1976 Remains The UK’s Hottest Summer
The Met Office have been widely mocked and accused of gaslighting for declaring that the UK has just had the hottest summer on record, which they say was a whopping 0.4C hotter than 1976
At first sight, this claim is absurd. The heatwaves in 1976 were far more severe and longer lasting than this summer, which frankly never got out of the ordinary.
Taking daily max temperatures on CET, in 1976 there were nine days above 30C, with a highest of 33.1C.
Despite repeated claims of “four heatwaves” this year, only two days topped 30C this summer, with the highest being just 30.7C
Now the Met Office’s claim however has been contradicted by their own Central England Temperature series, which still shows 1976 as the hottest, albeit tied with this summer.
This is not a regional anomaly, as the Met Office’s figures, part of the HadUK dataset, also show the Midlands region as hotter than 1976, and by an even bigger margin of 0.5C.
The Midlands covers almost exactly the same geographical area as the CET.
Below is a chart of recent hot summers, comparing HadUK with CET. What stands out is how much 1976 has been marked down on HadUK; the same is also true of 1995 and 2003, both of which are similar on CET to 2006 and 2022, but are much lower on HadUK:
If we compare summer temperatures since 1884 for both datasets, we see that for most of the record CET has run about 0.6C higher – ignore the absolute numbers, they show that the idea of an “average temperature” across a region is not a scientific concept; it is the trends that matter.
But then around twenty years ago, that gap dropped to about 0.2C. In short, since around 2006, HadUK Midland temperatures have run 0.4C hot compared to CET.
There is no logical reason why this should be so (unless there has been data tampering, as the sudden drop in records strongly suggests – Ed).
The CET is carefully constructed and based on rural stations. HadUK, however, is largely made up of junk stations, so poorly sited that that temperatures recorded may be as much as five degrees too high.
We have had this discussion many times. But on top of this, many of the Met Office sites are also in heavily urbanised areas.
In short, the Met Office’s UK dataset is not fit for purpose and only has propaganda value.
If, as the graphs suggest, UK temperatures are being overstated by 0.4C, the whole of the Met Office’s narrative is destroyed.
See more here notalotofpeopleknowthat
Bold emphasis added
Editor’s note: this is not the first time the Met Office has been accused of data tampering, they were found to have done so in 2016, as the chart below shows:
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