From The DAILY SCEPTIC

BY CHRIS MORRISON

Pressure is likely to grow in the coming days for the U.K. Met Office to make a full public statement about the state of its nationwide temperature measuring stations. This follows sensational revelations in last Friday’s Daily Sceptic that nearly eight out of ten sites had huge scientifically-designated ‘uncertainties’ that essentially disqualified them from providing the accurate data required to promote the collectivist Net Zero agenda. Our report went viral on social media with over 1,300 retweets on X, and it was reposted on a number of sites. The investigative journalist Paul Homewood has covered the Met Office’s temperature claims for many years, and in the light of the new disclosures he noted that if it wanted to continue to use its existing station measurements, it should show a warning that the margin of error is so great “that they have no statistical significance at all”.

Specifically, nearly one in three (29.2%) Met Office sites are rated by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) as CIMO Class 5, and this comes with a warning of “estimated uncertainties added by siting of 5C°”. Class 5 can be termed a ‘junk’ rating since the WMO gives no guidance on where it can be located. The next to junk Class 4 comes with uncertainties of 2C°, while Class 3 has a 1C° warning. From information disclosed under a Freedom of Information request, the Daily Sceptic compiled the graph below that shows Class 4 accounted for 48.7% of the Met Office’s 380 recording stations. Only 13.7%, or 52 stations are free of ‘uncertainties’ warnings.

Net Zero promotion requires reasonably precise measurements of both local and global temperatures and these are simply not available. In the run-up to last year’s COP28 meeting, the BBC ran an explanatory article on the significance of the 1.5C° threshold, a rise of the Earth’s temperature based on the ending of the Little Ice Age. “Every tenth of a degree of warming matters, but as you get warmer each increment matters more”, said Myles Allen, Professor of Geosystem Science at the University of Oxford, and a co-ordinating author of the IPCC’s special report on 1.5C° in 2018. It is difficult to see how precision down to 0.1C° can be achieved by consulting current Met Office data, let alone the ability to claim to two decimal points, as the Met Office did, that last year in the U.K. was only 0.06C° cooler than the all-time annual record.

Comments on social media following the Daily Sceptic publication were often damning. On Homewood’s site, ‘YorksChris’ observed, “wow, this is horrendous… some of the locations of the so-called professional stations simply amaze me!”, while ‘magasox’ commented that this was huge, adding, “sceptics should shout it from the rooftops at every opportunity”. Heads, he felt, should roll, “but of course they won’t”. On the Daily Sceptic blog, ‘For a fist full of roubles’ looked forward to mainstream media latching on to this, “and revealing how the powers that be deliberately mislead us”. On the U.S.-based Watts Up With That? site over 300 posts greeted the news, with ‘UK-Weather-Lass’ stating: “It’s about time there was a public inquiry into how rotten and unfit for purpose the Met Office is, and why it is allowed to continue to be so.”

The problems with the Met Office data are mainly caused by increasing urbanisation which has encroached on the space around stations and corrupted measurements with artificial heat. Similar problems have been identified around the world leading to ever-increasing doubts about the accuracy of frequently quoted ‘global’ temperatures. Scientists estimate that heat corruption is likely to be responsible for up to 30% of warming claimed by the meteorological databases. The Met Office adds its figures to global compilations but the increasingly politicised state-funded operation also uses its data to declare almost constant temperature ‘records’. The Daily Sceptic has investigated the heat records declared since 2000 and found that all bar two should be disqualified. Many of them have been set in ‘junk’ Class 5 and most of the rest in Class 4.

Class 5 records include the highest daily maximum temperature in Northern Ireland, declared in 2021 at Castlederg. The highest January monthly temperature was set this year at Achfary and this Class 5 site also holds the record set in December 2019. Three U.K. area records were also set at Class 5 sites including England NW, East Anglia and England SE and Central S. The latter record was provided by St. James’s Park, which was one of five sites that was said to top 40C° on July 19th, 2022. This particular event was lauded at the time by the Met Office as a “milestone in climate history”. Another one of the 40C° sites, Northolt airport, is also Class 5.

According to the WMO, a Class 5 site is one where nearby obstacles “create an inappropriate environment for a meteorological measurement that is intended to be representative of a wide area”. According to a previous FOI request from Paul Homewood, the Met Office noted that Class 5 data, “will be flagged and not quoted in national records”. This does not appear to happen. On July 25th, 2019, the site at the Cambridge Botanic Gardens was credited with an new U.K. temperature record of 38.7C°. The Cambridge Botanic Gardens is a Class 5 site, and it still holds the July record for the region of East Anglia. All these records should be removed, or at least flagged with the large uncertainties set down by the WMO.

