Tag: weather

Cherry-Picking Met Office Drops Declining Wind Speed Chapter From Its Latest Annual Climate Report

Lower UK wind speeds and less powerful storms have always been a bit of a disappointment to activists whipping up a climate crisis frenzy to back the Net Zero fantasy. Going back over 50 years, the data is clearly showing a declining trend.

From The Daily Sceptic

By Chris Morrison

Lower UK wind speeds and less powerful storms have always been a bit of a disappointment to activists whipping up a climate crisis frenzy to back the Net Zero fantasy. Going back over 50 years, the data is clearly showing a declining trend. Of course, despite its lamentable inability to step up to the Net Zero plate, wind is one of the UK’s “essential climate variables”, to quote the Met Office’s own words. Since it first started publishing its annual ‘state of the UK climate’ report, the climatic performance of wind and storms have had their own dedicated chapter. Alas, no more. The 2025 report, published last month, has abolished the chapter – wind it seems is now little more than a footnote. Should do better, some might comment.

However hard one tries to regard the Met Office as a sound independent science body, its obvious Net Zero promotion constantly gets in the way. “Embarrassingly duped by activists” was Matt Ridley’s recent verdict, and it is difficult to disagree. How it can justify abolishing wind is almost beyond comprehension. It doesn’t take a particularly cynical nature to suggest the ever-expanding chapter on temperatures is unlikely to disappear in future editions.

The Met Office has had trouble with wind and storms in the past. In January 2024, a spokesperson told a BBC radio programme that UK storms were “more intense” due to the effects of climate change. Paul Homewood asked for an explanation via a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, but was told no answer could be provided due to the fact that the information “is not held”.

It often seems that the Met Office does not hold a great deal of information when FOI requests are made. It has been asked many times to supply the names of ‘well-correlated and neighbouring’ stations that are apparently used to estimate temperatures at non-existent weather sites, but the answers always come back none.

You do not have to be particularly conspiratorial or uncharitably minded to find difficulty in understanding why the Met Office has got the hump about the heavenly breezes. As with temperatures, rainfall and sunshine hours, all given a large chapter every year, wind speeds and frequency are measured across a UK-wide network of dedicated weather stations. In its 2024 report, the Met Office described all these observations as “ground truth”, adding that its UK climate monitoring capability would not be possible without them. “When considering the variability in the UK’s climate, it is perhaps helpful to consider the observational series presented in this report as one realisation of an ensemble of possible outcomes which, taken together, represent the UK’s climate overall”, it notes.

Update to the latest report: “… represents the UK’s windless climate overall”.

The big take-out from recent Met Office reports is the graph below showing maximum wind gust speeds back to the 1970s. Noted the Met Office last year, this is a “useful measure” of storminess.

The graph plots the number of days each year on which at least 20 stations recorded gusts exceeding 40/50/60 Kt (46/58/69 mph). This useful storm measure shows an obvious decline over around 50 years in almost all the gust speeds tracked. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Met Office has a habit of expressing caution about these inconvenient figures, suggesting data “limitations” might be due to changes in instrument types, the station network size and individual site exposure. Would that such doubts were raised by the State meteorologist about its temperature measuring operation with its 100 non-existent stations, ‘records’ declared from obvious heat spikes picked up by new improved measuring devices, and a hopelessly compromised, unnatural heat-ravaged UK-wide 380-site network.

Lower wind speeds, particularly if they are part of a long-term trend, are not exactly helpful to the current fanatical Net Zero UK Government that is keen to throw billions of pounds of subsidies at promoting renewable energy, including wind turbines. No doubt energy ministers will welcome a little reticence on such matters from other government departments.

Of course, the Met Office has not completely given up on the value of windstorm scares to push the Net Zero political project. In its separately published guidance notes on wind, it states: “In future, most climate projections indicate that winter windstorms will increase slightly in number and intensity over the UK i.e. more winter storms, including disproportionately more severe storms, are projected to cross the UK. However, this has medium confidence because a few climate models indicate differently.”

How the Met Office arrives at this conclusion is unclear, although like most Net Zero activists it is keen on the ‘evidence’ produced by selected computer models measuring an unmeasurable atmosphere. It is certainly not backed up by decades of past observations, now conveniently ditched in its recent cherry-pick of essential climate variables. Instead, the report notes individual wind gust extremes and covers major storms in detail, but fails to update vital wind data to provide the trends of most interest to scientists. Needless to say, the Met Office owes the paying public an explanation for its extraordinary behaviour in failing to update such important climate data.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.

Separating Weather from Hysteria: The ‘Double Heat Dome’ Story

My forecast calls for sensible precautions and a healthy dose of skepticism toward overheated rhetoric.

From Watts Up With That?

Reposted from Legal Insurrection

My forecast calls for sensible precautions and a healthy dose of skepticism toward overheated rhetoric.

Posted by Leslie Eastman 

Last year, I delved into the origins of “heat dome” hysteria.  This year, the press has literally doubled down on this scare with news of a “double heat dome” hysteria.

