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UK Summers Getting Cooler

October 5, 2015
tags: ,

By Paul Homewood 

  

We are all familiar with predictions that the UK will soon be having Mediterranean summers every year.

According to the Met Office’s Climate: Observations, Projections and Impacts, issued in 2011, we are already seeing the effect of climate change on our summers:

 

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http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/t/r/UK.pdf

 

And there are plenty of studies coming out which tell us our summers are going to get much hotter and much drier.

 

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http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/25/climate-change-uk-weather-wet-dry-met-office

 

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http://blueandgreentomorrow.com/2015/07/07/study-hot-and-dry-summers-to-become-norm-in-uk-by-2100/

 

 

There is no arguing that there was a shift change to warmer summers in the 1990’s.

 

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http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/summaries/actualmonthly

 

But what have been the trends since then?

 

It is clear that summers have actually been getting cooler since 2006. Indeed, the 5-year average is back down to what it was in 1992.

The warmest summer since 2006 was in 2013, but this was not as hot as 1983, never mind others in between.

 

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http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/summaries/datasets

 

 

Five years is, of course, far too short a period to draw meaningful conclusions from; but the same can be said of the brief interlude of hot summers from 1995 to 2006.

Nevertheless, there is no evidence at the moment to support the projections of increasingly hot summers.

As for the Met Office statement that there has been a general increase in summer temperatures averaged over the country as a result of human influence on climate, how do they explain the opposite?

 

    

And what about the prediction of drier summers?

 

image

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/summaries/actualmonthly

 

Again we find that the opposite has occurred. The driest summers occurred in the 1970’s to 90’s, since when most summers have returned to the sort of weather common prior to 1960.

7 Comments
  1. Knute permalink
    October 5, 2015 5:04 pm

    I’d like to offer this to readers because the stakes are high. We are headed towards enforceable reparations for CO2 emissions. In order to get ahead of the curve, we should be demanding the same level of scrutiny for any data associated with decision making that we do for issues such as centrifuge inspections.

    It’s just really bad science at this point. In the next phase of monkey business, we will be forced to hand over wealth without verification.

    Think ahead.
    Identify the weakness in the opposing groups’ gameplan.
    Scientifically, you know you are being had.
    People get really pissed when they know you are stealing wealth from them.

    Raise that awareness.
    It’s an Achilles heel of the plan.

  2. October 5, 2015 5:16 pm

    Thanks, Paul. I better not send my palm tree to a new home in the UK.

  3. October 5, 2015 5:25 pm

    I’m not a fan of those computer generated models, since no model is able to stimulate all the conditions. The oceans are so large and we have so much to learn about them. I think that it’s better to learn from what happened in the past and, as far as I know, there was another period of time when Northern Europe plunged to Ice Age conditions. It seems that during the WWII naval activities stirred and churned huge seawater areas, leading to that severe cooling, especially in the Northern Europe, as shown here: http://www.2030climate.com/a2005/02_11-Dateien/02_11.html.

  4. xmetman permalink
    October 5, 2015 5:48 pm

    I don’t like the UKMO 1910 data sets for temperature it’s far too short, and that’s why I prefer to use the Central England Temperature [CET] series which the Met Office also maintain and which is so much longer. The Met Office have temperature records that could be used to extend both this series and the rainfall series [EWR] back to the creation of the Met Office in the 1850’s and why they haven’t remains a mystery to me!

    Using this CET data I can’t agree with you that summers are cooling – at least in the long term. At a quick glance I would say there has been little in the way of either cooling or warming during summers since 1659. There is of course the usual rise and fall as you would expect from a temperature series that is over 350 years in length. There was a brief surge in the 10 year moving average around 1990 from 15.5 to around 16.2°C, but that has since fallen back as you have identified.

    A linear trend across the whole series does show a slight rise of 0.34°C from 15.14°C in 1659 to 15.48°C in 2015. That equates to a very small rise of less than 0.1°C per century.

    The graph here is drawn from data that I download from the Met Office site:

    https://xmetman.wordpress.com/2015/10/05/cet-summers-1659-2015/

  5. October 5, 2015 6:43 pm

    I remember taking part in a consultation held by Devon County Council a few years ago. As a result of Met Office advice (and with the Met Office located in Exeter near to the ‘Dream Factory’ (the Council Offices) the Council are unduly influenced by the Met Office) they were going to make the highways more resilient to high summer temperatures and cut back on winter preparedness (i.e reduce salt stocks and get rid of most of the snow ploughs). Fortunately in the middle of the consultation we had a really bad winter when several main roads near Exeter were blocked with snow and ice, causing complete chaos and costing not only the Council, but also local businesses and the local economy a fortune. I believe the the Council changed their minds, but this shows what damage the Met Office can cause with their crass global warming predictions.

  6. Don Keiller permalink
    October 5, 2015 9:53 pm

    Again we need Dr Richard Betts (Met Office) to comment on this.
    Should be interesting.

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