Experts in the social and mainstream media are claiming that climate change is increasing the likelihood of heatwaves like the very short but historic heatwave enjoyed by the UK, during which temperatures exceeding 40°C were recorded for the very first time at airports, in some large cities and next to greenhouses.
In part 2 of this series I analysed the Central England Temperature Record for the period 1878 - 2022 and we discovered this wasn’t the case for heatwaves where the temperature met or exceeded 30°C each day. From 1960 onward no such trend was detected, with the record for number of excessively hot days going to 1976.
As ever, the devil is in the detail and we may conclude that experts are using a definition of heatwave that supports their political (and grant-funding) stance instead of simply counting the number of excessively hot days. This is frustrating and in our frustration we can easily loose sight of the fact that real world observation doesn’t always support the theor…
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