Two heat domes are preparing to join forces, sending temperatures soaring around the U.S. next week.

The first heat dome is developing in the southwest while the second is forming over the subtropical Atlantic, said Jeff Berardelli, chief meteorologist at Nexstar’s WFLA.

They’ll be replaced by one larger heat dome set to park itself over the center of the U.S. by the Fourth of July holiday.

“This could be the first widespread, significant heat wave of 2026 for much of the South and Midwest,” said Nexstar meteorologist Blake Matthews. “Unlike the record-breaking heat that scorched the desert southwest earlier this year, this event is targeting areas that haven’t experienced prolonged extreme temperatures yet this season.”

Double heat dome coming to US: Here’s when it’ll start, where it’ll be worsthttps://t.co/Ia9P6D9AGM

— The Hill (@thehill) June 26, 2026

Instead of offering calm, practical guidance on seasonal weather and local preparedness, headline writers are racing to outdo one another with apocalyptic graphics and overheated climate rhetoric.

So as the nation gets ready for July 4th, we’re being told to fear the forecast rather than focus on the very real, yet very manageable, risks that come with a hot holiday weekend.

A heat dome is simply a large, persistent upper‑level high‑pressure system that acts like a lid, trapping hot air near the surface and allowing temperatures and humidity to build for days or weeks. In this case, one dome is developing over the Southwest U.S., and another over the subtropical Atlantic.

Forecasters expect these two ridges to link up and effectively behave as a single, expansive dome over the central and eastern U.S. heading into the Fourth of July period.

NOAA’s Weather Prediction Center said hot weather will be the story this coming weekend from the Plains to the Ohio Valley, with widespread above-average temperatures expected thanks to a strong upper-level ridge of high pressure (aka heat dome) developing.

Highs in the 90s are expected as far north as the Great Lakes and Minnesota, and 100s for much of Texas. Heat indices approaching 110 degrees are possible from the mid-South to the central Gulf Coast where the combination of heat and high dew points will be greatest.

I grew up in the Great Lakes region. Highs in the 90s were not unheard of, and I suspect the 100s are not rare in Texas, either.

The “double” wording is more descriptive/media‑driven than a formal technical term; operational meteorologists are still describing the pattern as a strong, connected ridge/heat dome.

Despite the barrels of red ink and the adjectives, people seem to be chill with the idea that summer days can run a bit hot.

In fact, the use of color in weather graphics has gotten ludicrous.

But I digress.

The real message is that the next few weeks will be hot. So, make a point of drinking water regularly, wearing lightweight clothing, and taking occasional breaks in the shade or air‑conditioned spaces to avoid overheating.

Finally, review the U.S. National Weather Service’s heat safety recommendations for staying safe in hot weather, and follow those that apply to any outdoor activities.

So as the media pushes “double heat dome” alarmism and slathers maps in apocalyptic reds, most Americans will simply recognize what they’ve always called this season: summer.

My forecast calls for sensible precautions and a healthy dose of skepticism toward overheated rhetoric.

Sunny Springs Linked To Warmer Weather

A co-efficient of 0.69 is strong. In short, sunnier weather correlates with warmer weather.

This is not surprising, as the Met Office themselves found exactly the same thing in a 2006 study:

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

As I reported earlier, it was one of the sunniest springs on record this year as well as the warmest. Are the two things related?

I have charted the average of daily max temperatures and sunshine hours in England, and there appears to be a good correlation:

A co-efficient of 0.69 is strong. In short, sunnier weather correlates with warmer weather.

This is not surprising, as the Met Office themselves found exactly the same thing in a 2006 study:

Wayback Machine

The daily max is strongly correlated, but there is also a weaker correlation with daily mins. There is no evidence, in other words, that clearer skies result in colder nights during spring.

As the Met Office also suggested, the extra sunshine could be linked to reduced air pollution.

That Met Office study has since been buried and is only archived on Wayback.

NOAA Bets on AI to Translate Weather Warnings—But Can Machines Reliably Convey Life-and-Death Messages?

A new study celebrates artificial intelligence for translating National Weather Service forecasts into multiple languages, claiming accuracy above 95 percent and dramatically faster turnaround times. Yet the history of weather communication shows that translation failures often stem from culture, context, and human interpretation—areas where AI still faces significant challenges.

From Watts Up With That?

By Anthony Watts

A new study celebrates artificial intelligence for translating National Weather Service forecasts into multiple languages, claiming accuracy above 95 percent and dramatically faster turnaround times. Yet the history of weather communication shows that translation failures often stem from culture, context, and human interpretation—areas where AI still faces significant challenges.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Nearly 69 million people in the United States speak a language other than English at home, yet weather warnings have long been issued almost exclusively in English. A new study documents how the National Weather Service is using artificial intelligence to change that, developing a comprehensive translation program that delivers life-saving forecasts and alerts in Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Samoan, French and other languages.

The new multidisciplinary study was led by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign climate, meteorology and atmospheric sciences professor Joseph Trujillo-Falcón and NWS scientist Monica Bozeman and is published in the journal Artificial Intelligence for the Earth Systems.

