Hottest June kills UK fish and threatens insects

In this quick response article I check the veracity of the latest BBC headline of the same

Well there’s the big BBC banner for this penned piece in alchemical white, black and red. Not just alchemical, mind, but aposematic, being a triad of common binary colour combinations found in nature to trigger alarm. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica…

Aposematism, also called aposematic mechanism, biological means by which a dangerous, or noxious, organism advertises its dangerous nature to a potential predator. The predator, having recognized the dangerous organism as an unfavourable prey, thereupon desists from attacking it. Aposematic, or warning, mechanisms have evolved along with protective systems; it is advantageous for the protected organism not to risk the injury that is likely to occur in even a successfully repelled attack by a predator.

…so now you know why climate change and other topics of high political value are sold to us all in red, white, black and yellow: our bodies will invariably go on alert. This must mean the BBC is a ‘dangerous organism’, and I can personally vouch for this!

Correlation vs. Cause

I don’t have time to get into a discussion on pesticides, raw sewage, environmental toxins, manufacturing spills, cover-ups, heavy metals, micro-plastics, BPA, arsenic, lead, formaldehyde, PFA, benzene, aggro-chemicals, industrial waste water, bacterial growth, viral outbreaks, algal bloom and water management, but anybody with two brain cells should realise there’s a list longer than my arm that needs to be considered before we grope around for man-made climate change as a factor in fish and insect populations. And just when was the last time a UK water company invested in a new reservoir to meet increasing demand instead of sucking rivers dry?

Bizarrely, the article talks about lowered river levels impacting on fish stocks without considering water management, lack of reservoir build and poor water conservation strategies by corporate entities as contributory factors. There is mention of an incidence of dead sea-trout but hadn’t we better go check they weren’t poisoned or suffering a viral outbreak? Lowered oxygen levels were claimed to be “partly” causal but hadn’t we better check industrial use of water and effluence upstream as well as other factors that might also affect oxygenation? And how about natural factors like algal blooms and foams being left to choke rivers owing to lack of environmental management? And all this is before we drill down to the core fallacy of taking specific local events and conditions and wildly generalising. This is BBC churnalism at its dosh-tastic finest!

Reaching For the CET

What I can do with my limited time today is reach for the Central England Temperature Record to see if June 2023 has not been unusually hot but much, much hotter than all previous Junes since records began. Unless June just gone stands out like an utterly sore thumb we cannot even begin to think about excess heat uniquely causing excess decimation of fish stocks one way or another.

Whilst we’re at it we ought to examine historic evidence from our rivers and fisheries just in case sudden loss of stocks is one of those things that happens from time to time regardless of temperature, but which the churnalists do not even bother to consider. Unexpected stock loss in mild springs and winters would not really make for good quality wall-to-wall alarmism, methinks.  While we’re at it we also ought to browse through credible papers on the subject, for long gone are the days when I hung on the words of carefully chosen experts that are selectively interviewed by churnalists chasing cash and eco-glory. I guess these kinds of subversive activity from days gone by aren’t what we call following the science™.

Heat Is The Thing

Heat is the thing here so let us get stuck straight in with a time series of mean maximum daily temperature for each month of June since daily records began in 1878. Try this:

Does June 2023 stand out as a fish- and wildlife-killing seriously sore thumb month?

Not exactly.

It was certainly on the hot side with a mean maximum of 22.57°C, being the hottest June on the HadCET record to date. The silver medal goes to 1976 with a mean maximum of 22.49°C, being just 0.08°C cooler. I remember the scorching summer of 1976 very well and I recall hosepipe bans, brown lawns and watery frolics but I don’t recall the BBC getting worried about the death of fish and insects.

If June 2023 is to be hailed as an ecological disaster for the UK based on maximum temperature attained then, being sensible human beings, we ought to consider June 1976 as an ecological disaster for the UK. Then there’s the spectre of June 1940, with a mean maximum daily June Central England Temperature of 21.92°C, being just shy of the new HadCET record by less than a degree (0.62°C to be precise).

Now, with regard to a long-term warming trend, the black line is the usual climatey thing to do, being a linear regression plonked down among the means. This yields a statistically insignificant estimate of warming to the tune of +0.51°C per century (p=0.071). In plain English, the hot side of June ain’t getting hotter even though it might be bustin’ out all over!

