Met Office State of UK Climate 2022
By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby/Robin Guenier/Paul Kolk/Ian Magness
The record-breaking UK heat experienced in 2022 will be regarded as a cool year by the end of this century, the Met Office says.
Its report shows that last year was "extraordinary", with a heatwave pushing the UK record over 40C for the first time.
Hot years like 2022 will be the average by 2060, if carbon emissions are as expected, the authors say.
By 2100, it would be a cooler-than-average year across the UK.
Climate change is having an increasing impact on all parts of the UK, playing a key role in pushing last year’s temperatures to record highs.
While rain might be the dominant factor in the current UK climate, just a year ago the UK was suffering from a powerful heatwave that helped make 2022 the warmest year in records dating back to 1884, and also broke the Central England temperature series that goes back to 1659.
The UK’s highest daily temperature last year was 40.3C, recorded at Coningsby in Lincolnshire, which beat the previous high mark by a large margin.
As well as persistent warmth, one key aspect of the study shows that extreme temperatures in the UK are changing much faster than the average.
"The actual extremes that we’re seeing, the highest, the hottest days, those are really increasing markedly too," said lead author Mike Kendon.
"We’re going to see very, very many more days, exceeding 30, 32 or 35C. So warmer summers will become very much more frequent, and hot days will become very much more frequent."
One of the elements that might have led to a very hot year in 2022 and may help explain the current wetter summer are changes in the jet stream, the fast moving winds that carry weather systems across the Atlantic to the UK.
In recent years the jet stream has shown a tendency to get stuck, meaning that weather patterns can persist or become "blocked" in place for weeks. There is a school of thought that a warming climate is causing this change.
"I think the jury is out, but there is definitely some science showing that we are getting these much more persistent, static kind of weather patterns, similar to what we’ve got at the moment with the heat waves," said Prof Liz Bentley, from the Royal Meteorological Society.
"It’ll be interesting to see if there’s conclusive evidence that climate change has led to that. And that’s going to be a pattern that we see going forward in future."
The authors of the Met Office study say that 2022’s record year for the UK was made much more likely by climate change.
"The heatwave that is happening now across southern Europe, the heatwave that we saw last year, all of these things are fitting into a pattern," said Mr Kendon.
"These things emphasise that our climate is changing. And it’s changing now, and it’s changing fast."
Looking forward, under a medium emissions scenario, there’s a 1 in 15 chance that the UK would hit 40C in any one year by the end of the century.
"That trend for (extreme temperatures) is going to increase as we go through this century," said Prof Liz Bentley.
"If you look at future climate projections, we are on a path for hotter, drier summers. So 2022, for me was very much a sign of things to come in future years with our changing climate."
The ten year period from 2013 to 2022 is the warmest ten-year period on record.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-66304220
The Met Office has apparently not realised that one day’s weather is not climate. There is no evidence whatsoever that the 40C weather last year was anything but a freak meteorological event.
As for the claim that “we are on a path for hotter, drier summers”, the Met Office’s own data says otherwise. Recent summers temperatures have still not managed to top the summer of 1976, or for that matter 1995. Indeed last summer was only 0.2C hotter than 1899’s!
It is weather that is the driver for hot summers, not climate change. And, of course, summers have been getting wetter in recent decades, not drier as the Met Office projects.
Finally they claim that the ten year period from 2013 to 2022 is the warmest ten-year period on record.
It is, but barely so. UK temperature between 2013 and 2022 averaged 9.44C, compared with 9.35C between 1998 and 2007; effectively no more than a rounding error.
This lack of any real warming trend in the last two decades does not support the Met Office’s claim that hot years like 2022 will be the average by 2060.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-and-regional-series
FOOTNOTE
You may have noticed this attempt to blame the currently cold and damp summer on global warming:
As the above charts illustrate, UK summers have always veered from one extreme to another from year to year, how and cold, and wet and dry. You don’t need to invoke the climate bogeyman to explain away normal British weather!
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
“Climate change is having an increasing impact on all parts of the UK…”
Should read:
“Climate change hysteria is having an increasing impact on all parts of the UK…”
I was amused to note the increase in the Guardian’s climate hysteria today – in particular claiming no-one will want to holiday on the Med in the future. In the very same issue today they report the finding – alas – of three people in Colorado USA who died while attempting to live in the wild. The main reason they died, the local report suspected, was because Colorado had had its coldest winter in decades.
Media induced climate change. Of course it’s real, I saw it on the telly.
I have been tracking the tropics tropopause for the past few months. The highest, at the start of summer, was 58000ft. It has now settled to around 53000ft. Surely this will have an effect on the transport of energy towards the poles? Exacerbated by El Niño? And I haven’t even started on the Walker cells…
I seem to remember that tearly in the warming scare, the science(?) Behind warming to be caused by CO2 would result in less variation between seasons, the increase in global average temperature would be caused mostly by less cold winters rather than hot summers. This has disappeared under a shower of hottest ever records (?) claims which bear no relation to how increased CO2 should affect the climate.
Because there exists NO empirical data of any kind to tie variation in atmospheric CO2 to either temperature or the moronic arts graduate hysteria about klymutt shenshe, neither is there any empirical data which identifies and supports human contribution to either global temperature or their cretinous klymutt shenshe. No data means NO science no matter how many performing fools are paraded on tv and in the media spouting their asinine nonsense about “settled science” and “97% of scientists agree” and pretending weather is climate. This whole charade requires belief not data. Indeed it shies away from data like Dracula from sunlight. Data is its enemy as is data or facts the enemy of religion. This is a religion manipulated by dark malevolent forces hiding in the shadows who’s intentions are not good.