“Translating weather forecasts has always been a critical, time-consuming task, often added to the plates of bilingual forecasters managing full operational responsibilities, but it provides information for the 68.8 million people who do not speak English at home,” said Trujillo-Falcón, who also leads the ALERTAS lab in partnership with the department of communication at Illinois.

A new study led by Illinois professor Joseph Trujillo-Falcón documents how the National Weather Service is using artificial intelligence to develop a comprehensive translation program that delivers life-saving forecasts and alerts in Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Samoan, French and other languages. Photo by Fred Zwicky

The urgency for accurate and culturally sensitive translation of weather forecasts in the U.S. intensified in the 1970s and ’80s. In 1987, an F4 tornado struck the town of Saragosa, Texas, and 151 of the town’s 183 residents suffered injuries or casualties. The town, which had many Spanish-only speakers, had only one Spanish-language radio station, which did provide the NWS warning; however, the literal translation of the English message failed because the word “warning” has no Spanish equivalent.

The new program partners the NWS with the AI translation platform LILT, whose patented training process enables large language models to adapt neural machine translation tools for weather terminology and messaging.

“Before this program, bilingual NWS forecasters spent up to an hour manually translating a single product. The AI system now completes the same translation in 5 to 7 minutes for some NWS products, with accuracy scores above 95%,” Trujillo-Falcón said. “More than 30 NWS offices from across the country are using it and, starting with the 2025 hurricane season, the National Hurricane Center officially began issuing AI-translated Spanish advisories for all hurricanes in the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, providing lifesaving information to the U.S. and even Latin America.”

This graphic details the workflow for translating NWS text products via the LILT application programming interface and posting them to the public NWS experimental website at weather.gov/translate. Photo courtesy Joseph Trujillo-Falcón

Beyond the operational aspect of the new program, the team is also very interested in how it will benefit the American people and economy.

“Tourists from across the world come back time and time again, benefiting local businesses, and we can provide them with life-saving information,” Trujillo-Falcón said. “And with the World Cup approaching, the NWS has made an agency-wide effort to provide decision-support services in the event of dangerous storms approaching the stadiums.”

Trujillo-Falcón emphasized the importance of the multidisciplinary focus the U. of I. brings to the program. For example, Illinois geography and geographic information science graduate student and study co-author Liam Llewellyn has overlaid geographic information systems, weather and census data to identify which language translations are needed for all 122 NWS offices across the country.

“We plan to expand these collaborations in the future here at Illinois,” Trujillo-Falcón said. “For example, I have been working with Spanish and Portuguese professor Salvatore Callesano, who is helping with the social science evaluation of how the public responds to AI tools.”

Researchers from the University of North Dakota, Pace University, Colorado State University and the University of Oklahoma also contributed to this study.

Godzilla Weather, Widespread Devastation & Economic Disruption

Will somebody save us all from these clowns who call themselves “journalists”?

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Ian Magness

Will somebody save us all from these clowns who call themselves “journalists”?

Experts fear a ‘Godzilla’ El Niño will be strongest on record and cause widespread devastation.

The world could be on the brink of a “Godzilla-like” El Niño extreme weather pattern that could trigger economic and political disruption around the world.

El Niño, an oceanic heatwave that occurs two to three times each decade, is building in the Pacific around the equator, and is expected to peak in September, the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has warned.

The warm current will affect weather patterns and increase the risk of droughts in Australia, and southern parts of Asia and Africa. It will also increase the likelihood of violent storms and heavy rainfall in parts of the Americas.

While droughts and storms are bad enough, experts say this could be the strongest El Niño on record, with even more severe potential outcomes. These include flooding, landslides, wildfires, famine, conflict and migration.

The expected severity has led to some meteorologists using the term Godzilla El Niño – after the colossal dinosaur-like creature that has featured in dozens of monster films.

El Niño has been causing weather-related disasters for centuries. It is thought to have contributed to the collapse of Peru’s ancient Moche civilisation in the eighth century, for example.

So, at a time when global supply chains and geopolitics are especially fragile, what could a Godzilla El Niño mean for the world? Here are three potential effects.

Read the full fairy tale here.

The report goes on to claim that food supply will be disrupted, migration will increase and and there will be “conflict zone flare-ups”.

All this from a weather phenomenon that comes around every four or five years – something humanity has managed to survive for millennia! Indeed, when you add in La Ninas, which also impact the weather, most years are “abnormal”!

El Ninos create a problem for the alarmist media. As global temperatures can rise by as much as a full degree in the space of a couple of years, as the climate swings from La Nina to El Nino, without any noticeable detriment to human life, why on earth should we be worried about much smaller rises in temperature spread over many decades?

Hence the attempts to frighten us with childish descriptions of Godzilla weather patterns triggering economic and political disruption around the world.

In reality, the changes to weather patterns brought about by El Nino have nothing at all to do with higher temperatures. They are the result of the change in atmospheric weather patterns.

