Questioning Met Office Hot June/Climate Change Propaganda

They’re at it again. They can’t stop themselves. Apparently, it’s been the hottest June in the UK and in England since records began in 1884:

The Met Office says:

Climate change increases the frequency of hotter, drier summer weather and the chances of record-breaking high temperatures for the UK.

Mike continued: “While the UK has always had periods of warm weather, what climate change does is increase the frequency and intensity of these warm weather events, increasing the likelihood of high temperature records being broken, like we saw for 2022’s annual temperature for the UK.

“It is particularly telling that of the 12 months of the year, for UK average maximum temperature the records for the warmest months include 2019 (February), 2018 (May), 2015 (December), 2012 (March), 2011 (April), 2011 (November), 2006 (July) and now 2023 (June). Statistics such as this clearly tell us of the changing nature of the UK’s climate and how it is particularly affecting extremes.”

I’m a bit mystified personally as to how June 2023 wound up being the hottest since 1884, because, round here at least, it wasn’t exceptionally hot. The first half of the month was gloriously sunny, very dry and pleasantly warm, never too hot though, with winds often from the north and north east due to a stationary high pressure cell. In fact, the east of the country was decidedly chilly at times during June. Only later in the month did it become more humid and considerably warmer, but this was for about 10 days at the most. June went out with a whimper as rain set in and temperatures cooled right down. But let’s give the Met Office the benefit of the doubt and presume it was the hottest June since 1884. Let’s for the moment accept their proposition that global warming is leading to more extreme warm months in the UK (including this June). We can test this hypothesis because we have an even longer temperature series which stretches right back to 1659 (Central England Temperature - CET). Curiously, the Met Office neglects to mention this.

It turns out that when we look at CET, the hottest June (ref. mean temperature) since 1659 is in fact 1846 - before the Met Office’s preferred UK and England temperature series started. Admittedly, Central England is only a triangular area enclosing Bristol, Manchester and London, not the whole of England or the UK, but it does correlate very well with the England and UK data series and indeed there is a strong argument for suggesting that CET is even a good proxy for global mean temperature, given the unique position of the British Isles.

What is remarkable about this is that June 2023 is the only 21st century June so far to make an appearance in the top 20. There are only five Junes in the 20th century (the hottest being 1976 unsurprisingly) which make an appearance. The majority are all from earlier centuries. If June really was becoming a hotter month because of man-made global warming, we would expect to see it overly represented especially from the mid 20th century onwards. It isn’t. Also, what’s even more remarkable is that June 1676, which was a full degree warmer than June 2023, occurred smack bang in the middle of the coldest period of the Little Ice Age - the Maunder Minimum 1645-1715. If global warming causes hotter Junes, how come the second hottest June in England since 1659 occurred when the planet was the coldest it’s been in at least 8000 years? If global warming causes extreme warm weather what caused the extremely warm June of 1676 and the even warmer June of 1846, when the planet was still very cool and there were virtually no man-made greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere? The Met Office is having us on as usual.