Saturday
Jul112015
by 
Josh
Josh Hot spot or not - Josh 335
Jul 11, 2015 Christopher Booker Climate: MetOffice Josh 
It is good to see Christopher Booker writing about the 'hottest day of the year' in the Telegraph again. Paul Homewood's excellent posts, on which his article is based, are well worth reading.
The story starts here, with more here, and Booker's first article, followed by more doubts, some Met Office spin, then a belated response, comment moderation, and finally more Met Office spin. It's quite a saga.
Anyone would think they are trying to hype every possible weather event they can. I wonder why?
Reader Comments (78)
Anyone would think they are trying to hype every possible weather event they can.
No! Surely not?
They are having a barbeque to celebrate this record temperature, and to record the next one.
Comin' in low to Heathrow
Carryin' in a couple to sow.
Please mr stephen, don't clutch
At your seeds so fast.
==============
Heathrow 1955 - 2015.
More buildings, tarmac, runways, taxiways, aprons.
More planes per hour, require more runways, again.
Planes now predominantly jet fuelled, and heavier, burning more fuel.
Aerial/satellite photos would allow comparison of the sites, then and now, plus the location of the thermometer(s).
Other than the above, I can't see any problems with comparing then and now, it is hardly as though the Met Office would pull thermometers out of their body temperatures. But it is close......
Nice one! I wonder if the new Boeing 787 Dreamliners and/or the Airbus A380s have anything to do with the new 'record'?
@TinyCO2
Is that a sneaky reference to the unfortunate overheating battery problem affecting early 787s? ;-)
DaveS, the thermometer may have been next to the bin where they dumped those troublesome batteries.
:-D @ DaveS and golf charlie.
I was just thinking bloody big aircraft but you never know, the MO may be fitting extra hot batteries... for long life obviously.
It's quite clear now that the management level att Met Office have jumped the shark and are prepared to openly lie to promote the CAGW agenda. I pity any honest scientists still working there.
It's supposedly staffed by 'experts'. They looked at that spike and issued that press release. A scientist would know management were lying, but mysteriously kept quiet about it. I suppose ones salary and pension are more important than the truth.
The modern scientific method, I suppose.
It would be nice if Met managaement sued. We could then have some disclosure on this and other lies Slingo's kool-aid drinkers have issued.
But not just any old airport, Josh. The world's 3rd busiest!
On average, a 'movement' every 45 seconds. And whilst that 'movement' occurs, both the previous plane, AND, the next plane are simultaneously taxiing to their respective positions. i.e. 3x aircraft burning avgas simultaneously.
Is their a competition to find the world's biggest Mannmade Urban Heat Island?
Apart from power station and blast furnaces etc, is Heathrow a world record breaker, and the Met Office have not noticed?
I don't suppose that temperatures from Heathrow are used by CRU at UEA to calculate global temperatures? It would be such a shame if all this confusion about global warming has been generated directly by burning jet fuel in a few square miles rather than the CO2 released around the entire planet.
One lucky plane per day could have skewed the calculated temperature of the whole world.
I wonder why they did not claim the Centre Court at Wimbledon as the new record?
" I wonder why they did not claim the Centre Court at Wimbledon as the new
record?"
I remember loads of high temperatures in the sun at wimbledon from my younger days. I think it may have been more 120F on court back in the 70's, while they had a break for a barley water. For some reason we use to watch it in the afternoon at my junior school.
There's no sign of conspiracy. The MET Office got a record high result and reported it.
Sure, the result is meaningless. Heathrow is not typical of the landscape.
Most areas have fewer runways and hardly any Boeings landing.
The MET Office should have pointed out the record was meaningless.
But it; is easy to see why they haven't argued with their business partner (the BBC),
Jul 11, 2015 at 8:54 PM | golf charlie
GC, you left out one factor which no-one seems to talk about. Every temperature sensor is associated with a time constant - a measurement of how long it takes the sensor to indicate the correct temperature after a change in its environment. For a liquid-in-glass thermometer, the time constant is of the order of 2 to 3 minutes and varies with the air velocity across the sensor. The thermometer will not show a reading within 95% of the change until after 3 time constants, around 6 - 9 minutes. For example if the temperature changes 1°C instantaneously, a liquid-in-glass thermometer will indicate a change of 0.95°C around 6 - 9 minutes after the change.
Other types of sensor will have different time constants depending on their thermal mass and their construction. Thermocouples constructed of thin wire may have time constants of less than a second.
The Heathrow met station has been in operation since 1949. I cannot believe that the instrumentation has not changed. No doubt the UKMO would charge a fat fee to release that information but it is critical to determine whether the so-called record of last week at Heathrow could have been exceeded in the past but without the knowledge of the operator.