The Met Office have this useful video, showing exactly what El Nino is:

Because of the changes in Pacific trade winds, as shown above, precipitation patterns around the world are also affected:

To label weather as “good” or “bad” is an oversimplification. The BBC, for instance, talk about floods in some regions, but heavier rain is more often than beneficial for agriculture.

But these effects tend to be much smaller than they would like us to believe. They are usually much more subtle. Take the Indian monsoon, for example:

Monsoon On Line

Yes, El Ninos tend to lead to droughts, but not always so. Droughts often occur in other years as well. But more significantly El Nino-linked droughts have not become more severe over time, which the silly Telegraph article implies. Indian rainfall patterns respond to atmospheric changes, not global temperatures.

Finally, just to deal with the food supply crisis, we are supposed to expect, the chart of cereal production proves that recent El Ninos have had zero effect on output:

FAOSTAT

I cant leave this without mentioning that the young reporter who wrote this twaddle is the Telegraph’s “Global Health Security Reporter”:

The Telegraph’s Global Health Security coverage is partly funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Real Story of the D-Day Weather Forecast

New information from Allied and German archives and modern reconstructions of the weather during the landing period reveal that some of the “Pressure” story is not correct.

From The Cliff Mass Weather Blog

By CliffMass

The anniversary of D-Day is coming this week, and a movie has just been released about the D-Day weather forecast (called Pressure).

The movie follows the plot of the play of the same name, describing how a weather forecaster (James Stagg) pushed to delay the landing due to a storm, was opposed by an egotistical American meteorologist, and that the German forecasters were wrong, leaving the German defenders unprepared.   

New information from Allied and German archives and modern reconstructions of the weather during the landing period reveal that some of the “Pressure” story is not correct.

June 6, 1944

The landing in Normandy had several key environmental requirements.   

A full moon was needed to provide sufficient illumination for gliders and parachute troops the prior evening. No low cloud base that would prevent close air support and accurate naval bombardment along the coast.    Low tide conditions, so dangerous beach obstacles could be avoided.   Furthermore, winds had to be light so that waves and swell would be minimal.

June 4-7th had the requisite lunar and tide conditions, with the next opportunity not until later in the month.  And it was a matter of time before the Germans figured out where the real invasion would take place.  There was strong pressure to move sooner rather than later.

Three forecast groups were represented in the overall meteorological team: two British (UK Meteorological Office and British Navy) and one American (headed by Dr. Irving Crick).  The meteorological leader was the Royal Air Force’s James Stagg.    

The British meteorologists made use of traditional forecasting approaches that relied on the Norwegian Cyclone Model, with a typical evolution of cyclones and fronts (see below), while the Americans used a controversial “analog” approach, where one searched for similar weather situations in the past.

Weather prediction was a primitive, subjective affair at that time.  There were no numerical weather prediction models, little understanding of jet streams and upper-level weather features, and an acute lack of observations, particularly over the ocean.

The situation on June 4, 1944, was problematic (see the Allies’ sea level pressure analysis below).  A fairly strong low center was approaching northern Scotland.  The lines are isobars, lines of constant pressure, and where they are close together, the winds would be too strong.  Plus, a cold front was approaching (the line with the triangles on it).   

Not good for invasion:  winds would be too strong on the beaches, with lots of wave action and high water level (could not see the obstacles).

The weather map on June 5th indicated that the low had strengthened but had moved to the northeast (see below). An area of high pressure centered west of Spain was starting to extend northward into the region. Winds would still be significant, but the situation might be improving.

The forecast team under Stagg predicted the low would continue northward, producing conditions just good enough for D-Day on June 6th. The actual weather map for June 6th (below) suggests that Stagg and associates made the right forecast for the wrong reason.

As noted in an excellent recent paper by Anders Persson, the storm did NOT move to the northeast as predicted but weakened rapidly and slid southeastward.  Problematically, pressure differences over the channel were large enough to create significant wave action, which caused extensive sea sickness, high water levels on the beaches, and lost equipment and deaths.  

The disliked American forecaster  (Irving Krick) has been right about a pattern change that would push the low south rather than to the north, as predicted by Stagg and friends.

The situation was marginal, but just good enough for the landings in Normandy.

It has been thought that the Germans had poor weather maps over the eastern Atlantic because they had few weather assets over the Atlantic (and none over North America).  

But as noted in the article by Anders Persson, it appears the Germans had decoded Allied weather communications and possessed relatively good weather maps.  They assumed that the marginal conditions on June 6th were not good enough for an invasion, resulting in a lack of readiness and the absence of General Erwin Rommel to visit his wife on her birthday.

But the story does not end there.   

During the past decade, the meteorology of the period has been simulated using modern weather models and data assimilation tools, giving us a far more accurate description of what occurred during the D-Day period.

Below is an animation of the hourly precipitation (color shading) and sea-level pressure on June 6, 1944, made by the European Center (the ERA5 analysis).  You can see the low northeast of England weakening and moving southward.    Not what Stagg expected.

