Met Office 'Heatwave' July 2022 Post Event Report

Proves that 1976 was FAR more significant

Yes, the sub-heading is what the report actually demonstrates, but being the global warming obsessed Met Office, they claim the complete opposite of course. Here’s what they say in the blurb which introduces their actual report:

A new event summary from the Met Office shows that the UK’s recent extreme heat was far more intense and widespread than previous comparable heatwaves. This was the first time 40°C has been recorded in the UK.

Yes, it got extraordinarily hot, but it was only for two flipping days! The Met Office, in their desperation to accredit ‘heatwave’ status to the event, say it was four days, but then they just focus on the two hot days of July 18th and 19th. Two very hot days does not a heatwave make. Temperatures across the UK on the 16th and 17th were nothing out of the ordinary.

The UK experienced a brief but unprecedented extreme heatwave from 16 to 19 July 2022 . . . . .

New provisional national temperature records were also set for Wales and Scotland. On 18 July, 37.1°C was recorded at Hawarden Airport, Flintshire, while 35.1°C was reached at Floors Castle, Borders on 19 July.

The post-event report from the Met Office shows that the record-breaking temperatures seen as part of the heatwave demonstrate much more widespread and significant heat than previous noteworthy extreme heat events.

‘More widespread and significant’ is the claim, so let’s test that against the actual facts (as presented by the Met Office themselves) shall we. One particularly noteworthy previous event was 1976. That summer saw a prolonged heatwave which, though less intense in terms of absolute temperature, lasted for months (June right through to the end of August), not two days. Virtually every person who was alive in the UK at that time and managed to miraculously survive, can still vividly recall the event 46 years later! What the miracle survivors of the July 2022 event will remember most in decades to come is not the extreme heat, but the extreme propaganda and scaremongering bullshit, I guarantee.

Here’s how the Met Office choose to graphically represent 18th and 19th July in comparison to one hot day in 1976, 2003 and 2019:

Note the whites, violets, deep lurid purples and even ‘unprecedented’ browns of 2022 compared to the decidedly tame looking red heat of 3rd July 1976. It’s an extremely deceptive portrayal using vivid colouration, focussed on just single days, which makes 2022 look like Thermageddon in comparison to 1976. But the Met Office give the game away near the end of their report, presumably because, behind the highly politicised agenda of propagandising extreme weather, which is their current remit, they just can’t help themselves by reporting on actual, meaningful weather statistics too. Here’s the killer bar chart which reveals that summer 1976 was a far more significant weather event than an isolated couple of record-breaking hot days in July 2022:

Approximately 2100 stations in 1976 reported temperatures exceeding 30C and about 750 reported temperatures in excess of 32C. In 2022 (so far) only 600 or so stations have reported temperatures exceeding 30C, a little under 300 exceeding 32C. In 1976, 32C was reported by one or more stations for 15 consecutive days, a record that still hasn’t been beaten. So you can see, what 1976 lacked in terms of absolute temperature, it more than made up for in terms of duration and extent across the country. This is reflected in the Met Office’s second bar chart, showing stations exceeding 34C and 36C, which makes 2022 look more impressive, but again, the impression is deceptive.

Look at the absolute numbers of stations. less than 250 reporting in excess of 34C in 2022 and only 150 reporting temperatures exceeding 36C. Peanuts compared to 2100 and 750 exceeding 30C and 32C respectively in 1976, when the world as a whole was considerably cooler and only just on the cusp of warming again after cooling significantly in the 50s, 60s and early 70s.

Finally, in an effort to remind us that July 2022 was in fact weather, generated by an unusual but naturally occurring large scale stationary wave pattern, the Met Office say:

The heatwave in the UK and more widely across western Europe was associated with a naturally-occurring large-scale wave pattern in the northern hemisphere, with a chain of five high pressure regions around the globe, and heatwaves also being experienced during summer 2022 in China and the US.

The exceptionally hot weather was associated with a ‘heat-dome’; an area of high pressure with falling air in the atmosphere trapping warm air at the surface. By the 19th a cold front tracking from the west resulted in some thundery rain and somewhat fresher air to parts of the country.