Ditto ‘near junk’ Class 4, where the crowd of record holders is higher. Class 4 sites include Charterhall where the highest Scottish temperature was set in 2022, and Hawarden Airport, home to the highest Welsh recording. A monthly U.K. record for August was set in 2003 at Faversham, while no less than five U.K. areas have records attributed to this class that comes with a WMO ‘uncertainty’ of 2C°. The all-time British record was set on July 19th, 2022 at a Class 3 site, which comes with WMO uncertainty of 1C°. Set halfway down the runway at RAF Coningsby, the record stood for just 60 seconds at 3:12pm, and was preceded by a rise and fall of 0.6C° either side of the event. A previous FOI from the Daily Sceptic disclosed that three typhoon fighter jets were landing on the runway at or around the time the record was set. All of these records should also be ditched as well, or given appropriate warnings.

So far as can be seen, no Met Office heat record has been set since 2000 at pristine Class 1 sites, which might not surprise given there are only 24 of them. Only two – the highest U.K. February temperature at 21.2C° and November at 22.4C° – have been set at near pristine Class 2 locations.

Most propagandising for Net Zero revolves around higher temperatures, and without this ammunition the project will quickly wither. It explains why these so-called ‘records’ are rarely out of the mainstream media headlines. The high temperature readings are weaponised at the national level, but local media is also targeted. This can be shown by considering the photograph below from Google Earth.

This is the site of the Sheffield temperature station. On July 19th, 2022, the local Star newspaper reported that the city had smashed the temperature record with over 39C° for the first time. According to the Met Office, the newspaper reported, the record reached 39.4C° on July 18th. The red marker shows where the Sheffield readings are taken, hard by a busy road with a large bus lane, surrounded by either city buildings or heavy vegetation, and located at or near what appears to be a concrete park. It might not surprise to learn that Sheffield is a Class 5 site.

The Met Office’s Chief Scientist and leading Net Zero promoter Professor Stephen Belcher states that “in a climate unaffected by human influence, climate modelling shows that it is virtually impossible for temperatures in the U.K. to reach 40C°”. It is not thought he was referring to the influence of typhoon jets or the 95 bus.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor

From the Cliff Mass Weather Blog

Cliff Mass

 The Seattle’s Times ClimateLab writers have done it again.

Another highly deceptive and error-filled climate story in the ST.  One predicting more than a doubling of wildfires over western Washington and Oregon by mid-century.

The trouble is that this story is based on a highly problematic paper published in February in JGR Biogeosciences (see below).   A paper that is missing the key element of Westside wildfires and makes predictions that are unsupported and highly exaggerated.

Before anyone suggests I should not comment on this work, let me note that I am doing research on EXACTLY this topic.  I have read all the relevant papers.  The authors of this paper cite several of my previous papers on the topic.

The Key Control of Westside Fires Was Ignored

Both this article and the Seattle Times article ignore the central fact about major wildfires occurring west of the Cascade Crest.  

Let me explain.

Westside fires are infrequent for a reason:  the region west of the Cascade crest is generally too moist to burn.   Precipitation is abundant west of the crest (see below) and for most of the year cool, moist marine air from off the Pacific (whose temperature is about 50F) floods over western Washington and Oregon.

Moisture vegetation and ground surfaces, as well as cool/moist air.    Wildfires don’t have a chance and are thus rare.

But there is an atmospheric “trick” that can make Westside wildfires possible:  strong easterly (from the east) winds.   Winds that are generally dry and warm, and capable of pushing the moist/cool marine air out to sea.

Virtually all major Westside fires are associated with strong easterly winds.  

The air starts relatively dry over eastern Washington and Oregon.  As it descends the western slopes of the Cascades and coastal mountains, it is warmed by compression, causing relative humidity to plummet.   

The warm, dry air associated with powerful downslope winds can rapidly dry surface fuels, no matter how moist they were days or weeks before.  The strong winds can also start fires, by damaging electrical infrastructure. among other ways.

I have looked at every one of the Westside fires of the past 120 years– all of them were associated with powerful easterly winds.   

Examples include the Yacolt Burn near Vancouver, WA in 1902, the Tillamook Fires of the 1930s, and the 2020 fires over western Oregon (there are more).  Being a little warmer or drier the days before would have made little difference to these fires:  the easterly winds were the key.