Although marginal, conditions were just good enough for a successful landing on Normandy, although the high winds were very problematic. 

No, WHYY, a Heat Wave Is Not a ‘Fingerprint of Climate Change’

Observational data from NOAA and peer-reviewed analyses show U.S. heat wave frequency and intensity peaked in the 1930s — long before post-1950s CO₂ rise accelerated. The 1934 and 1936 summers stand out for extreme hot day counts, with the decade recording the highest frequency of very hot days over much of North America. Many all-time state and city highs (including in the central and eastern U.S.) were set then and still hold. Extended heat waves were more common in that era than in the 21st century so far.

WHYY’s Climate Desk piece (April 14–15, 2026) claimed an early April heat wave threatening Philadelphia records carried the clear “fingerprint of climate change.”

It quoted Climate Central’s Jen Brady asserting the event had that imprint, with their Climate Shift Index (CSI) tool declaring such temperatures “twice as likely” in Philly and 3–5 times more likely in parts of southern New Jersey/Delaware due to human-caused warming.

Forecast highs pushed into the low-to-mid 90s°F, potentially breaking the April 15 record of 88°F (set in 1941) or tying earlier marks.

This framing is misleading.

A short-term weather event driven by a persistent high-pressure ridge and warm air advection is weather, not long-term climate.

Conflating the two to imply causation or unprecedented crisis misrepresents both the science and the data.

Observational data from NOAA and peer-reviewed analyses show U.S. heat wave frequency and intensity peaked in the 1930s — long before post-1950s CO₂ rise accelerated.

The 1934 and 1936 summers stand out for extreme hot day counts, with the decade recording the highest frequency of very hot days over much of North America.

Many all-time state and city highs (including in the central and eastern U.S.) were set then and still hold. Extended heat waves were more common in that era than in the 21st century so far.

The most accurate modern U.S. temperature network (USCRN, deployed around 2005) shows no sustained rise in daily high temperatures nationwide since its inception.

Broader trends since the 1950s, when properly contextualized against the 1930s baseline, reveal mixed or modest changes in heat wave metrics — not a dramatic escalation.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

From ClimateRealism

By Linnea Lueken

A recent article from the climate desk at Philadelphia’s WHYY News titled “‘Fingerprint of climate change’: April heat wave could break a record in Philadelphia,” claims that warm temperatures in the Mid-Atlantic this week are evidence of long term global warming. This is false. While it is true that average, long term global temperatures have modestly increased since the Industrial Revolution, heatwaves like those forecasted for the East coast are not evidence of any emergency, and also are not becoming more frequent or severe.

A high-pressure ridge in the Atlantic Ocean is causing warmer air to sweep up the Southeastern United States and Mid-Atlantic, giving the region a springtime heatwave. That’s a short-term meteorological event, which is normally referred to as weather, not a long-term change in the average temperature and prevailing conditions for a region, which is climate.

WHYY News says “climate analysts say these hot temperatures fit into a trend of warming spring weather,” quoting a researcher at the climate action advocacy group, Climate Central, saying the heatwave has “a fingerprint of climate change,” as proof.

It is true that some data indicate that spring weather conditions are arriving a few days earlier in recent years than they did a hundred-plus years ago in some locations. However, this does not mean that severe spikes in temperature are the drivers of those changes. In fact, it is less severe cold driving the trend, not more severe warmth.

For example, the article and Climate Central point to Philadelphia as an example of one of the regions expected to see unseasonal warmth this spring, saying “since 1970, Philadelphia’s average spring temperatures have risen roughly 3 degrees, according to Climate Central.”

They say that climate change is what “makes this week’s high temperatures in Philadelphia twice as likely, according to the organization’s Climate Shift Index, which uses models to compare today’s world to a world without human-caused carbon pollution.”

There are major flaws in this reasoning, and bad science.

Data show that temperatures for Pennsylvania have only increased on average by around 2 °F since 1900, meaning that Philadelphia’s 3 ° F of warming since 1970 (if we assume Climate Central is correct) is higher over the past half-century than the average for the state as a whole over the past 125 years. This is actually not at all a surprise, but it has nothing at all to do at all with “human-caused carbon pollution.” The higher warming rate in a city like Philadelphia, like with other highly urbanized regions around the country, has everything do with increased population density and associated development producing the urban heat island effect. This effect was recently described by both an analysis of urban temperature stations in extremely hot places like Reno, Nevada by meteorologist Anthony Watts, as well as broader, summertime satellite-based measurement of temperatures by Dr. Roy Spencer, who found from 1895 to 2023:

[f]or the average “suburban” (100-1,000 persons per sq. km) station, UHI is 52% of the calculated temperature trend, and 67% of the urban station trend (>1,000 persons per sq. km). This means warming has been exaggerated by at least a factor of 2 (100%).

This analysis was for summertime temperatures, but what’s true of summer is true of spring because the built-up, heat retaining environment is the same.

