UK already undergoing disruptive climate change-BBC
By Paul Homewood
h/t various!
The BBC/Met Office have wheeled out their latest bit of propaganda:
The UK is already undergoing disruptive climate change with increased rainfall, sunshine and temperatures, according to scientists.
The year 2020 was the third warmest, fifth wettest and eight sunniest on record, scientists said in the latest UK State of the Climate report.
No other year is in the top 10 on all three criteria.
The experts said that, in the space of 30 years, the UK has become 0.9C warmer and 6% wetter.
The report’s lead author Mike Kendon, climate information scientist at the UK Met Office, told BBC News: “A lot of people think climate change is in the future – but this proves the climate is already changing here in the UK.
“As it continues to warm we are going to see more and more extreme weather such as heatwaves and floods.”
Scientists warn of worse extreme weather if global temperatures rise and politicians fail to curb carbon emissions.
The report says the UK has become hotter, sunnier and rainier:
- 2020 was the third warmest UK year since 1884; all the years in the top 10 are since 2002
- Last year was one of the least snowy on record; any snow mainly affected upland and northern areas
- Spring 2020 was the UK’s sunniest on record, and sunnier than most UK summers.
- 2020 was the UK’s fifth wettest year; six of the 10 wettest years have been since 1998
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-57988023
Quite why extra sunshine is disruptive I have no idea. Nor, for that matter, why climate change would cause the sun to shine more.
But what about the substantive issues?
2020 was the third warmest UK year since 1884; all the years in the top 10 are since 2002
Every year, the Met Office try to con the public with these sort of claims. The truth, which they are desperately trying to conceal, is that UK temperatures stopped rising in 2006.
If they were to admit this pertinent fact, all of their scare stories about the future would be shown to be so much nonsense.
Yes, the UK climate did warm up during the 1980s and 90s, but we are now in a stable position, with no indication that temperatures will resume their rise.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/index.html
2020 was the UK’s fifth wettest year; six of the 10 wettest years have been since 1998
When you analyse the data, however, you find that this increasing trend in rainfall is confined mainly to Scotland:
In England & Wales, it is a totally different picture.
Last year was only the 19th wettest on record, and only two of the 10 wettest years have occurred since 1960:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadukp/data/ranked_seasonal/HadEWP_ranked_ssn.dat
Long term trends show that there have been other periods which were just as wet as the last decade; for instance, the 1770s, 1870/80s, and 1920s. What we see is natural variability.
One reason for the recent increasing trend is the absence of extremely dry years, which have frequently plagued the country in the past. Maybe the BBC does not think these droughts were “disruptive”?
The Met Office naturally want you to believe that the climate will get warmer and more extreme. For instance:
Liz Bentley, head of the Royal Meteorological Society, said that even if governments could achieve the challenging outcome of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C – which looks very unlikely – that would still lead to a 10% increase in the amount of water the air can hold.
“In the UK,” she said, “we are likely to see temperatures of 40C. As we get 1.5C warming, that’ll be something we see on a regular basis.
"People don’t realise that even a small temperature rise of 0.1 or 0.2 degrees overall can make a huge difference – especially in the frequency and intensity of extreme events.
But there is nothing in the data which actually supports this conjecture. On the contrary, everything indicates that things will carry on pretty much the same as they are now.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
What I would like to see is the BBC “putting its money where its mouth is” and reducing its “carbon footprint to zero, first by sacking all its rubbish journalists!
They have learned with covid, if you lie and lie consistently , most people will believe you. Especially it seems about ‘bad’ things which happen because we are ‘bad’.
Human beings are pretty sick ( in the head)
And it’s not just the BBC that is lieing, the Government is constantly lieing over most issues along with the quangos like the Environment Agency.
I was just reading the BBC article and have commented as below, I was struck looking at the recent comments that the majority about 80% were pro the article, just like the grauniad. How ever the majority of Telegraph and Mail comments on green issues are generally from the climate change deniers, critical of the article. I conclude from this that BBC and Grauniad readers are thick, brainless, gullible.
