No, January 2022 Was Not A “Record Breaker”
By Paul Homewood
Although 2022 is still only really getting going, January has been a month of chart-busting weather in the UK. Some will remember it for record-breaking temperatures, sunshine levels and a noticeable lack of rain, but for others it was almost the opposite, with endless cloudy days and ending with a duo of severe storms.
The year began with the UK having the warmest New Year’s Day on record as St James’s Park in central London reached 16.3C. The previous New Year’s Day record was set in 1916, when it reached 15.6C in Bude, Cornwall.
Warm air from the Azores had brought unusually mild weather.
The Met Office has also confirmed it was the sunniest January on record for England with a total of 80.7 hours, beating the previous record of 77.5 in 1959. It is also the third sunniest January on record for the UK, with 1959 remaining in the top spot with 69.7 hours.
Rainfall has also been in short supply in some locations. Both East Anglia and the area covering the east and north-east of England ended up with their fifth driest January on record with 16.4mm and 23.8mm respectively.
The rainfall total for England and Wales up to 29 January reached 34mm, which is less than 40% of the average. Though it doesn’t even make the top 20 record-wise, with a long way to go to beat the 1766 low of 4.4mm.
With recent rain in Scotland, that figure is now more than 50% but not by very much.
Destructive storms Malik and Corrie brought gusts in excess of 90mph and a very sobering end to the month. Two people died in Staffordshire and Aberdeen and thousands of homes in Scotland and England were left without power.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/60216565
To most normal people, extreme weather in January would mean freezing cold, six feet of snow, storms and floods. But not the charlatans at the BBC, who reckon that a bit of sunshine is somehow newsworthy.
They start by talking about record breaking temperatures, which is grossly misleading.
Yes, it is true that it was the warmest New Year’s Day on record at 16.3C, (61.3F) but that is meaningless, given that it is only one day out of 31.
The UK record temperature in January is 18.3C, much higher than this year’s “record”, and was set in three separate years, 1958, 1971 and 2003. There will of course have been many other years with higher temperatures than this year. January 1916 was actually the warmest on record, 1.6C warmer than this year, and temperatures reached 63F on the 6th:
In those days, though, the Met Office was not trying to sell its global warming scam, so there was none of the hyperbole we get nowadays about “record breaking and extreme weather”. Instead their reporting was just matter of fact, as with the sunniest January on record in 1959:
Neither was rainfall as abnormally low as implied by the BBC. Across the UK, it was just the 13th driest January, with rainfall more than double that of January 1997.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/datasets/Rainfall/date/UK.txt
No doubt all of this will be blamed on climate change, when the Met Office publishes its annual “Britain’s Wild Weather” nonsense at the end of the year.
Even though they have been consistently claiming that Britain’s winters are getting wetter because of climate change!
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Is that true, or did you see it on the BBC?
It has long been my opinion that the only way to judge climate change from the temperature records we have is to take the subset of weather stations that go back into the 19thC, have not been affected by changes in the land around them (roads, housing, industry etc) and see what has happened at those stations, individually. And look at the raw data, not any ‘homogenized’ datasets.
I note that the Japanese have done some of this (and other places) reported on the NoTricksZone. In all cases they come up with almost no warming, which is probably why the Japanese govt. clearly doesn’t believe the Warmist mantra.
Someone in the Japanese Government should watch the “slide show” that convinced Boris.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60203674
A slide show that Prime Minister Boris Johnson says helped convince him on climate change has been revealed for the first time.
The slides used to “teach” him about climate science have been released after a Freedom of Information request by UK climate website Carbon Brief.
While Mr Johnson has urged action on climate change, he previously, as a journalist, expressed scepticism.
AKA The Peppa Pig Vroom Vroom guide to Climate Emergency
Yes I was just reading it. 11 slides changed his mind.
The briefing consisted of 11 slides showing key aspects of climate science and its impacts and the presentation was led by Prof Stephen Belcher, the chief scientist at the Met Office.
The first slide shows the global temperature rise since 1850 alongside graphs showing how carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have increased and how sea level has risen.
The year began with the UK having the warmest New Year’s Day on record as St James’s Park in central London reached 16.3C.
St. James’s Park is not ‘the UK’ 🙄
Mustn’t forget the urban heat island effect as well. Central London and surrounded by concrete and tarmac.