Additionally, data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) state climate summaries show that heat spikes are not getting more common. Rather, the long-term slight rise in temperatures is due to days and nights with extremely low temperatures becoming less common, and nighttime temperatures (which are particularly influenced by UHI) are modestly warmer than they were a few decades ago.

Figure 1: “Very cold nights” from 1900-2020, from NOAA state summary for Pennsylvania: https://statesummaries.ncics.org/chapter/pa/

In fact, data indicate that instances of extreme warmth are actually less prevalent today than they were in the mid-1900s:

Figure 2: “Very hot days” from 1900-2020, from NOAA state summary for Pennsylvania: https://statesummaries.ncics.org/chapter/pa/

Climate Central and WHYY News fail to reference any real-world data, opting instead to simply assert without providing proof that it is warming in general. Instead, they point people to an attribution study that compares two models of the world—both fictional, both loaded with assumptions on the part of the researchers and other climate scientists—in order to prove climate change is causing heat waves. Models are not data, and, as such, attribution studies don’t provide evidence of warming. Climate Realism has discussed many times why it is invalid to use a model that assumes what it is setting out to prove; that climate change is responsible for any given weather event. Base models, which these attribution studies rely on, have failed to accurately predict real-world temperature change, and the vast majority of supposed extreme weather trends they predict have failed to materialize.

Just as a single month’s unusual cold is not proof that the planet is cooling, a single month’s unusual warmth is likewise not some “fingerprint” of a climate emergency.

It is shameful that WHYY News and other media outlets do not undertake some basic research before publishing alarming climate stories. Referencing long-term data would result in a fact-based and nuanced scientific view of weather. Instead, harming their audience, they produce hyperbolic stories based on fearmongering grounded in unscientific attribution modeling done by groups like Climate Central. A week of warm weather after months of dreary early spring cold is hardly alarming and certainly provides no evidence that catastrophic climate change caused by humans is underway.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

U.S. heat-related deaths have fallen sharply over decades thanks to air conditioning, better infrastructure, early warnings, and adaptation — despite urban growth. Cold-related mortality historically exceeds heat-related in temperate zones. Long-term fingerprints of warming (e.g., global tropospheric patterns, ocean heat content) exist and are debated in magnitude and impacts. Single April ridges in the Northeast are not among them.

WHYY and Climate Central turned a predictable weather story into advocacy by cherry-picking a warm spell and a model-derived index while downplaying history and observational nuance. This pattern repeats with hot events (and is often absent for cold ones or quiet storm seasons).

The honest assessment: Modest anthropogenic warming shifts temperature distributions, contributing a small increment to extremes in a warmer baseline. But heat waves like this one are driven primarily by natural meteorological variability, amplified locally by urban effects. They have occurred for centuries and do not signal a climate “crisis” requiring rushed energy system overhauls.

Policy should emphasize resilience — reliable power, cooling access, accurate forecasting — and energy abundance over treating every warm spell as Exhibit A for net-zero mandates.

Physics, history, and data align: this was weather, not a fingerprint of doom.

The 1930s Dust Bowl era stands out as the period of peak heat wave frequency, duration, and intensity across much of the contiguous United States in the instrumental record (since ~1895). Multiple independent analyses of NOAA data confirm this, particularly for the central U.S., Great Plains, Midwest, and Upper Mississippi Valley.

Why Dimming the Sun Is the New Climate Fix — And Why It’s a Terrible Idea

This “race to dim the sun” feels like the flip side of Gary Abernathy’s column on renewables finally standing on their own without subsidies. Both reflect frustration with decades of policy-heavy approaches that haven’t delivered reliable, scalable results. Instead of doubling down on market-driven energy (nuclear, natural gas for AI/data centers, advanced storage), some pivot to planetary-scale experiments with unknown side effects and massive governance questions.

The article spotlights the accelerating interest in solar geoengineering (or solar radiation management/SRM) — large-scale, deliberate efforts to reflect sunlight away from Earth to counteract global warming.

Some scientists, particularly at Cambridge University’s Centre for Climate Repair and backed by UK government funding via the Advanced Research and Innovation Agency (ARIA, ~£50–60 million), are described as “racing” to develop and test these technologies.

Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI): Releasing reflective particles (sulfates, calcium carbonate, or other aerosols) into the upper atmosphere to mimic volcanic cooling (e.g., Mount Pinatubo 1991).

Marine Cloud Brightening (MCB): Spraying fine seawater mist to make low-level clouds more reflective.

Smaller-scale ideas like thickening Arctic ice or cirrus cloud thinning.

Research remains mostly in modeling, lab work, and small-scale studies. No large-scale deployment exists.

A standout quote from Dr. Hugh Hunt (deputy director at Cambridge): “When you run the numbers, there’s just no way to avoid global warming without geoengineering.”

The piece acknowledges risks, skepticism, and governance issues but presents the work as a pragmatic response to stalled progress on mitigation.

The framing is urgent: emissions cuts alone aren’t happening fast enough, so “Plan B” interventions like dimming the sun are moving from fringe theory to active experimentation.

