Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire

The mainstream media are attempting to convince the public that July 2023 was the hottest month on record but is this true?

Here in the UK, back in the sweltering heat of July 1976, neighbours resorted to sleeping on the lawn under the shade of trees rather than brave baking upstairs bedrooms. When I say ‘lawn’ I mean a brown and cracked expanse where the grass used to be. Those who ventured upstairs at night found comfort by sleeping on top of their beds under wet towels. Showers and baths were verboten, so in the morning those who felt the urge to freshen themselves had a bucket or two of recycled ‘family’ water to sit in. Youngsters took the rare opportunity not to scrub behind their ears. To this day I’m not quite sure why we had to scrub behind our ears but that’s us Brits for you!

Wind the clock forward 47 years to July 2023 and our household voted to put the central heating back on for an hour each day to take the chill off. As the month progressed sweaters were issued, hot meals were ordered in preference to salads, short trousers were abandoned, and I resorted to wearing my Norwegian 100% woollen socks. Friends and contacts around the globe reported a similarly cool situation, and my trusty North wall garden thermometer told the tale of an abysmal summer once June had gone.

Just over one week into the new month and talking heads were already announcing that July 2023 was likely to be the hottest month on record EVER; a bold statement indeed with three weeks of the month left to run! And then, with just a few days into a dismal start to August, we had the mainstream media announcing that July 2023 has been confirmed as the hottest month on record EVAH! Here’s the newspaper of the year telling us so on Tuesday 8^th August:

Newspapers are not supposed to lie to their loyal fee-paying readers, but obviously something isn’t adding up big time and I have my fetid Norwegian socks to prove it. Let us then get our kettles on, get our biscuit tins open, and have a jolly rummage through the data starting with the source for the Guardian’s claim:

“July has been confirmed as the hottest month on record globally after several heatwaves in parts of Europe, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).”

“The global average temperature was 16.95C last month, surpassing the previous record set in 2019 by a substantial 0.33C”.

“July is estimated to have been about 1.5C warmer than the average for 1850-1900, according to C3S, and 0.72C warmer than the 1991-2020 average.”

“Dr Samantha Burgess, deputy director of C3S, said: “We just witnessed global air temperatures and global ocean surface temperatures set new all-time records in July.”

The Darnedest Thing

Now here’s the darnedest thing. On the one hand experts are trying to say something about heat and heatwaves but instead of looking at maximum daily temperatures they’re mumbling on about average temperatures. Us humans also tend to live, work, gawp at our phones and wear socks on dry land, with many living in urban sprawls, so you’d think that analysis of maximum daily land surface temperatures might be the order of the day. Instead of getting all logical about this expertistas not only go mumbling on about average temperatures but they also grumble on about global (combined land and sea surface temperatures) mean temperatures, this being an idealised construct that we cannot ever experience unless we happen to be statisticians living in our minds. Then there’s the peculiarity of using a global measurement to quantify a summer heatwave that occurred in the northern hemisphere! Then there’s the high strangeness of comparing July’s mean with the 1850 - 1900 and 1991 - 2021 series means.

The Hottest Hot

Let us get real for a moment and take a look at the profile for the absolute maximum daily July temperature as recorded amongst 722 long-series GHCNd weather stations that possess records stretching back at least 123 years. Anybody wanting to run this analysis for themselves can do so by clicking here:

We’re looking at the highest daily temperature recorded, so outliers must be expected since these represent a single measurement at just one station. The vast majority of these stations also lie in the northern hemisphere and, given that these are daytime maxima for July, we are going to be looking at the results of the hottest running stations within the northern hemisphere. In sum, this is the hottest of the hot and should be the measure we use if we are going to talk about daft concepts like global boiling.

That black line (a linear regression) is as flat as flat can be; so flat, in fact, that it is pointless running any statistical tests for flatness. The wiggly green line (locally estimated scatterplot smoothing) gives a bit of excitement and essentially bounces up and down around a grand mean of 46.84°C. Geeks and/or nerds might like to note that a Wald-Wolfowitz runs test indicates that the series is effectively a random walk (p=0.586).

So where does July 2023 feature in all this extreme heat? I can report that it sits down in 38^th place at 47.8°C, with the gold going to 1905 (52.8°C), the silver going jointly to 1900 and 1995 (51.1)°C, and the bronze going jointly to 1913, 1936, 2003 and 2017 (49.4°C).

