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Early July saw Britain basking in a brief heatwave, with air temperatures across much of south and east England hitting the mid 30s centigrade. On July 1, the Met Office announced that the UK had recorded the hottest July day on record, with temperatures hitting 36.7° centigrade at Heathrow airport. The claim was widely repeated in the media—the BBC’s headline read “Hottest July day ever recorded in UK”, while The Guardian opted for a live blog under the headline “Heatwave live: Britain swelters on hottest July day on record”. But eagle-eyed climate bloggers immediately spotted a problem with the so-called...

David Rose’s October 2012 article in the MailOnline generated a multitude of responses around the blogosphere. The article was titled Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released… and here is the chart to prove it. There have been so many blog posts about the article it’s not practical to list them all. SkepticalScience—a blog run by advocates of human-induced global warming, not global warming skeptics—attempted to counter the Rose article a number of times. They included a YouTube video in their January 2013 effort 16 More Years of Global Warming. The following YouTube video On...

The Central England Temperature Record has been getting some inconvenient attention as of late. Joe D’Aleo at ICECAP pointed out recently: The Central England Temperature record is one of the longest continuous temperature record in the world extending back to the Little Ice age in 1659. December 2010 was the coldest December in 120 years with an average of -0.7C just short of the record of -0.8C recorded in December 1890 and the Second Coldest December Temperature in the entire record (352 years). I don’t know if it is simply sloppy webkeeping or related to the fact that the CET...

A Freedom of Information request submitted to the Met Office by Autonomous Mind reveals the Met Office did not tell the truth when it said it had scrapped its seasonal forecast. Despite repeatedly trailing the line that the Met Office no longer issues seasonal forecasts because the public says they are not of use (a separate blog post on that public view later today, with some new information that has come to light… Update: part two can now be read here), the reality is that the department’s Chief Executive, John Hirst, engaged in a smoke and mirrors exercise in an...

Just when you think things are as inanely silly as they can be, they raise the stakes. It’s a game of double or nothing in the race to the bottom. The close common interests of three big government agencies is fragmenting and instead of skeptics launching the FOI’s, this time, the BBC is.Just in case there is anyone who doesn’t know, the UK Met predicted a winter a couple of degrees above the usual. Then supertankers of snow turned up and dumped on the nation, surprising people, and making life difficult for everyone who hadn’t made arrangements for the return...

From the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the questions begin, news coverage follows:Did UK Government Keep Cold Winter Warning Secret In Run-Up To UN Climate Conference?Press ReleaseLondon, 6 January: The Global Warming Policy Foundation has called on the House of Commons Transport Select Committee to set up a parliamentary inquiry into the winter advice the Government received by the Met Office and the renewed failure of both the Government and local authorities to prepare the UK transport system for the third severe winter in a row. In a letter to the Chair of the Transport Committee, Louise Ellman, MP, the...

In October the forecaster privately warned the Government - with whom it has a contract - that Britain was likely to face an extremely cold winter. It kept the prediction secret, however, after facing severe criticism over the accuracy of its long-term forecasts. The Met Office eventually issued a public warning about the early onset of winter a month later, just days before snow and ice covered much of Britain and temperatures plummeted to the lowest on record. Motoring organisations and passenger groups said yesterday that the delay hampered preparations for winter. It has also been disclosed that the BBC...

Now another senior British climate scientist–this time Professor John Mitchell, the Met Office’s Director of Climate Science, is about the face the full force of the blogosphere for contemptuous breaches of the UK’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Mitchell and the UK Meteorological Office have apparently been up to the same tricks as Professor Phil Jones of the now discredited UK Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia.The Met Office is refusing to disclose Prof Mitchell’s working papers and correspondence with his IPCC colleagues in response to requests filed under the FOIA. The block has been endorsed...