and some waffle about “a break in the clouds” and said nothing about tarmac and jet blasts.
I would love to see a point by point rebuttal of this article by the MO. I would love to be a millionaire too, however squadrons of Old Spot pigs are more likely.
I can concur that there is something very dodgy about the Charlwood site. It is about 8 miles from me and to the west of Gatwick Airport. If we go back to the ‘great day’ when the temperature soared I decided to put my temperature datalogger outside on my shaded patio thermometer set to record every minute as this would provide a good graph and not exceed memory storage. On the ‘great day’ Charlwood got in early to claim reaching 40C between 11am and noon. Is this bollocks? Yes, I would say so since the daily peak for me showed up around 2pm and held roughly until 4pm. Looking at the fabled RAF Coningsby showed a similar timescale to me so I cry dodgy for Charlwood. And in my country location which in theory matches Charlwood, the peak never reached 40C anyway.
It is a joke in this country. It is the middle of June and I have had the heating on all day and artificial light most of the day. Look at the projected increase in energy usage based on AI data centres, a quadrupling. This agenda is so sick because its schtick is to get the plebs to build their own prison. It is horrible to be imprisoned but it is even more horrible to have your erstwhile compatriots be mind-controlled into building it for them. This has happened for decades with language.
It’s very sad that yet another institution is shown to be churning out junk due to political and activist pressure.
we have a government that is unrepresentative of the people, who strut around the world as if they have something to offer and the entire world is laughing at them.
They are irrelevant on the world stage and clearly delusional. I really don’t see how we can regain any credibility whilst this bunch are in control.
The temperature record of earth is about as reliable as a chocolate teapot. The data has been fiddled with more than a prostitutes knickers, and all for political purposes.
I; along with billions of others stopped believing Governments years ago.
If you write to the met office to ask about the chem trails we witness each day, you will be told by email these are contrails and caused
to atmospheric gibberish and that chem trails are a conspiracy theory, and do not exist. The met office suppports their gibberish with two fill pages of scientific “data” gibberish. Talk about being dishonest with the public. Go ahead, send them an email asking about what you witness every single day.
When is someone, anyone, going to set up completely independent temperature measuring stations? If we cant trust the equipment or the people at the Met Office to give honest, accurate and reliable data re temperature somebody else needs to do it.