The peak temperature in question was one of a series of 1or 2-minute temperature readings. The temperature was only above 36°C for about 6 minutes, possibly less. It is highly unlikely a liquid-in-glass thermometer would have recorded the same maximum since it would not have had time to settle (3 x time constant) at the highest temperature.
The UKMO needs to demonstrate that by smoothing electronic record using the time constant of the previous standard of sensor a record was still achieved. Otherwise, the best they can say is that it was the highest temperature measured with the current equipment which was installed in .... (UKMO to fill in the blank)
Bottom line; the UKMO is very likely not comparing apples with apples.
Josh need not travel to Heathrow to find the hot air his caption balloons require:
SITE PREV RECORD PREV RECORD MAX (°C) 1 JULY 2015 MAX (°C) YEARS OF DATA
Durham 31/7/1943, 10/7/1921 30.6 31 133
Sheffield 31/7/1943, 10/7/1921 31.7 33.3 130
Bradford 31/7/1943, 13/7/1935 30.6 30.9 106
Cranwell 22/7/1996 32.6 34.3 93
Sutton Bonnington 19/7/2006 32.9 33.6 84
Stonyhurst 3/7/1976 31.1 32.6 75
Manston 15/7/1983 31.4 33.6 74
Goudhurst 3/7/1976 32.8 33.3 74
Waddington 12/7/1949 32.2 33.1 77
Heathrow 19/7/2006 35.5 36.7 66
Nottingham (Watnall 3/7/1976 32. 3 33.9 64
St James’s Park5/7/1959 34.4 34.7 52
Of course , none of these thermometrs meet Bolivian standards :
http://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2015/07/bolivia-vatican-reach-liberation.html
Supplementary observation - I wonder how many new temperature records (and how much global warming) is due to the much shorter time constants of electronic temperature sensors cf liquid-in-glass max/min thermometers?
Another problem with electronic temperature sensors is self-heating. I wonder how that is dealt with when measuring to better than 0.1°C?
Billy Liar, thankyou for that update on the subtleties of temperature measurement. I have worked at military airbases in the UK, and know how much temperature can change between runways and long grass, without any aircraft being present.
Heat haze can hang in the air, and drift with the wind, long after a plane has left the runway. It may be a trick of the mind, but smelling jet exhaust, is something I associate with a physical warm sensation.
Are thermal imaging cameras able to follow hot air lingering and moving around an airfield after a plane has passed? It would be interesting to know if hot plumes engulf the Heathrow thermometer, or indeed ones near roads etc.
Dealers are aware of an exceptional influx into the market of modern day 'West Country Graphiti'.
caveat emptor
Considering all the twists and turns of the U.K. Met Office on this (and on much else in the past) ... pardon my metaphor** but ... it seems to me that this performance on the part of the jewel in the crown puts them in the lead for a gold medal in verbal acrobatics.
** Much influenced by sporadically watching the Pan Am games, which began yesterday in Toronto. A most refreshing change, I must say, to hear nary a word about "climate change" - and/or its synonyms and substitutes - in all the coverage (and ads) so far. P'haps I should listen less to the much infected CBC radio and watch more (far less affected?!) CBC TV?!
Well done, Josh ... And thanks for a real gold standard performance, as always:-)
Over 60 flights landed at Heathrow between 6 and 7am this morning. Between 7am and 7:30am 58 aircraft were either made airborn or taxiing in preparation for flight. The tarmac runways are surounded by the 5 departure lounges, maintenance hangars and hotels stretching along the perimeter roads. The whole area resembles a pasta bowl.
A couple of hundred degrees gushing out the engine exhaust in a continual flow of maneuvering aircraft can't possible make a difference to a reading on a tiny little thermometer. Can it?
Weather stations at airfields where created in order to help flight movements, in the old days knowing such things as barometric pressure, used to define altitude, was vital to safe air travel . They where never designed nor intended to be used has a means to predict weather for a much wider area .
This has occurred because , they exist therefore could be used and more importantly before the idea of 'settled science' people accepted that weather data had to be taken with a pinch of slat and and weather forecasts where inherently 'uncertain' in nature . So the fact that airfields can poorly represent the wider area , was not really an issue .
So what has changed ?, well on the problem side nothing , indeed with bigger airfields and more jets the problems have actual got worse , anyone who has worked on the pans of these airfields can tell you how hot they can get.
What has really changed is the 'need' for certainty in such measurement as those of temperatures and that is a product of those infamous words 'settled science '
Now all the problems of airfield based weather measurements are simply 'ignored ' , the highly political/ relgions nature of 'the cause' as created a need for unquestionable 'facts ' in a area where in reality much is still 'questionable'
Does the Met Office know all this? , absolute they been involved in such airfield measurements and their problems form day one , indeed a large part of their work used to be around this area , many MET people went through the RAF so are personal familiar the issues involved .
