BBC/Met Office Heatwave Predictions Backfire
By Paul Homewood
There was inevitably much hype from the BBC/Met Office about a bit of pleasant weather last week, and the inevitable blaming on climate change:
The UK has recorded its hottest day of the year so far, with temperatures set to rise on Friday, the Met Office said.
Northolt, west London, saw temperatures reach 29.5C (85.1F), surpassing the previous hottest day of the year on Wednesday which saw 28.2C (82.8F).
On Friday the mercury is expected to rise to 34C in the south east of England, exceeding temperatures in parts of Jamaica and the Maldives.
Across most of England and Wales, highs of between 27C and 30C are expected.
The Met Office said the "unusual" temperatures for June were a result of high pressure over the southern half of the UK and a south-westerly airflow bringing warm air across the UK and Europe.
The weather has not yet beaten the record for the hottest June day ever, which was a high of 35.6C at Southampton Mayflower Park in June 1976.
Dr Mark McCarthy, head of the Met Office’s National Climate Information Centre, said climate change had increased the average temperatures of UK summers and the likelihood of experiencing more extreme temperatures during hot spells and heatwaves.
He said: "Reaching 34C during June is a rare, but not unprecedented, event in the historical climate records for the UK.
"But if it should happen this week it would be notable that it would have occurred on three days during the last six Junes."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61831290
Friday came and went, but as the actual data showed afterwards, the weather was not remarkable at all.
Temperatures peaked at 32.7C, well below the record for June of 35.6C , set in 1957 and 1976:
And as Dr McCarthy should know, hot days like these are WEATHER EVENTS, NOT CLIMATE!
CET hit 28.2C on Friday 17th, again in no way an unusual temperature for June. There have been 46 days of 28C and over since 1878:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/data/download.html
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/graphs/2022/daily_maxtemp_cet_2022.png
Finally, let’s return to McCarthy’s comment:
“But if it should happen this week it would be notable that it would have occurred on three days during the last six Junes”
Notice how he is trying to ramp up alarm based on data which did not even exist at the time, and which eventually proved to be a woefully inaccurate prediction.
Apparently this is what we pay our Met Office for!
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
There were obviously too few take-offs & landings at Heathrow.
Seems to be a lot of baggage at Heathrow and at Exeter.
Heathrow was as dominant as it ever is, in fact one source said it matched Santon. It has nothing to do with jet engines. As I pointed out before, the unique local environment at Heathrow causes it to run hot, but the advantage disappears the hotter it gets because the local effect is swamped out by the London conerbation UHI. It was as ever, within a few tenths of Kew, St James etc. throughout.
In the 2020 and 2021 hot spells when there were hardly any flights at all, Heathrow still dominated.
I do wish people would stop the jet engine nonsense based on one slightly suspicious occasion.
Airports absorb more heat primarily through huge swaths of sunheat absorbing black tarmac (the engines just help retain that absorbed heat. I have IR satellite images of this tarmac effect globally – but i dont know how to post images here. You can test this absorption effect for yourself on a sunny day, lie in a grassy field next to a road then lie in the middle of the road – feel the burn!
I agree with the comments of bobn. If you wish to measure screen temps accurately for climate purposes you make sure that tarmac and concrete are a good distance away – unless you have an agenda.
Still, jet effluent effects have often been seen on temperature traces when a taxing aircraft has got close but at Heathrow it is not ideal but probably a small effect overall.
To post pictures just get a jpg or jpeg version of the image seem to be ones that work( right click to copy image address) make sure its https as well.
And then just paste that link under your text explanation. The blog will show the image instead of the link
Mankind went to the moon with less computing power than the average pocket calculator, but with a Cray supercomputer the MET are no more successful at getting weather forecast’s right than they were when I were a lad in the early 1970’s.
I have searched without success for a metric that demonstrates the accuracy (or otherwise) of weather forecasts over the decades. Certainly, I on a purely subjective basis, agree that forecasts have not improved over the last few decades; would like to find some factual evidence either way. Might try “More or Less”, one of the few listenable radio 4 programmes.
Well it actually depends on how you set the measure of success.
If you forecast over a winter night that the air temperature will fall to minus 5c and it just about makes it down to zero. Is that success? Bearing in mind that in one instances you might have several hours of frost and in the latter 10 minutes.
You might think that was a fatuous example, but I can assure you that it depends on your agreed service level agreement and a customer/user need.
Since the MetO – and others – constantly change their forecasts, including on the same day, they claim a high success rate. LOL Take Jubillee Sunday, on the lead up to the weekend it did not look good for our annual village hog roast and celebration as a wet day was forecast. By Sunday morning it was now rain from 3pm, which meant it could be worse. However, come 3pm the radar showed the rain way to the south still and we got through the day dry. On returning home, the rain was now due at 9pm but actually started at 8pm.
“The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.”
~ Prof. Chris Folland ~ (Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research)
The unexpected result of the climate emergency.
The weather is entirely normal!
It is June and a plume of desert air from the Sahara heads north over western Europe.
On crossing the Pyrenees the descending air brings high temperatures to western France.
Ventusky 18Jun22
This is normal weather associated with the 30-year phase of Meridional air flow that is part of the natural 60-year climate cycle.
Not just western France. Three days of record temps for June in Burgundy.
(Mind you, my records only go back 12 years.) 🤡
The incessant doom mongering by the MSM reveals only its ownership by 5 major globalist organizations who delight in spewing their rhetoric about everything they wish to bring about, rather than any honest facts on a range of subjects.
I C. You are obviously not informed enough. Mankind has never gone to the moon. It was just another scam!
