Image: United Kingdom daily news
By Paul Homewood
Booker on the heatwave:
There is at least one thing about this summer of 2018 on which we can all agree: the past months have unquestionably been swelteringly, abnormally hot.
And not just here in Britain, but in many other countries right across the northern hemisphere.
In the UK, our own heatwave began in May and has continued relentlessly ever since. In Japan, where one city claimed the highest temperature ever recorded in that country, topping 106 degrees Fahrenheit (41 degrees Centigrade), the heatwave has been declared ‘a natural disaster’.
Meanwhile, wildfires in Greece have killed at least 80 people, leading to claims that this has been the worst disaster of its kind seen in Europe since World War II.
There have been numerous other claims of temperature records being broken, all the way from California to Armenia and Azerbaijan (although here in Britain we have not so far seen anything to equal the 101.3f — 38.5c — that was recorded near Faversham, Kent, on August 10, 2003).
But more sober experts have raised question marks over the reliability of these temperature measurements, because of the siting of the thermometers which recorded them.
In every case, it turned out, they broke the golden rule that such thermometers must not be placed near heat-retaining structures or surfaces, such as in the centre of large cities, near airport runways or on Tarmac car parks.
This is because their readings are then distorted by the so-called ‘urban heat island effect’, which can exaggerate temperatures by up to 2 degrees Celsius or more.
One comical example of this was on June 28, when the UK Met Office rushed to announce that the 91.7f (33.2c) reached at Motherwell made it the hottest temperature recorded in Scotland.
Only when it was pointed out that its thermometer was in the middle of a Tarmac car park did the Met Office hastily withdraw its claim, with the rather sad explanation that the reading had been distorted by a ‘car left nearby with its engine running’.
But all these excitable little mishaps notwithstanding, it has certainly been abnormally hot. Above all, this raises the question: how unprecedented has this summer’s heat really been? And, secondly, how long was it going to be before certain climate scientists came round to telling us that this was unquestionably proof the world is in the grip of man-made global warming?
At last this week they have come in on cue, with Peter Stott, head of climate change predictions at the Met Office, and Rowan Sutton, head of atmospheric science at Reading University, both making that point loud and clear.
As Professor Sutton told us on yesterday’s BBC Radio 4 Today programme, thanks to climate change we can expect summers like this one to become more frequent. And even if we curb our carbon dioxide emissions in accord with the famous Paris climate agreement of 2015, this will continue for decades to come.
Perhaps it is time, therefore, to start looking at some proper historical evidence in order to gain a more balanced perspective on what is really going on.
For a start, here in the UK we have the longest-running set of temperature data in the world, the Central England Temperature Record (CET), which goes back to 1659. And this shows that June of this year was only the 18th warmest June in more than 350 years — the hottest being as long ago as 1846.
So this kind of summer heat is far from unprecedented. In fact, as people have begun to observe, the nearest parallel to what has been happening this year was the celebrated ‘drought summer’ of 1976.
That was the year when, as older folk vividly recall, the heatwave lasted virtually unbroken for three months, until rain finally came at the end of August. And, according to the CET, those daily temperatures 42 years ago frequently beat this summer’s figures hands down.
But there is another striking parallel between this year and 1976 — as there also is with that other heatwave summer of 2003 when the highest single temperature ever recorded in Britain was set.
In each case the cause of the prolonged heat has been a large area of high pressure that has sucked in hot air from the Sahara (when my next-door neighbour returned to Heathrow this week, she found her car covered in this desert sand).
This in turn has been caused and prolonged by a movement of the jet stream (which dictates much of the northern hemisphere’s weather conditions) because of cooler ocean temperatures in the Atlantic. This movement has kept lower-pressure weather formations containing moister and cooler air parked further out in the Atlantic to the north-west of Britain and Europe.
Sweltering
Although the causes of this cooler Atlantic are an entirely natural cyclical shift, the global warming-obsessed Met Office became so excited by that heatwave in 2003 that the following year it produced a report based on computer models, called Uncertainty, Risk And Climate Change.
This predicted that baking summers would soon be so frequent that by 2040 more than half of Europe’s summers would be hotter than 2003.
But the same 2004 report predicted that by 2014, global temperatures would have risen by 0.3c. In fact, during those ten years, temperatures recorded by weather satellites did not rise at all. Neither, until the past few weeks, have we seen a single summer to compete with the sweltering 2003.
We need to recall such facts, if only to remind ourselves that there are those so convinced of their particular theory of how climate works that they will leap on any evidence which seems to confirm that they and their computer models are correct.
Although there have recently been claims in the U.S. that America is getting hotter than ever before, more than half the temperature records for the 50 U.S. states were set in the baking ‘dustbowl years’ of the Thirties. Another 13 state records are even older. Indeed, only two state records were set in the 21st century, at a time when — we are constantly told — increases in industrial emissions are causing dangerous warming of the planet.