So what is the game? well you can say the Met Office has done very well out of 'the cause ' they are one of the organisation how have seen substantial increases in funding , of which a recent 96 millions for new computer was part , while its head has been personal honoured and has gained political influence the head of the MET office has not had for a very long time . In many ways they done a 'good job ' for both themselves and the MET office , although they failed to do a good job for the actual people picking up the bills .
So it would be easy to say it is merely self serving interest , but that leaves out the fact that some extent the MET office serves a political master and that is why they get the funding and the honours in the first place, in the end it is not the totally misleading headline that is the problem , it is the totally failure of the MET office to correct has we see so often in climate 'science' the bad behaviour is made far worse by the failure to call out such behaviour, either through cowardice or self serving interest, of those who should be acting has gatekeepers.
Many years form now if the public views scientists has naturally untrustworthy , dishonesty an self serving , then it will be the current generation of scientists , both those that matched this pattern and those that side nothing about them , which will be to blame . While we all my end up paying the price for Mann . the Teams etc inability to do science at the level we expect any undergraduate handing in an essay to do.
Another scorcher from Josh!
I wonder if the weather folks at the Met Office would like to see the climate ones pack their bags, remove their computers, and set up shop elsewhere? The weather ones would keep the radars and the observations work, and could save their pennies up to get new computers and software for weather forecasting purposes in due course.
Advocacy, civil servants with an agenda, do not make for objective observation - evah.
The Wet Office talk in riddles and with it bestrewing a weave of falsehoods and disinformation, it is their trade, it is an agency of the UK government and therefore will toe the line with its woeful adherence to the official man made global warming
bollocksmythologizing.These days, It, the Wet Office gives off a rotten whiff of cow's ordure, it stinks - and very redolent, similar in style to the taxpayer funded NGO sock puppetry - taxpayer paid advocates ref' the Environment Agency and lobbyists who then purposefully agitate as cheerleaders for the green agenda - simply put.
Further, how can anyone who is given to objective analysis believe aught it utters when said institution whose bias is legendary and whose judgement went missing, just like its skewed computer models which are, models all based on
bentfixed (read adjusted upwards) temperature readings?"Warmest evah" - too bloody convenient. Too many lies.
Is it not time, for the Wet Office to be defunded?
Inexorably the Wet Office's clouded bias has provoked the private sector into seeding a number of good forecasting alternatives. Indeed, there are accurate weather forecasting organizations who are not funded by the UK £taxpayer but who can do and do it - a very efficacious and expert job - without all the meddlesome, unhelpful baggage of a wet behind the ears and egregiously biased civil service.
All we (the UK public) want is clear observation and weather tracking - just METEOROLOGY................................... not creative statistical analysis, blatant climate advocacy and politicized double speak.
I think the Met Office have to justify their expenditure, which continues to increase, with ever increasing tales of woe and disaster. And still, nothing continues to happen. Computers were supposed to be great labour saving devices, that would save money.
Apart from improved 5 day forecasts, what have Met Office Climate Models ever done for us?
Well, there is the humour, and pretty graphics, and nice new office accommodation, and increased certainty about inaccurate forecasts.
Weather stations beside airport runways are not intended for meteorological use. Pilots need to know the actual wind, temperature and pressure conditions over the runway in order to calculate their aircraft's take-off performance. That is why the measurements are made as close to the runway as possible.
To use these measurements for any other purpose is nonsensical.
John Shade
The Meteorological Office founded in 1854
The Hadley Climate Research Centre founded in 1990
150+ years of meteorological experience being directed by a 25 year young research department?
For all our sakes they need to be made separate, individually accountable operations as quickly as possible!
Russell
Josh need not travel to Heathrow to find the hot air his caption balloons require:
SITE PREV RECORD PREV RECORD MAX (°C) 1 JULY 2015 MAX (°C) YEARS OF DATA
Durham 31/7/1943, 10/7/1921 30.6 31 133
Sheffield 31/7/1943, 10/7/1921 31.7 33.3 130
None of the stations broke the UK record for July, nor came anywhere near it, which is of course the claim made for Heathrow.
The data provided by the abettor of sexual predators... cherry picked.
Brilliant drawing, Josh. I like the fact that MO also stands for 'modus operandi'.. :-)
Paul Homewood, don't confuse warmists with facts that were not made to their approval. They can cook up anything they choose, and tell you their recipe is better than evah.
Pro Celebrity Climate Science Cook Up is set to be a TV hit in December, with great advance publicity from official sponsors, the BBC and Grauniad.
