What The Met Office Did Not Tell You About Extreme Temperatures – Watts Up With That?

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Climate change is causing a dramatic increase in the frequency of temperature extremes and number of temperature records the UK experiences.

New analysis of observations shows that extremes of temperature in the UK are most affected by human induced climate change. This means the UK is seeing, on average, more frequent periods of hot weather, bringing challenges for infrastructure, health and wellbeing.

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/news-and-media/media-centre/weather-and-climate-news/2024/temperature-extremes-and-records-most-affected-by-uks-changing-climate

Remember the Met Office’s recent claim that we seeing a dramatic increase in the frequency of temperature extremes?

As I pointed out at the time, while we might be experiencing an increasing number of hot days, we are also having fewer extreme cold days. The Met Office’s claim is therefore simply not true.

I have now had a chance to do a full analysis, which will be included in my GWPF State of the Climate report due out shortly.

I have taken the CET daily mean temperature data since 1961, and extracted the coldest and hottest 5% – ie days below the 5th percentile and above the 95th percentile.

As suspected, there has been an increase in the number of the hottest days, though interestingly, apart from 2018, years such as 1975, 1976, 1995 and 2006 were at similar levels to recent years. The last decade does not appear to be much different to the 1990s and 2000s, suggesting we won’t see any further significant increase. Ultimately hot days are the result of anti-cyclonic weather, and the UK’s variable, temperate climate tends to mitigate against summer long heatwaves.

But as well getting more hot days, we are also seeing a drastic reduction in the number of extreme cold days:

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When we combine hot and cold together, there is no trend at all, either up or down:

The most extreme years were 1963, 1976, 1983, 1995, 2010 and 2018.

This analysis was easy to do, so why did the Met Office do something similar in their State of the UK Climate Report this year?

Instead they chose to deliberately deceive the public into believing that UK weather is becoming more extreme.