‘Hottest-ever’ Hysteria

Written by John O'Sullivan on July 30, 2019. Posted in Current News

Yesterday, the BBC reported that the “UK’s highest-ever temperature” has been officially recorded in Cambridge at 38.5C (101.3F) beating the previous UK record set in 2003. But is this to be taken as evidence of global warming?

Well, as Roger Higgs DPhil (Oxford) quickly noted, things may not be as they appear:

“I am a geologist, not a meteorologist or a ‘climate (pseudo-) scientist’, so I may be wrong, but my meagre attention to the usual mainstream-media hysteria this summer suggests that most of the supposed ‘hottest ever recorded’ temperatures are reported from cities (e.g. Cambridge).”

Like any good scientist, Roger makes a perfectly sensible observation on what is known as the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, which we have covered in several articles here.

Roger continues:

“Surely, in cities, constant growth (new buildings, new roads, more vehicles, car parks, etc.) inevitably increases the ‘urban heat island’ effect, such that ever-higher ‘hottest temperature’ readings are expected (predictable), even in a cooling world (overall global cooling has been underway since February 2016 according to the NASA and HadCRUT charts)?

Are record-breaking high temperatures ever reported, in contrast, from open countryside or little villages that have remained virtually unchanged for centuries? Maybe they are and I’m poorly informed. If not, then there are two possibilities: (1) no ‘official’ thermometers are located outside urban regions or airports (easily checked); or (2) the ‘record-breaking’ temperatures indicate nothing more alarming than relentless urban growth.”

Readers are encouraged to take no one’s word for it and do there own research on the glaring fact that these ‘hottest-ever’ temperatures are repeatedly shown to be occurring cities and towns suffering ongoing urban sprawl.

Yes, it is a kind of ‘man-made warming’ but it is entirely local and not global, confined to the built up populated areas, and rarely, if ever, seen in remote, rural locations.

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For example, in ‘Urban Heat Island Effect Is Making NYC Warmer‘ (July 23, 2019) reports:

“The Environmental Protection Agency describes heat islands as urban areas, populated with over a million people, where the average air temperature is 1.8 to 5.4 degrees warmer than surrounding areas (and 22 degrees warmer at night).

“Buildings, infrastructure, streets—the concrete, cement—they’re all absorbing the heat and making it warmer,” Jessica Spaccio, a climatologist at Cornell’s Northeast Regional Climate Center.”

In ‘Urban Heat Island Impact On Temperature In Manchester, UK‘ (December 21 2018) Dr Craig D Idso points us to a very revealing study from Levermore et al. (2018). [1]

The study is a thorough examination of the urban heat island in Manchester, UK. It revealed that due to the relentless increase in the size of the built up metropolitan area, the reduction in green space was the main factor causing urban heat island contamination in the Manchester temperature record.

While ‘Advanced Weather Forecasting Models Confirm Urban Heat Island Effect‘ (October 25 2017) respected U.S. meteorologist, Joe Bastardi, reports that weather forecasting models are having to now take into account the UHI impact.

Bastardi notes that Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Orlando, Chicago, New York City – among other places – are all showing higher temperatures, around 2°C warmer. He advises that the impact is not being felt at rural measuring stations which stubbornly refuse to show any warming.

As Thomas Richard reported in ‘Satellite Temperatures Show Global Pause Resumes As Temperatures Plunge‘ (November 23 2016) what is compounding the public misapprehension is that many hundreds of cooler rural temperature stations are being systematically discontinued so that there is a growing bias in the overall temperature records towards warming.

His report shows that if we opt to rely on the uncontaminated satellite data, rather than surface stations, we see, for example, that there is no statistical difference between 2016 temperatures and 1998.

In fact, any serious scientist would want to minimize the contamination of data caused by UHI. By do doing they quickly understand that in recent years temperatures globally have been plunging downwards,

[1] Levermore, G., Parkinson, J., Lee, K., Laycock, P. and Lindley, S. 2018. The increasing trend of the urban heat island intensity. Urban Climate 24: 360-368.

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