There is no science behind the global warming scare .https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism/
And 2022 global temperature was .26degree C below the 30 year average .
But UK weather does have variations over the years .
Is this caused by the UKs 0.00001%, [ or 1 part in 10 million ], of the CO2 it puts into the atmosphere ??????????????
As others comment, the meja are in total hysteria mode at the moment with hourly doom-scares. The billionaires are obviously frightened that the public have seen through the scams.
‘ a school of thought ‘ – WTF? How about there is scientific evidence that the change in the jetstream pattern is caused by CO2? The evidence suggests that the change comes from a low level of solar activity but there is not as far as I know a solid explanation as to how. But then how many Billions are being to spent to research this as opposed to those wasted on trying to prove the temperature – CO2 correlation with no success?
Still promoting the ‘Typhoon record temperature’ I see and as to the ’40C summer’ last July, the temperature recorded on my patio never reached that on the ONE day it all happened. I don’t think it even made 102F let alone 104F.
The Beeb is still peddling the myth that the more CO2 the more warming there’ll be.
Global emissions have actually risen regardless of all the COP pledges. Still no sign of hot summers in the UK bar a mere couple of hot days (some heatwave) in small pockets of the UK last summer,
Is the ‘school of thought’ based upon the Ferguson modelling technique of ignoring all empirical evidence and loading your mathematical model with selected data?
Dr Candice Howarth of the LSE Grantham Research Institute: “2022 heatwaves would not have been possible without climate change. The July heatwave was extremely rare, a one-in-1000-year event, and was made ten times more likely due to anthropogenic climate change”.
So that makes it just a once-a-century probability, I assume? How worrying is that?
The quote from Prof Liz Bentley (“It’ll be interesting to see if there’s conclusive evidence that climate change has led to that”) is referring to the jet stream. What a pity that all the commentators on the global climate – I refuse to call them scientists – don’t make that comment about every spurious conclusion that is repeated as if it’s proven fact.
Like gezza1298 I noticed the use of the weasel phrase “There is a school of thought that a warming climate is causing this change” – designed to ensure that the casual reader who wants to believe in the catastrophe theory of human activity will take it as absolute proof rather than mere speculation. It is the nature of a religion to tell you that their conclusions are true as you can’t definitively prove they are not, however unlikely they appear. But this is supposed to be rational science and not a brainwashed cult.
Now, what was the name of the woman in that long-ago comedy “Nuts in May”?
Candice Marie
The most recent really hot summer in the UK was in 1976, nearly 50 years ago. Now imagine if the Met Office had made a prediction in 1977 that the UK was likely to face really hot summer weather in future years………. they would look pretty stupid today.
“The most recent really hot summer in the UK was in 1976,”
Not any more according to the Met Orifice, after getting the supercomputer to “homogenise” it, the record shows that 1976 was not particularly long, hot or dry.
“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)
This extraordinary statement from “Prof” Folland needs to be broadcast far and wide and challenged. How can anyone who calls himself a scientist make such a statement? Models need to be continuously checked against actual data – they are not an end in themselves.
Gentlemen
There is no doubt that average yearly temperatures for the UK are higher than they were 30 plus years ago. But the increase still has not exceeded the dreaded so called tipping point of +1.5 degrees C. My view is that no man is capable of telling what the future may be. Will a so called tipping point ever be met?
My feeling is that the doom mongers are winning, especially in the UK. Our politicians are being led by their noses and as a consequence we are in the process of bankrupting ourselves. It does not matter how much non believers, like most who watch this web site, say.
Please note that the media are interested in big stories (not the “truth”) Hence last week, a lot of fuss was made about the fact that this week temperature records will be broken! Big story and lot of good headlines. Mission accomplished.
This week, no records broken anywhere. Who cares? They got the story and no-one went back and said “your predictions were wrong!” Now it is all about wildfires, as if they were a new phenomenon…
I’ve thought and said this for a number of years, forecasts get hyped to a huge extent “Met Office forecasts exact date heatwave/hurricane/snow/earthquake/tornadoes/etc will begin” The so called date is always 10 days ahead. What matters people remember the forecast not the actuality
J K Galbraith said there were 2 types of forecasters: those who were wrong and those who didn’t know they were wrong.
I too am a skeptic of claims of climate change BUT … isn’t there a clear trend over the last 40 years (1983-2023) of increasing temperatures in the UK data?
“Hot years like 2022 will be the average by 2060….”
Where is the evidence that 2022 was a HOT YEAR?
Since when do a couple of days of ‘hot’ temperatures in a summer month in parts of the UK constitute a “HOT YEAR”.
“In the context of the last few centuries the summer 2022 in Central England/ England and Wales was hot and dry. But it was not exceptionally so. The summers of 1976 and 1995 were both substantially hotter and drier”
https://mikehulme.org/the-2022-uk-summer-in-long-term-perspective/
With regards climate change scaremongering in the uk (see the 2022 review) there are two central problems. One is the Met Office and the other is the BBC. What can be done about this? At the moment the scaremongering media has the upper hand.
And we’re paying for both.
pkinkade: for interest, here’s the Met Office Temperature, Rainfall and Sunshine data set from which the UK summer rainfall graph above was taken:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-
temperature-rainfall-and-sunshine-time-series
Trend lines are just that – they’re not predictors of what will happen in the future, as you see on the decade by decade graph plots (the dotted black lines).
‘a sign of things to come in future years’
blah blah blah
We used to laugh at people who claimed they could predict the future.
Today’s Matt cartoon in the DT says it all.