I’m not keen on those linear regression thingies hence the wiggly green LOESS snake that points to periodic behaviour with recent cooling between 2005 and 2015 and a relatively recent surge. There will be many reasons for this, but whatever they are this is clearly not evidence of generalised warming behaviour consistent with a persistent rise in man-made CO2.

Hottest Hot!

So, that was a consideration of mean daily maximum temperature within the HadCET dataset. What we can do now is go looking at the trend in the absolute maximum daily temperature recorded each June - the hottest hot! Here we go:

June 2023 no longer stands out in any way and, in fact, at 28.6°C comes fourteenth on the list of hottest days recorded amongst the HadCET station sample, with the gold medal position going to 2019 at 30.4°C, silver going to 1976 at 30.3°C and bronze going to 2005 at 30.1°C.

Just in case folk desire to place faith in that 30.4°C of 2019, herewith an article concerning the new 2022 UK record, and herewith an article of mine concerning another national record. A good word is ‘dodgy’, despite denials by suitably briefed suits (been there done that on behalf of HMG).

Trend-wise we now have statistically significant warming of +1.24°C per century (p=0.015) and the big question is what could be causing this. My money is on the urban heat island effect (UHIE) since the Hadley crew adjust the mean record downward by -0.2°C over the period 1974 - 2022 but not the maximum. That’s most generous of them but I somehow think that an adjustment rate of -0.0042°C per year for UHIE isn’t really cutting the urban mustard. Neither are we likely to get any truthful research from any authority with a vested interest in the climate change gravy train as to how big the UHIE really is.

Side Plate

Here’s a bit of cogitation to try out next time you pour a cuppa…

The mean maximum daily June temperature record (of several weather stations in central England) isn’t showing long-term warming but the absolute maximum daily June temperature record (of just one station at a time) is indeed showing long-term warming. This must mean that at least one station in the central England sample is plagued by UHIE that is not accounted for.

“Continually Pounded By Extreme Weather”

That’s the claim made down in the article somewhere so let’s stick with the heat side of things and look at the number of hot days each June since 1878 according to the central England Temperature Record. By ‘hot’ I mean days when the maximum temperature managed to hit or exceed 25°C:

I don’t see any evidence of “continual pounding” by extreme heat. What I see is a record-breaking spell of ten hot days back in 1976 and another goodly spell of nine hot days last month; followed by another spell of eight hot days back in 1960. We should note that June 2017 saw six hot days, as did June 1878. And this, of course, is assuming the weather stations in question are not subject to an urban heat island effect that is being surreptitiously ignored or played down.

If I do something funky with these counts – ‘funky’ as in fitting a generalised linear model with Poisson assumptions – then I get a non-significant rise in the daily counts to the tune of +0.70 hot June days per century (p=0.084). We may conclude that yet another expert hasn’t bothered to check their facts before coming out with glib statements that churnalists love to siphon like ticks on a buttock.

But What About May?

Quite. This should be one of the first questions that keen members of the public should ask of churnalists working under contract for the BBC. The basic logic is simple enough: if June was flaming and May was freezing, then we can’t go muttering on about global warming and/or fossil fuel use per se. We might mutter on about something vague and rather contrived called climate change, which can be pretty much anything to support the narrative. We might even wave our hands in the air all expert-like and talk about the instability of the jet stream brought about by oodles of man-made atmospheric CO2 holding excess energy that is capable of bringing both a freezing May and a scorching June. So let’s have a quick look at the mean daily average temperature for the month of May since 1878 according to the Central England Temperature record:

May 2023 seems to have got lost in the crowd and the reason for this is that, at 12.54°C, it is the 26^th warmest year amongst the 146 years of 1878 - 2023, which makes it pretty middling and rather nondescript. In comparison, June 2023 brings home the gold medal at a mean daily temperature of 16.96°C, pipping June 1976 into second place by a mere 0.07°C. It would seem we’ve had to wait 47 years for a heat-driven eco-disaster.

So… we have a middling May and flaming June, which is not exactly a solid basis for screaming alarmist slogans and throwing soup everywhere, though I’m sure it’s a good earner for churnalists who don’t give a flying fig roll about real science.

Kettle On!