We may deduce from this that the air above the land masses of the northern hemisphere is not getting any hotter in absolute terms; it is as hot as it can get and isn’t getting any hotter despite what Dr Samantha Burgess says.

The Hottest Average

Instead of looking at the absolute daily maximum temperature amongst a sample of stations we can average the maximum across all stations on a daily basis to get a measure for the mean maximum daily temperature attained each July. This is my total über-fave measure for assessing heatwaves since it irons out any quirks that might affect just one or two stations. This is what this time series looks like:

Again we may note the linear trend (black line) is pretty darn flat, though keen eyes might suspect a slight negative slope. Such eyes would be correct in their assumption for the regression kicked out a statistically significant but modest cooling trend estimated at -0.46°C per century (p=0.033). Whoops. In plain English this means long-series GHCNd land stations (that are largely concentrated in the northern hemisphere) are pointing to what may well be a slightly cooling planet in terms of the average daytime maximum temperatures attained.

As for July 2023 I can report that this managed to scrape 20^th position with 30.14°C, with the gold going to 1936 (32.07°C), the silver going to 1934 (31.64°C) and the bronze going to 1901 (31.43°C). Not exactly good news for alarmists, I admit, but this is what records held at long-running land surface stations tell us.

As humans in bodily form we can only experience the absolute temperature from hour to hour, but since not everybody lives in Addis Ababa and other scorchio places then the mean daily maximum temperature is a better measure for assessing generalised heat. However, whatever measure of extreme heat we elect to use we observe that July 2023 was most certainly not the hottest month in recorded history, and that the land surface where us humans live and read newspapers does not appear to be warming. This fits in with our collective experience of July starting warm but turning into a damp squib.

So What Gives?

So how come those C3S bods are saying something different? All boils down to what data they are using. For starters they are using sea surface temperature data that is notoriously difficult to obtain and estimate. They are also using the daily average, so let’s have a look at the mean daily temperature for those long-series land surface stations to see if this time series matches their claims:

Aha! As if by magic we now have global warming, estimated at a rate of +0.49°C per century (p=0.007); and just look at how things have taken off since 1990! At this point we can start wailing or note the cyclical nature of warming and cooling periods. So, yes, the average temperature has been rising once again, but my money is on this turning downward into a cooling phase at some point, which would be far more troubling for humanity as well as the biosphere.

As for July 2023 strutting its stuff, it managed a not-that-respectable 10^th place at (23.80°C), with the gold going to 1936 (24.72°C), the silver going to 2012 (24.63°C), and the bronze going to 1934 (24.40°C). In terms of land station records, therefore, we may deduce a case of liar, liar pants on fire. The implication that the C3S bods have managed to swindle a new global record by relying on average global sea surface temperatures, this being data that are difficult if not impossible to verify. If I can get hold of something decent I’ll pen a second instalment but here’s the thing… if warming seas are responsible for the new global record then we need to figure how this is possible for the atmosphere cannot warm until the oceans do!

Chewing Things

Anybody chewing reflectively on a hobnob at this point might ask why the global average land surface temperature is rising over time but the absolute and mean maximum land surface temperatures are not. This boils down to daytime maximum vs. nighttime minimum, with the so-called ‘global warming’ taking place at night. This places us deep into confounding variables territory since we’ve got to consider changes in cloud cover, daily sunshine and urbanisation – and these three factors are just the start of a very long list that needs to be considered before we go blaming fossil fuels. When it comes to warming oceans we’ve ideally got to consider geothermal and other effects rather than go reaching for the super glue and other tools of the psychotic personality experiencing deliberate menticide.

Another point to bear in mind is that this analysis (and anything the C3S bods can rustle up) is based on a mere +100 years worth of instrumented data, which is not even the blink of an eye when it comes to Earth’s geological record. In this regard I love ice, and not just the variety I slap into my G&T each evening at 6pm. I’m talking ice cores, and especially the high resolution Greenland ice core samples that tell a fascinating story. I shall be telling this story in a future article series but will offer, right here and now, this utterly fabulous 4min clip of an ice core dude talking ice cores - even though he gives my dramatic ending away!

Kettle On!