You are obviously a troll who wants to suggest commenters on here are nutters.
Seen it all before.
Go forth and multiply.
He came 1st … all down his leg !!
Eejit…
I read every article on this site. But I would never read, nor believe, anything from the BBC, even if they said the sun rises. Liars tend to deflect a little truth before they tell their whoppers.
Unfortunately false or modelled predictions find an echo chamber in the media and then enter social conversation as certain fact. I was sitting outside a pub on Monday having a drink with friends and we overheard the next table being scared by the climate emergency – “It’s too hot for me… This heat is unprecedented!” – and then 10 minutes later they were discussing a forthcoming holiday in Greece. Should I laugh, cry, or start an argument? I once asked a group of climate warriors in a public meeting ( I was opposing a windfarm) what percentage of Earth’s atmosphere is CO2 and got answers ranging up to 20 per cent. The media really are to blame for implanting the climate crisis panic. Unthinking. Uncritical. Uneducated.
What was the lowest answer? I bet none of them got 0.04%
Correct – the climate warriors didn’t have a clue. None of them seemed to think it was less than “about 12 per cent”. And when I gave the correct figure they didn’t believe it, and I mean that literally. They thought I must somehow be mistaken.
If the “climate warriors ” were young it is difficult to understand their ignorance about the % of CO2. I have been helping one of the grandchildren with GCSE chemistry revision and of course the syllabus is full of sustainability , global warming , H2 fuel cells , etc . But the syllabus is also quite clear about the % of CO2 in the air, where it comes from , its predominance in the early atmosphere and its connection with plant growth . It should be impossible for anyone who went to school recently to be ignorant about CO2 concentrations.
Incidentally some might complain that the current GCSE is much easier than the old O levels . Well I think that the syllabus generally today is better than the old O level syllabus in chemistry at least , being more focussed on calculations and less on general descriptive chemistry.
I once convinced a group of greens that there was an important group of Italian activists known as Avogadro’s Number. They believed me until one of them goggled the name and astonishingly came up with a restaurant in Colorado!
Many on here will be familiar with the Surface Stations project over on Tallbloke’s site. This is how the Santon Downham site was described “Estimated Class 4, fails class 3 on 12.9% hardstanding within 10 metres, WMO limit 10%” This was back in 2007 – the site has got much worse since with additional buildings!
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/surfacestation-santon-downham/
Go to google maps and search 52.459178N 0.671189E and zoom in on satellite view.
It really makes the Met Office look like a bunch of dodgy 2nd hand car salesmen trying to sell old bangers as nearly brand new limos claiming that site is justifiable for setting anything other than corrupt data let alone quoting to a decimal place.
Surely this nonsense has got to be stopped?
Remember the great Cambridge high scam? Not even a MetO site but they rushed to check the equipment to be able to claim the highest temperature evah!! Shame they ignore the environment which like Santon Down was 3 at best but 4 if the pic of the freshly dug soil around it was there at the time.
Oh yes I certainly do remember the Cambridge scam. I put in a written complaint to the Met Office pointing out that site was delisted from the CET series in 1931 (yes 1931) due to acknowledged evidence of Urban warming even back then. See page 321 3rd paragraph link below. The site now is much worse.
Click to access Parker_etalIJOC1992_dailyCET.pdf
They wrote back the most ridiculous reply simply stating the instruments were found to be accurate.
Am I on the naughty step? My last post doesn’t seem to have gone anywhere!
Okay I shall try again. Santon Downham site is shown here.
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/surfacestation-santon-downham/
The site has got worse since. Google maps for 52.459178N 0.671189E and zoom in. This site should not prove accurate to within 2°C but the Met Office seem to think it is accurate enough to the decimal place.
It’s laughable how desperate the alarmists are to find evidence that confirms their in-built bias. When they fail to find it, they resort to hoping for it.
On a tangent a relative stated last week that renewables provide most of the UK’s energy. I did clarify that reference to energy as opposed to electricity but no, energy was the word used.
“Santon Downham – the Topsy-Turvy weather capital of the UK” You couldn’t make it up.
http://santondownham.org
Some misdirection here methinks concentrating on the 1976 date when the record of 35.6 oC was actually set 29/06/1957 in Camden Square (London) and then equalled in 1976.
As confirmed by the Met Office’s Sunday quiz
They were also hoping to break the long standing UK record for that day of 33.9 oC set in 1917 in Little Massingham (Norfolk). Only 1.3 oC short of that.
It was 19C in West Wales.
We are getting more heatwaves reported since Met-office changed the criteria around 2019 ?
Anyone remember the original definition ???
Changed again this year…https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/weather/types-of-weather/temperature/heatwave
If it gets over just 25°C for 3 consecutive days in Honiton, Devon then it’s a heatwave there. No I am not joking!
Contrast that with the Wikipedia review of the summer of 1976. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_British_Isles_heat_wave
Back then it was only considered significant if temperatures went over 30°C. I graduated that year and we all thought the weather was marvellous.
Is Southampton Mayfair Park’s weather station still active?
Surely one should compare like to like?
Wasn’t it Dr. Johnson who said that the English summer consisted of three fine days and a thunderstorm?
Well well what do you know, last week we had the three fine days, and yesterday evening I hear that there was a “yellow warning” for lightning and downpours.
Really, nothing much changes, does it.
“Wasn’t it…?”
I think it was Charles II, but I stand to be corrected.
So many sayings were first said by another.
Oscar Wilde was in company when someone produced a witticism, and Wilde said,
“I wish I had said that!” upon which the first speaker returned, ” Oh, you will ! “