Tillamook Burn, Clatsop County Oregon

So if you want to know how Westside fires will change over the next century, you MUST determine how the easterly winds will change.

Unfortunately, the JGR paper does not examine this issue at all.  The Seattle Times article ignores the issue as well.

You probably are asking yourself:  Will strong easterly winds strengthen or weaken under global warming?   

I have examined this question with high-resolution regional climate models (and published the results in the peer-reviewed literature).  It appears easterly winds will WEAKEN, which would reduce Westside fires.    The Seattle Times article doesn’t provide that critical information.

But the problem with the Seattle Times article and paper it cites does not end there.

The paper assumes the same distribution and frequency of fire starts as today and then uses the output from global climate models to see how the fires would change as the earth warms.

Unfortunately, they used a highly unrealistic and aggressive global warming scenario (RCP 8.5) that greatly exaggerates any global warming impacts.   

The global model also is far too coarse to get the local meteorology correct. For example, THERE ARE NO CASCADES in the simulation at all.

Finally, let me note there are many other problems with the paper and even more in the Seattle Times story.

The ClimateLab series in the Seattle Times is pushing incorrect and hyped climate information.  The reporters do not evaluate the validity of the exaggerated claims they report.  This is not quality journalism and misinforms citizens who need accurate information about climate change.  

By Jim Steele

1. There is a global fire crisis! The truth: Fires are totally driven by local conditions. Framing wildfires as a global crisis is a misleading semantic device to frame fires as part of a CO2 driven global warming narrative. For example (GRAPHIC A), the American southwest’s naturally dry climate always makes that region vulnerable to fire weather. California receives no moisture during the 4 months of summer, naturally drying vegetation. In contrast eastern USA gets most of its rains during the summer and suffers much fewer fires.

• Wildfires have Dramatically Increased! The truth: Graphs (GRAPHIC B), only showing changes in wildfire frequency since 1950 are egregiously cherry-picking the timeline. Long term research (GRAPHIC C) shows wildfire were far more frequent before 1900. Afterwards intensive fire suppression dropped fire frequency to all time lows. However, fire suppression was allowing a dangerous accumulation of ground fuels. So, over the past 3 decades, fire suppression policies have been relaxed to allow more fires.

• Climate Crisis Expanded Fire season to All Year! The truth: Natural fire season is caused by lightning ignitions and peaks in June thru August (GRAPHIC D blue bars). It’s human ignitions that have expanded the fire season (GRAPHIC D red bars). 85% to 95% of all fires are due to human ignitions. In the US, 13% are started by arsonists.

• Global Warming Made Vegetation More Flammable: The truth: We all know starting a sustainable campfire requires flammable tinder and kindling (GRAPHIC E). Fire experts call tinder 1-hour fuels and kindling 10-hour and 100-hour fuels (GRAPHIC F). That means the tinder and kindling that starts wildfires only require 1 to 4 days of dry weather to become highly flammable. 1 to 4 days is weather, NOT climate. Flammable fuels that start wildfires have nothing to do with climate change which requires at least 30 years of change to detect.

•  Reporting Increased Burnt Area Fails to Mention Vegetation Type! The truth: Grass and shrub fires dominated by 1-hour and 10-hour fuels account for 70% of the burnt area since 1990.(GRAPHIC G) . The extensive recent Texas panhandle fire is an example of a human ignition starting a prairie grass fire during Texas’ naturally driest month of the year. Furthermore, 1-hour fuels in grass and shrublands have increased due the increase in invasive cheat grass. .(GRAPHIC H) Unlike most native grasses, cheat grass is an annual that dies and dries out by early spring, providing fuels for earlier fires. Furthermore, in the deserts of the American southwest, limited ground fuel controls fire frequency. It once took 80 to 100 years to accumulate enough ground fuel to sustain a desert wildfire. Now cheat grass has added abundant ground fuels that have dramatically increase western USA’s desert wildfire frequency.

• Mindlessly Blame CO2 warming for Increased Aridity! The truth: Studies of precipitation since 1998 found only 12% of the world has had any significant changes in precipitation. .(GRAPHIC I) Only 6% has resulted in increased aridity.  Most of the detected increased aridity in California was caused by natural La Nina-like conditions during the research’s time period.

Although a 20-year period of a drier climate associated with La Nina-like conditions will dry out the biggest dead logs, so they more easily burn, changes in wildfire frequency and burnt area extent, have absolutely nothing to do with climate change.