Drastic
On yesterday’s Today programme, Professor Sutton of Reading University and his BBC interviewer agreed on how important it is that the world should follow the Paris climate agreement by making very drastic reductions in its emissions of CO2.
What neither of them seemed to realise was that the much-touted Paris Accord was no more than a wholly non-binding Western wish list. Even at the time, the rest of the world — led by China and India, respectively the world’s largest and third-largest CO2 emitters — made no secret of the fact that it had no intention of reducing its CO2 emissions.
In fact, buried away in the small print of the documents every country had to supply before Paris, it was clear the rest of the world would continue to build coal-fired power stations. China planned by 2030 to double its emissions and India to treble them, to keep their economies growing.
Despite all pretences to the contrary, Paris was little more than an empty charade. But the good news is that this may well have not the slightest effect on the world’s climate.
We shall continue to have abnormally hot summers from time to time, just as we did in 1976 and 1846, way back before global warming was invented. Meanwhile, we can only keep praying for rain.
Ref.: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2018/07/26/yes-its-scorching-but-claims-that-the-heatwave-is-down-to-climate-change-are-just-hot-air-june-was-even-hotter-when-victoria-was-on-the-throne-writes-christopher-booker/
Climate change fuelling heatwaves, “experts” warn
By Paul Homewood
An extremely dishonest story propagated by the Press Association, based largely on statements from Peter Stott, which contain inaccuracies, significant omissions and prejudices dressed up as fact:
Rising global temperatures caused by human activity are making the heatwaves gripping the northern hemisphere more likely, scientists warn.
Extreme heat has been seen in the northern hemisphere, with temperatures exceeding 30C (86F) in the Arctic circle, a deadly heatwave in Japan being declared a “natural disaster” and heatwaves in parts of North America and Siberia.
Professor Peter Stott, Met Office science fellow in attribution, likened the increased chances of a heatwave to rolling a dice and getting a six – but that climate change was weighting the dice.
“What we’ve seen this summer is repeated throws throwing up a six in different parts of the world.
“If you get a six over and over again you start to think ‘This is not normal, somebody has given me a loaded dice’.”
He said the chances of the 2003 heatwave in Europe happening was more than doubled by climate change, and predictions by climate models that heatwaves would increase in frequency “are coming true before our eyes”.
He said the “jury is out” on the extent to which climate change is affecting the jet stream, whose current pattern is keeping an area of high pressure to the west of Britain and causing the hot, dry weather.
But he said: “It’s settled into a pattern here this summer, and what that means when it’s in this pattern, the Arctic temperatures are very much warmer, and temperatures are globally very much warmer, it’s fuelling these heatwaves.”
Temperatures have risen globally around 1C above pre-industrial levels, as a result of greenhouse gases put into the atmosphere from activities such as burning fossil fuels, while increases in the Arctic have been much greater.
Figures from Nasa show last month was tied as the third warmest June in 138 years of modern record-keeping at 0.77C above the 1951-1980 average, with only June 2015 and 2016 warmer.
Professor Len Shaffrey, professor of climate science at the University of Reading, said: “Global temperatures are increasing due to climate change.
“The global rise in temperatures means the probability that an extreme heatwave will occur is also increasing.”
Recent studies showed climate change had made extremes such the European “Lucifer” heatwave, which hit south-east France, Italy and Croatia last summer, at least four times more likely, he said.
He added: “The current hot and dry spell in the UK is partly due to a combination of North Atlantic Ocean temperatures, climate change and the weather.
“Should weather patterns continue as they are then we might expect this summer will turn out to be as hot and dry as the extreme summer of 1976.”
Dr Jeffrey Kargel, senior associate research scientist and glaciologist at the University of Arizona, said the upsurge in months-long extreme weather showed the climate is less stable than it was 30 years ago.
“This profound instability seems to be the harshest effect of global climate change,” he said, warning of the costs of extreme weather, from wildfires to agricultural losses during droughts.
http://www.oxfordtimes.co.uk/news/national/16374010.Climate_change_fuelling_heatwaves__experts_warn/
His main argument is that recent heatwaves in the NH are somehow unusual, record breaking and caused by global warming.
He mentions an “Arctic heatwave” with temperatures up to 86F. However emotive this may sound, there is no evidence that such temperatures are unusual. The official all-time record for Alaska was 100F set in 1915. The same temperature was recorded in 1937 in the Yukon.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/scec/records
Across the Arctic as a whole, temperatures have been below normal all summer:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
And we have already seen that recent heatwaves in the US have actually been pretty routine events, only made to sound scary by using UHI affected sites.