From Friends of Science – How NASA is in the tank of the climate scammers
Japan’s Data Show No Warming, NASA Changes to Warming
The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) temperature data for Tokyo show that the megalopolis has been cooling since 1994. KiryeNet plotted the mean annual temperature of Tokyo from JMA data, the NASA unadjusted version 4 and the NASA homogenized (altered) version 4 on one chart. NASA’s Version 4 Unadjusted data plot is very similar to the JMA data, both showing no warming since 1994. Pierre Gosselin wrote “But then NASA altered the data, and now its so-called V4 “Adjusted Homogenized” plot suddenly shows a ruddy warming trend [of 0.22 °C/decade]. The JMA data, we suppose, isn’t good enough, and so NASA took it upon themselves to fix it up. Don’t believe the Japanese data!” Pierre presents another temperature plot of the island of Hachijo-jima, some 287 km in the Pacific. The island doesn’t have the urban sprawl that exists in Tokyo. The plot of temperatures from 1950 to 2021 shows no warming trend in either the JMA or NASA unadjusted data. Pierre wrote “NASA tampered with the data and now its V4 Adjusted Homogenized data plot shows a strong warming trend since 1950. This is in stark contrast to what the JMA data plot shows and what NASA’s V4 Unadjusted data depict.” NASA tampers with the data to get a warming trend of 0.18 °C/decade that they want.
Actually the point is that if you start looking for individual dates in January to set your records you have 31 times as many opportunities to find a “record”. It’s a classic example of a spurious statistical claim, like a spurious correlation.
In spurious correlation if you compoute enough correlations amongst random data one of them always has the highest R^2. But it’s statistical significance has to be downgraded by the power of the number of comparisons made, a much higher threshold for determining statistical significance.
In terms of weather there is nothing special about New Year’s Day or any other day.
Next it will be the record temperature for a morning on a specific January day. Then it will for the next more specific period and so on.
Finally, as Phoenix44 notes, if its really climatically important how do you explain that the previous record was set 100 years ago? That is actually evidence is not climate change but just random fluctuation in a stationary system.
Broadband & Phoenix44 both commented on my last point.
Yes and if say there are perhaps 200 individual places where you might get a record in England, four possible records (min, max, wet, dry) and three possible periods (day, week, month) then you have an extremely high probability of a “record”.
“The previous New Year’s Day record was set in 1916, when it reached 15.6C in Bude, Cornwall.”
So, what was the cause of the previous record, if CO2 is the cause of the present one…the “control knob”?
Took over 100 years to get slightly warmer and then only in central London.
BJ’s real life IPCRESS file conversion.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60203674
Doh! I should read comments before posting!
https://photos.app.goo.gl/sYKokvEuFdfLWJAj7
Pity this link wasn’t included: a proper temp graph, not a temp diff from a mean.
Hmm.that may have linked to my photo library. Please can you delete for me Paul?
All within normal variability then. Presumably the record on New Year’s Day was because the air from the Azores was slightly warmer than last time. Big deal.
This is a classic Climate scam – using averages as if they were what “should” happen rather than the mean of what actually is highly variable weather at this time of year.
Reminds me of Michael Gove (I think), saying in Education he wanting to get all the pupils to be above the average. No wonder we’re doomed.
Yes, it always annoys me when football fans demand their team is in the top ten! Half of all teams are going to be inb the bottom half no matter what.
Yes I once listened to a talk given by Michael Gove at a Conservative Association Christmas lunch. Deeply, deeply, unimpressive. The next year,
I was invited again, with the enticement that Theresa May would be speaking.
I declined. The hotel served good food but I feared indigestion.
It is a pity that good ideas get lost in the confusion that lies inside the heads of politicians. Saying you want EVERY child to be above average could be replaced easily enough by saying you want MOST children in future to surpass the PRESENT average, and you have a plan to bring it about.
Also, the idea of Mastery Learning might be struggling for recognition. The idea is that a certain level of competence is REQUIRED, and SUFFICIENT. For example, even quite stupid people can learn the complex task of driving safely, with a focused programme of instruction. Taking your test, you do not care about the average driver score, and whether you are above or below it. You just want your licence. More education should be like that.
Hardly a ‘record January’ for Global Temperatures:
Met Office delenda est.
The brainwashing continues unabated, I overheard someone spouting forth about Climate change affecting railways …………
this on an episode of Coronation street!!
I have collected raw data (28 locations) for the UK since Oct 1998. Having seen the nonsense from the BBC and Met Office I thought I would check the full UK to see the truth. I will have it up tomorrow as WIP.
https://www.weather-research.com/articles
The above in now available on the link above
I got this from a debating friend re: Climate Change . . .
“When in the last 10,000 years did the average global temperature increase by 0.017deg C per annum and the rate of growth lasted for a LONG TIME? It grew by this annual amount from 1960 to 2016. The latest figure is 0.019 deg C per annum…and growing. We’ll be adding about 3 deg C to the current temperature by 2100. And then it will still continue to increase because we have no way of stopping it.”
Here is my response . . .
History says . . . We all believe what we want to believe and we always find what we are looking for . . . Especially when we are trying to prove a point . . .