Comment posted by gandalf, today at 12:59gandalf
12:59
Rubbish, not peer reviewed, not statistically significant, cherry picks the data. What about the cold spring decimating the grape vines in Europe, what about the southern hemisphere severe winter right now, crop devastation in Brazil and South America Antarctica at record lows.
What is a definition of a “climate change denier”? That’s a term used by those who accept every word of those who talk about disruptive weather and automatically correlate it with man-made CO2.
but that is what the eco loons call us……..maybe I should have put “climate realists” or just “intelligent people”
What is a definition of a “climate change denier”? …someone who falls for a
Barthesian myth!
“… the global warming myth harks back to a lost Golden Age of climate stability, or, to employ a more modern term, climate ‘sustainability’. Sadly, the idea of a sustainable climate is an oxymoron. The fact that we have rediscovered climate change at the turn of the Millennium tells us more about ourselves, and about our devices and desires, than about climate. Opponents of global warming are often snidely referred to as ‘climate change deniers’; precisely the opposite is true. Those who question the myth of global warming are passionate believers in climate change – it is the global warmers who deny that climate change is the norm”
Quote from Philip Stott professor emeritus of biogeography at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and a former editor (1987–2004) of the Journal of Biogeography.
p.s. he is also a very nice person.
” but that is what the eco loons call us……..maybe I should have put “climate realists” or just “intelligent people” ”
I prefer the description “non-believer”.
Geoff, I can’t make my mind up whether they know about all the cold events and are determined to keep pushing their dross anyway OR they just don’t look outside their models at all.
Try this for a excellent article:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/britain-climate-change-and-the-reality-of-extreme-weather-events
If memory serves, didn’t the BBC not renew their contract with the UK Met Office a few years ago, because the MO factored climate change into their computers Since AGW is a fantasy so were the Met Office’ forecasts?
I also recall that several weather satellites were launched into orbit in the early 1980’s with highly accurate Platinum Resistance Thermometers that could measure atmospheric temperatures with great accuracy at different altitudes.. The ‘scientists’ were wetting themselves with excitement, that their doom laden prophecies were at last proven.
The result? ‘The Great Pause’, 18+ years of no warming, so they, with little publicity, reverted to using readings from thermometers at airport runways I would guess also that today’s announcement of ‘proof ‘of warming is based upon a comparison between lockdown temperatures and current ones, with pre-lockdown temperatures conveniently being ignored?
Paul it would be interesting if you could get hold of this data?
The ‘scientists’ were wetting themselves with excitement about observation of the Tropospheric Hotspot, which was a “robust feature of model simulations” (Santer et al 2005, “Amplification of Surface Temperature Trends and Variability in the Tropical Atmosphere”).
The result was yet another failed prediction.
In 2010, John Christy falsified the models by showing the Tropospheric Hotspot doesn’t exist (Christy et al 2010, “What Do Observational Datasets Say about Modeled Tropospheric Temperature Trends since 1979?). He concluded “model amplification of surface temperature trends is overdone, and that the observed atmosphere manages to adjust to heating processes without allowing (over decades) a temperature change in the troposphere at a higher rate than it changes near the surface”.
After more than 12 years debate in the scientific literature, Christy’s conclusion stands today.
I was my disfortune to hear some government advisor, possibly Sir David King, wittering about the climate emergency, the Arctic having passed a tipping point. I changed channel as I normally do knowing none of this will be questioned.
Some TV academic was claiming yesterday on BBC News that 95% of Vietnam would be under water within 30 years if ‘we’ didn’t mend our modern ways. Let me guess: he’ll be retired or even departed well before then, so no embarrassment likely.
A quick check of Vietnam on Google Earth shows it is of very high elevation. There are a few low lying coastal areas, but, generally, elevations are hundreds to thousands of feet.
Hence, he should be embarrassed NOW.
It was David King, who (of course) was given a free pass to spout whatever he wished.
Any evidence at all for ‘tipping points’, let alone those which he claimed have already passed? Of course not.
Not once did the BBC host question him critically.