The official Climate Science Special Report, published by the US Global Change Research Program last year, confirmed that heatwaves in the US were many times worse in the 1920s to 40s, and that recent weather has been relatively mild.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/11/05/a-deceptive-new-report-on-climate/
Stott argues that increasing global temperatures are making heatwaves worse, but satellites show that atmospheric temperatures have not increased for twenty years:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/
If some regions are hotter than normal, others must be colder.
In short, Stott has provided no evidence that recent heatwaves in certain areas are nothing other than random weather events, which happen in various parts of the world most years.
Britain
Naturally, of course, Stott focuses on the current UK heatwave, noting that it is similar to 1976.
While we await the eventual outcome, what is absolutely clear so far is that daily temperatures were far higher in 1976. This is really a serious omission from a supposedly impartial scientist.
So far this summer, the highest CET daily max temperature has been 28.6C, with just three days over 28C.
In contrast, in 1976 temperatures reached 33.2C, the all-time record, and there were 18 days over 28C in June and July alone.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/data/download.html
While it was consistently hot in June this year, the month only ranked 18th warmest on CET, with the warmest June as long ago as 1846.
There is little evidence therefore of anything unprecedented about the weather we have had so far this summer.
Causality
Stott starts by saying that there are striking similarities in meteorological patterns with 1976, in particular Atlantic ocean temperatures.
What he conveniently omits to mention is that those ocean temperatures just happen to be much colder than normal. This hardly supports his contention that global warming has contributed to our heatwave!
Meteorologist Simon Lee explains the connection:
“The heatwave is being caused by a persistent area of high pressure over Europe and Scandinavia, which has deflected active weather systems northward, thus giving us dry and warm weather. It’s possible that this is being driven by a region of record-cold sea surface temperatures in the northwest Atlantic which has changed the path of the jet stream. This pattern has become ‘locked’ and amplified over time, thus giving our record-setting conditions.
Other scientists have already come to the same conclusion. A recent paper by Duchez et al found that every severe heatwave in Europe since 1980 coincided with extremely cold North Atlantic Ocean temperatures:
We have also examined whether the cold ocean temperatures may have contributed to the development of the 2015 heat wave. In this case we have not been able to establish causality, as that would require a complex model analysis that considers the various possible factors advanced previously as potential drivers (including soil moisture, precipitation and Tropical Atlantic atmospheric warming) in addition to the cold ocean precursor. Nevertheless, our results have established that similar cold Atlantic anomalies were present prior to the onset of the most extreme European heat waves back to 1980 indicating that it is a common factor in their development. Furthermore, in the case of 2015, we suggest that the ocean anomaly, and the resulting strong meridional SST gradient could have initiated a propagating Rossby wave train causing a stationary Jet Stream position that favoured the development of high pressure and temperature extremes over Central Europe during the heat wave.
Stott claims that “the jury is out”, as to whether climate change is responsible for this summer’s jet stream:
He said the “jury is out” on the extent to which climate change is affecting the jet stream, whose current pattern is keeping an area of high pressure to the west of Britain and causing the hot, dry weather.
But he said: “It’s settled into a pattern here this summer, and what that means when it’s in this pattern, the Arctic temperatures are very much warmer, and temperatures are globally very much warmer, it’s fuelling these heatwaves.
What he means is that there is no evidence at all that climate change is responsible, but he thought he ought to imply that it is anyway.
And, as we have already seen, the Arctic is not “very much warmer”, but has in fact been colder than average throughout this summer.
As for “climate change affecting the jet stream”, if it was true we would have seen an effect on summer rainfall patterns in recent years. But according to Met Office figures, there is no such effect.
In any reputable field of science, that alone would be enough to consign Stott’s theory into the waste bin.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/summaries/actualmonthly
Are heatwaves getting worse?
According to Stott:
The chances of the 2003 heatwave in Europe happening was more than doubled by climate change, and predictions by climate models that heatwaves would increase in frequency “are coming true before our eyes.
In fact, there has been no repetition of the 2003 European heatwave since then, nor anything remotely approaching its intensity.
As for nearer home, summers since 2006 have seen precious little in the way of heatwaves.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/summaries/actualmonthly
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/index.html
Propaganda
There has been a determined push in recent weeks to persuade the public that hot weather is the result of global warming, and that the world is close to burning up.
We have had fake news from the Washington Post and BBC about “record” temperatures. Now we have climate scientists such as Stott jumping on the bandwagon, desperate to keep the scare alive and their grants flowing.
Ref.: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2018/07/26/climate-change-fuelling-heatwaves-experts-warn/
We’re not there yet. The map shows record warm, historic measurements for the southern part of Norway. Guess CO2 doesn’t work here ..