This “race to dim the sun” feels like the flip side of Gary Abernathy’s column on renewables finally standing on their own without subsidies.

Both reflect frustration with decades of policy-heavy approaches that haven’t delivered reliable, scalable results.

Instead of doubling down on market-driven energy (nuclear, natural gas for AI/data centers, advanced storage), some pivot to planetary-scale experiments with unknown side effects and massive governance questions.

Critics argue it’s a symptom of the same mindset: when the preferred “green transition” stalls, reach for bigger interventions rather than pragmatic, dispatchable solutions that already work.

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The climate change scientists racing to dim the sun

Geoengineering schemes may hold the key to reversing global warming, but risks abound and many remain sceptical

Ian McEwan’s recent novel, What We Can Know, is set in a semi-underwater Britain in the year 2119.

A few decades on from a climate catastrophe, things are pretty dire. If you want to get from the Chilterns to the South Downs, you have to travel by boat. The Telegraph has the story.

What saves humanity from total wipeout is, ironically enough, nuclear explosions in the Middle East. Detonations in the desert in the 2040s send gigatons of dust and sand into the upper atmosphere, where they begin to filter out the sun’s harsh light – and reverse global warming.

“Over the graves of millions, the earth began to cool,” our narrator tells us. Over time, the cooling encourages “a new spirit of optimism”.

As sci-fi as all this may sound, the scenario is grounded in scientific fact.

What McEwan is describing is a particularly brutal form of geoengineering – that is, modification on a planetary level – and specifically, “solar radiation modification”, or SRM.

In other words, turning the dimmer switch on the sun. The good news is we don’t need a nuclear apocalypse to do this. It is, theoretically, entirely possible for humans to cool the planet by reflecting more sunlight back into space.

“When you run the numbers, there’s just no way to avoid global warming without geoengineering,” says Dr Hugh Hunt, deputy director of the Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge University, who has been studying this for the best part of three decades.

“Increasingly, that’s what anyone who really sits down and thinks about it comes to believe. If you stop the sun’s rays from reaching the surface of the Earth, it’s kind of obvious, it’s cooler – as it is on a cloudy day.”

He points to the so-called “napkin” diagram, which charts predicted temperature rises in various scenarios: business-as-usual, mitigation (i.e., the outcome if we switch to renewables), carbon removal and SRM.

The mitigation helps, but it is only with SRM that the temperature actually falls. Again, theoretically.

Proposed techniques vary from the surprisingly lo-fi – painting city rooftops white to reflect more sunlight, say – to the Thunderbirds-esque.

Some have suggested using balloons to send artificial clouds made of aerosols into the sky; others have proposed fleets of planes circling the Earth and spraying sulphur dioxide aerosols into the upper atmosphere.

Last year, a US-Israeli start-up named Stardust, whose co-founder and chief executive, Yanai Yedvab, was once the deputy chief scientist at the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, announced it had raised $60 million to develop a “full-stack solution” to climate change, promising “a safe, measurable, adjustable, and fully reversible system to stabilise Earth’s temperature” (in other words, the deployment of particles, and bells-and-whistles monitoring).

Another US start-up, Make Sunsets, founded by two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, is banking on making artificial clouds.

To say that these companies are controversial is an understatement. Indeed, shortly after making its announcement, Stardust was accused by the Center of International Environmental Law of “accelerating a reckless race that threatens to put humanity on a path of no return to perpetual dependency on this extreme technology”. It comes with risks: acid rain, or climate becoming a new vector of warfare.

Read full story here.

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Risks and Challenges

Uneven regional impacts: Cooling might not be uniform. It could alter precipitation patterns (e.g., weaken monsoons in Asia or Africa), shift storm tracks, affect agriculture, or disrupt ecosystems in ways that harm some regions more than others.

Termination shock: If deployment stops suddenly (due to conflict, technical failure, or politics), temperatures could rebound rapidly — potentially faster and more damaging than gradual warming.

Ozone depletion, acid rain, and other side effects: Sulfate aerosols in particular raise concerns about stratospheric chemistry.

Governance and geopolitics: Who controls the “global thermostat”? Unilateral action by one country, company, or actor is theoretically possible, raising risks of international conflict. Attribution of weather events (droughts, floods) to SRM would be scientifically and politically contentious.

Moral hazard: Critics argue it could reduce urgency for emissions reductions, creating a dangerous distraction or “techno-fix” mindset.

Real-world practicality: A 2025 Columbia University study emphasized that SAI is far harder, costlier, and more unpredictable in practice than computer models suggest, due to engineering, delivery systems, maintenance, and atmospheric dynamics.

WESA Is Wrong, Sneezing and Watering Eyes Aren’t Climate Change Indicators

WESA Radio in Pittsburgh ran a story titled, “Sneezing, runny nose, itchy eyes: Allergy symptoms start earlier with climate change,” claiming that allergy seasons are beginning earlier and becoming more intense because of climate change. This is false. Year-to-year changes in pollen timing and severity are overwhelmingly driven by short-term weather variability, regional conditions, landscaping choices, and natural biological cycles, not gradual global temperature trends.