CR: I so wanted Evan Davies to ask King: ‘Have you ever been wrong?’
Anything other than a ‘Yes’ would have been a lie.
“Not once did the BBC host question him critically.”
Oxymoron Alert !!!!!
Ben, it was my misfortune to feel compelled to transcribe that glorious interview:
We have come to expect low standards from the BBC, alas, but to use nearly 10 minutes of the flagship news program on this bilge, without any sniff of any critical thinking & with lobbed softball questions, plus the cringeworthy interjection of “Wow” from the presenter, represents to my mind an unprecedented low that has come far more early than our models predicted. A tipping point may be soon reached, when the BBC will be beyond saving, unless we all stop pre-rinsing our plates before putting them in the dishwasher or something.
Their problem is that although the 2016 El Niño spike fades into obscurity, it’s five years now, it will be difficult to announce a new global temperature record. Random spatial cherrypicks ignoring the 1930’et al, sure. Perhaps that’s why there’s a note of desperation in the BBC’s outputs.
“Scientists warn of worse extreme weather if global temperatures rise and politicians fail to curb carbon emissions.”
Tis is a nonsense statement which cannot be tested. There needs to be a drive to ensure any claim is testable and credible. I’d suggest all of the following criteria should be met:
The claim should be recorded, with the person making the claim putting their name to it.
The claim must relate to a specific type of weather event or physical change (such as ice loss), including metrics to give thresholds
If the claim is an “increase in frequency”, the prediction must be a future frequency compared to a demonstrated historic baseline
There must be a limit of the geographic region being tested
The prediction must be time limited
The numerous claims of an ice free Arctic could then be tested. As well as increases of Atlantic hurricanes and US tornadoes. And the 2011/2012 drought in SE England which was said to be the “new normal” – how’s that going?
The claim that any of these things is “disruptive” is simply a lie. Lack of snow is surely the opposite of disruptive?
But the whole thing is a sleight of hand as it uses averages. A higher average temperature over a year doesn’t mean any single minute, hour or day was above average or outside say two standard deviations of the mean. It just means there were more days higher than average than on average – or fewer days colder than average than on average. Nobody would notice that at all. Its utter nonsense as we simply don’t experience these averages in any meaningful way.
Shall I monitor Farmers Weekly to see if this year’s yields are also exceptional — exceptionally good, I mean. That should knock the doomsters back a bit. Should be easy to get crop figures for cereals, legumes, rape seed and sugar beet fairly easily.
I have not forgiven them for telling me to prepare my garden for a Mediterranean climate. All the decorative plants have rotted in the ground, the fig was cut to the ground by -8C temperatures a few years back and my olive is barely surviving.
And they are now continuing the climate porn today by threatening regular 40C temperatures in a few years time. That is only going to happen if they move the thermometers at Heathrow directly into the jet efflux.
Always point out maximum temperatures are not rising.
UK has a temperate oceanic climate (Köppen: Cfb ). Rainfall goes up; rainfall goes down. Temps go up; temps go down. UK still has a temperate oceanic climate (Köppen: Cfb ).
The variability is in weather. Not climate. There is NO climate change. ANYWHERE.
A common theme on the BBC is to state that climate change is something new, also to state that climate change can be stopped. These statements need to be publically undermined on a wide scale, but on what platform?
In 2021, the UK endured its coldest April since 1922, and one of its coldest Mays in its 362-year weather record. So it should not be surprising that Spring overall delivered a record number of frosts.
Climate change in Scotland seems to mean that our weather becomes more stereotypically Scottish, ie wetter. Or no change at all!
I just took a look at the highest recorded temperatures in each country/territory of the world. I was a bit surprised that only 18 out 120 have a maximum of less than 40C. Most of these are NW Europe/Scandinavia or island nations, so small populations. In fact ~98%* of the world’s population live in countries that have a maximum temperature over 40C. Why we in the UK would be bothered by this figure at all is beyond me.
* This figure is a bit misleading as large counties could could have a maximum that has never been reached in large areas of the country. I guess it would be better to be done by city.