Archives par mot-clé : UK

better to know...?, climate-debate

What Heatwave?

by P. Homewood, Apr 14, 2024 in NotaLotOfPeopleKnowThat

I hope you did not blink, otherwise you may have missed it!

Brits are set to bask in a ’72 hour’ heatwave, according to some forecasters, but not everyone will be feeling the heat as two parts of England are expected to miss out on the sizzling temperatures.

Weather maps reveal that while many will enjoy a mini April heatwave, some will still face April showers. According to WX Charts, which uses Met Desk data for its predictions, temperatures could soar to a balmy 21C at times this month.

The charts indicate that Londoners can expect to enjoy highs of 20C from today until Saturday, with East Anglia and the East Midlands not far behind at 19C. Cities like Birmingham, Nottingham, Manchester, and Sheffield are also set to experience a warm 18C.

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/72-hour-heatwave-hit-parts-28989573

Sure enough temperatures reached 21C in Essex, but I don’t know anyone who would actually describe this as a heatwave:

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climate-debate

UK Rainfall In 2023

by P. Homewood, Jan 7 ,2024 in NotaLotofPeopleKonwThat

image

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadukp/data/monthly/HadEWP_monthly_totals.txt

Last year was a wet one in England & Wales, the 7th wettest on record. (The UK series has a similar result).

We routinely hear claims that the climate is wetter because a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, (while also being told we will get more droughts!). However the fact that we have had similarly wet years in the distant past, such as 1768, 1852, 1872, 1877, 1882, 1903 and 1960, rather demolishes that argument.

The major factor behind last year’s high rainfall was that the number of rain days was also one of the highest on record since 1931, when Met Office daily data begins. In short, annual rainfall was high because of weather, not climate.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

CET Daily Temperatures

by P. Homewood, Jan 4, 2023 in NotaLotofPeople KnowThat

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cet_info_max2023.html

I want to focus on the end of year CET graph, which gives the lie to the extreme temperature myth often bandied around.

The graph plots daily max CET temperatures, against the background of the percentiles of the 1961-90 climatology. The Met Office should of course be using 1991-2020 as the baseline, so the climatology should be shifted upwards by a half a degree or so. But we’ll leave that aside.

We can legitimately regard anything between the 5% and 95% bands as being “weather”. Only days outside this might be regarded as “extreme”. (I would actually argue anything outside 1% and 99%).

We see that apart from a handful of days, every day was within that “normal weather” band.

In a year there will be 36 days outside of that band on average. The Met Office do not supply the data for these percentiles to enable the number of days to be calculated, but this year it does not look to be excessive in terms of that average.

Moreover, although there were a few days in September which set record highs for that particularly day, none were records for the month as a whole. The highest temperature last September was 28.9C, but the record for September stands at 31.5C in 1906:

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Of course most of the year had temperatures above the average. But we have a wide range of weather in Britain. We can have mild, wet winters, and cold, snowy ones; we can have cool, wet summers and sunny hot ones. But these are weather events, not climate, and they are dependent on weather patterns, the jet stream and so on.

A predominance of warmer weather is not climate change.

climate-debate

CET 30-Year Averages

by P. Homewood, Sept 7, 2021 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

The World Meteorological Organisation is clear about defining climate average:

image

It is disappointing then that the Met Office still continues to use the 1981-2010 period as its base. By doing this, of course, it exaggerates temperature increases in the UK.

If we look at the Central England Temperature mean temperatures, for example, we see that both winter and spring this year were colder than average, whilst summer was only 0.3C warmer:

 

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climate-debate

Climate Crisis Update–England As Warm As 1736 Last Month!

by P. Homewood, February 13, 2020 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cet_info_mean.html

It’s been a mild start to the year here in England. In fact, according to the CET, it’s been the 14th warmest January since the start of records in 1659.

No doubt fingers will be pointed at global warming, but as the above chart shows, we have simply had mild weather of the commonly seen before. The difference is that it lasted virtually all month.

Moreover we have had warmer Januaries way back in the past. The warmest was in 1916, followed by 1921, 1796 and 1834.

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/mly_cet_mean_sort.txt

Continuer la lecture de Climate Crisis Update–England As Warm As 1736 Last Month! →

climate-debate, energy and fields

Gas needed for low-carbon targets says National Grid

by P. Homewood, April 8, 2018 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

Bit by bit, some reality appears to be intruding into the make believe world of the Climate Change Act:

No credible scenario’ exists for hitting the UK’s 2050 decarbonisation targets without continued reliance on gas, the National Grid has warned.

In a new report, entitled The Future of Gas: How gas can support a low carbon future’, the grid says that it is not feasible to switch over to electric heating on the scale required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 80 per cent of 1990 levels by the middle of this century.

better to know...?, press and newspapers

Two inches of snow will fall TONIGHT before the coldest night of the year hits TOMORROW with temperatures of -10C and wintry showers

by A Matthews and M Duell, November 29, 2017 in MailOnline

  • Widespread frost and snowfall is on the way with temperatures plummeting in London by this evening

  • Parts of Scotland could fall to -10C (14F), lower than the -8C forecast in Lapland and OC in St Petersburg

  • Met Office has issued ice warnings for northern Scotland and England  with 2in inches of snow set to fall

  • Snow is also forecast for North East England tomorrow including up to 4in on the North York Moors

 

energy and fields

Drilling set to begin in British shale

by Daniel J. Graeber, July 28, 2017

“With the decline of North Sea gas and our ever increasing reliance on gas imports, including shale gas imported from the United States, developing an indigenous source of natural gas is critical for U.K. energy security, our economy, jobs and the environment,” Cuadrilla CEO Francis Egan said in a statement. “We are proud as a Lancashire company to be at the forefront of that effort.