Worth repeating Paul Homewood's earlier statement on his blog that "How does this compare to past heatwaves? (the Heathrow "record") Temperatures over 36 °C reported at any station in the UK observing network are very rare, with only a handful of notable heatwaves seeing such extremes. The heatwaves of August 1990, August 2003, and July 2006 each saw a number of stations exceed 36 °C, whereas on 1 July 2015 Heathrow was the only station."
There is no doubt that The Met Office is in perpetual "cherry picking mode" to promote their CAGW agenda. Personally I would vote for the closure of those parts of The Met that meddle in climatology and constrain them to weather. I also seem to remember seeing an article in The Telegraph (shortly after the Heathrow "record") that we could expect another heat wave shortly exceeding 37C in UK. I am still waiting and up here in Scotland we are currently at 15C.
John Peter, do Met Office records for Heathrow go back as far as 1976? It was a very significant hot dry summer, but the Met Office and other Green Blobbies seem to have forgotten all about it.
Maybe their pens ran out of ink, and their mad dogs have reprogrammed the records, of the mid '70's sun.
For the record, Tchannon (at Tallbloke's) also had a post on the Met Office's hottest July day ever claim - Is this FUBAR? Heathrow “record” temperature
It would be interesting to see how many weather stations report an increase in temperature of 1.7 K in under 5 minutes, and under what conditions that occurs.
I am not sure if I would advocate cessation of climatology within the Met Office, but I would like to see them study some climate history and all take a refresher course on natural variation.
"I am not sure if I would advocate cessation of climatology within the Met Office, but I would like to see them study some climate history and all take a refresher course on natural variation."
Yeah maybe but not on the taxpayers tab, it's way past time the whole lot of them were made to survive as a stand up operation in the real world and off the public teat.
Met Office climate models have a musical Auto Correct function, it plays "The only way is up!"
After December it will revert to the Status Quo. "Down Down, Deeper and Down", though this may be in relation to revised Met Office financial forecasts.
Stuck-Record: "I suppose ones salary and pension are more important than the truth."
This statement just about sums up the whole GW/CC problem, doesn't it. It's naughty when done by private industry but unforgivable when done with taxpayer money.
Interesting Russell.
So what you are saying is that out of 440 stations 97% of them didn't even break their daily record let alone their annual one.
I'm surprised that old rogue Josh has not drawn the same plane flying over suspiciously blob-shaped Green Park, abettting the July 1 temperature record there as well.
Thanks to TerryS for reminding us that 97% of the snow on top of Mt.Everest is not as high as the summit.
Re hottest July day ever at Heathrow.
Heathrow has recently undergone a huge enlargement, the completion of T5A,T5B andT5C terminals, the construction of many thousands of square meters of new taxiways to the service the terminals ( all constructed of 457mm thick concrete). At the same time a new energy centre and car parking facilities (constructed of concrete) were added to service the new T5 expansion along with a new access roads and roundabouts which were added for access to the terminals from the M25.
T2 has also been expanded and a new energy centre built to service its needs, little wonder then that the temperature recorded recently exceeds that of previous years.
Typically the MET Office always seems to look only at the result and rarely consider possible causes.
Barry Wells, in the days of steam locomotives, engine crew would cook themselves fried breakfast on a shovel in the firebox.
With extra long forks, construction workers at Heathrow can prepare excellent toasted bacon sandwiches, white or wholemeal bread, but fried eggs remain a problem.
Thanks to Russell the vvhinger for not recognizing that temperature distribution in deg C over a flat area would not be expected to behave in the same way as the distribution of height in meters over a steep mountain slope. Such is the level of technical understanding and discourse...
As I tried to explain above, if you replace a temperature sensor with a long time constant (liquid -in-glass) with a sensor with a short time constant (electronic) you will get records. They're just blowin' in the wind; you know, the drifting hot air bubbles that gliders rely on (in met office speak 'a parcel of air').
The BBC is funded through a poll-tax/licence fee which is levied for the reception of radio/TV signals - not to pay for the BBC internet (good as it - used to be - is). In the same way, the MO is funded to provide weather forecasts which, with more and more powerful computers at their disposal and more and more mega-yonks of funding, are less accurate now than ever.
Defunding both organisations would be a start.
I pity any honest scientists still working there
I pity anyone trying to find one
the MO is funded to provide weather forecasts which, with more and more powerful computers at their disposal and more and more mega-yonks of funding, are less accurate now than ever.
Defunding both organisations would be a start.
Harry Passfield
Harry, while I agree with most of what you say I think the above sentence is a little cruel, though I do agree that their forecast reliability has not improved enough relative to their cost