Study the warming from the depth of the ‘Bronze Age Cold Epoch” about 350 BC to the year 0. The coldest in 10,000 years to the warmest in 4,000 years . . . The Roman Warming Period . . . Lasted about 700 years . . . OH . . . there were no thermometers back then . . . common sense and scientific interpretation will have to do . . .
I’m a little sarcastic here because the Science and the History MUST be given an opportunity with a good strong dollop of common sense . . .
If you look you will see . . .
The fastest warming of all, however . . . the end of the last Ice Ace . . . look at the speed and intensity of acceleration from the last Glacial Maximum or better yet . . . look at the end of the Previous glacial maximum coming into the Eemian . . . Now THAT was Fast !!
We see what we want to see . . . absent common sense . . .
Climate Change is eternal . . . on Planet Earth . . . CO2 has NEVER been a leading indicator, follower yes, at times . . .
Climate Change . . . Nature Rules ! Pollution . . .
THAT is on us . . . Yes a clean up is long over due . . . But CO2 is NOT pollution . . . What is attached to CO2 going up the smoke stack IS . . .
My thoughts . . .
350 BC was the Iron Age – not the Bronze Age ….And the Roman Optimum did not last 700 years ….You write some utter cr*p
Stuart: I just ignore his ramblings.
I nearly fell off my chair when I heard this rubbish on the BBC. In Warwickshire January was dismal cloudy and miserable day after day, no sun, no rain, a bit of frost but generally awful.
Same here in South Shropshire – just like the classic poem “November”!!!!!!!
London was below average after New Year’s Day. We had a longer run of below zero nights than I can remember. Gloves and hat every day. Dry yes, but cold.
It’s much worse than we thought Paul…
http://lsas.uk/friends/articles/17/prognostication
1877-1878 may have been hottest year of the past two centuries.
I have posted versions of this elsewhere. I don’t know how to post images so you should follow the links.
The winter of 1877-1878 first caught my attention in 2016 when Paul Douglas noted in his daily weather column in the Minneapolis StarTribune that ice-out on Lake Minnetonka (a large lake west of Minneapolis) was the earliest since 1878 (March 11). One immediately asks one’s self – what was so special about 1878? Looking on the internet I found an extensive discussion by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources that the winter of 1877-78 was the warmest on record. Winter in the American Midwest was extraordinarily warm, with St. Paul, Minnesota experiencing the year with no winter:
http://climateapps.dnr.state.mn.us/doc/journal/wint77_78.html
“The winter of 1877-1878 — the so-called winter without a winter — was one of the most extreme and anomalous events in Upper Midwest meteorological history. Average temperatures at the St. Paul Signal Corps station were far above winter normals: 34 F in December 1877 (with an overnight minimum temperature of 45 F on 22 December), 22 F in January 1878, 32 F in February 1878 and 45 F in March 1878. As these values suggest, springlike temperatures prevailed throughout much of the winter, provoking the 2 March 1878 edition of the St. Paul Pioneer Press to comment that “….yesterday was the first day of spring, in theory, but in fact we have had the first days of spring nearly all winter….” More at the link.
An article in the evening edition of the Minneapolis Tribune of March 19, 1878 titled “A Wonderful Winter” begins:
“Observations on the weather have been kept at Fort Snelling since 1819. There is nothing in the memory of the living or the records of the dead that give us such a winter and spring as we have passed in the last four or five months. Indeed we have had no winter weather in Minnesota, and the first spring month thus far has been more like May than March.”
Fort Snelling is located just a few miles from Minneapolis and St. Paul, which means that this area has had continuous weather observations since 1819 – over 200 years ago. One cannot extrapolate the Minnesota temperature record to the rest of the world, but it merits notice that, at least here, the winter of 1877-1878 is the warmest of the past two centuries.
This extraordinary warmth was also felt elsewhere in the world, especially in the southern hemisphere, where the months of summer correspond to Minnesota’s winter.
In Australia, the summer of 1877-1878 may have been the hottest on record:
https://jennifermarohasy.com/2014/09/homogenisation-of-williamstown-temperatures-draws-attention-to-hot-newcastle-in-1878/
and
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/01/forgotten-extreme-heat-el-nino-of-1878-when-miners-yearned-for-the-years-when-theyd-knock-off-at-44-4c/
Tony Heller provides a useful chart here:
https://realclimatescience.com/2016/09/afternoon-temperatures-in-australia-peaked-in-1878/
And provides further historical data here: https://realclimatescience.com/2019/08/bourke-nsw-almost-as-hot-as-1878/
South America experienced extremely hot weather:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233922059_The_1877-78_El_Nino_episode_Climate_anomalies_in_South_America_and_associated_impacts
And in India, this was the worst drought of the last 150 years:
https://www.tropmet.res.in/~kolli/MOL/Monsoon/Historical/air.html
Oldbrews comment above shows that a temp. measurement is an intensive value,and is only of interest at that particular place and time.Thats it.