From ClimateRealism

By Anthony Watts

WESA Radio in Pittsburgh ran a story titled, “Sneezing, runny nose, itchy eyes: Allergy symptoms start earlier with climate change,” claiming that allergy seasons are beginning earlier and becoming more intense because of climate change. This is false. Year-to-year changes in pollen timing and severity are overwhelmingly driven by short-term weather variability, regional conditions, landscaping choices, and natural biological cycles, not gradual global temperature trends.

The article states that “allergy season starts earlier than past seasons because of the effects of climate change,” and that “temperature and precipitation pattern changes mean trees are blooming earlier and vegetation is growing more rapidly, producing more pollen in the atmosphere.” That is a broad attribution claim. It assumes that earlier blooms in a given year reflect long-term climate forcing rather than ordinary seasonal variability.

But plant phenology, the timing of leaf-out and pollen release, has always varied from year to year depending on winter chill, spring temperature swings, soil moisture, late frosts, and regional precipitation patterns. A mild February followed by a warm March can advance tree pollen season by weeks. A cold or wet spring can delay it. That is weather, not climate.

The physicians quoted in the story acknowledge that pollen allergy season “typically begins in the beginning of March,” with grass allergens in summer and ragweed in fall. That seasonal progression has been consistent for decades. The intensity of any given season depends heavily on rainfall, wind patterns, and local vegetation density.

In Pennsylvania and surrounding states, spring temperature variability from one year to the next routinely swings by several degrees. Those swings have an immediate effect on bloom timing. A single warm spell can trigger early budding. Extra precipitation can speed up plant growth. A subsequent cold snap can halt or damage growth. None of that requires invoking global climate change. It is the normal interplay of regional weather patterns.

For example, regional map data from the Northeast Regional Climate Center show that for the month of March, Pennsylvania has had above normal precipitation:

Similarly, Pennsylvania’s March temperature has been above normal:

Anybody who has a home garden can tell you that’s a double-booster for plant growth, and by extension results in more pollen causing spring allergies. March next year could be exactly the opposite, cold and dry, with a delayed allergy season. That’s normal year-to-year weather variability. Plants respond to immediate temperature thresholds, not abstract global averages. A warm week in late February can advance budding regardless of whether the long-term global mean temperature has increased by one degree over a century. Year-to-year variability in spring onset can easily exceed the magnitude of the long-term warming trend itself.

Moreover, increased pollen exposure can result from non-weather factors. Urban and suburban landscaping choices matter. The widespread planting of male ornamental trees, which produce pollen but no fruit, has increased airborne pollen in many communities. The widespread planting of male ornamental trees is a phenomenon often referred to as “botanical sexism,” a term coined by horticulturist Tom Ogren to describe the preference for planting male clones of trees and shrubs in urban environments. This practice, which has contributed to significantly higher pollen counts and increased seasonal allergies is likely the single biggest source of tree pollen in expanding suburban areas. That is land-use policy, not atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Air quality also plays a role. Particulate pollution, diesel exhaust, and ozone can irritate airways and exacerbate allergy symptoms, independent of pollen counts. Population growth and urban heat island effects can locally amplify pollen production and symptom severity. Warmer localized conditions in a city can trigger earlier plant growth. Again, these are regional environmental factors, not evidence of global climate-driven transformation.

Another important point is timescale. The article implies a trend based on recent seasons, but meaningful climate analysis requires at least 30 years of consistent, standardized pollen monitoring across the same sites. Pollen data are often sparse, localized, and methodologically inconsistent. Drawing sweeping climate conclusions from a handful of recent seasons is statistically weak and little more than mere opinion.

It is also worth noting that allergy medications and diagnostic awareness have improved significantly over the past two decades. Increased reporting of symptoms may reflect better recognition and treatment, not necessarily worsening environmental exposure.

None of this denies that climate has modestly warmed over the past century. It certainly has. But attributing fluctuations in pollen timing in a single region to global climate change requires rigorous long-term datasets showing a clear upward trend beyond natural variability. The WESA article does not present such data. It relies instead on expert opinion and generalized statements about warming.

Weather variability explains why one spring is earlier or more intense than another. Soil moisture explains why some years produce heavier pollen loads. Wind patterns explain distribution. Urban landscaping explains local exposure levels.

Year-to-year allergy changes are normal biological responses to local weather conditions. Converting those fluctuations into proof of climate change stretches correlation into causation. Climate Realism debunks articles just like this one every spring, and there are dozens of examples of such flawed reporting we’ve written about.

Sneezing in March is not a climate signal and WESA is doing a disservice to allergy sufferers in their coverage area by falsely leading them to think climate change is making them miserable.

Record Rainfall? No, A Damp Squib!

After three months of apocalyptic media stories, flood warnings and amber alerts, you would be excused for thinking we have just had the wettest winter in the UK since Noah slipped anchor! Even now the Met Office are describing it as “among the wettest on record”.

But the Met Office numbers tell a different story. In reality, it turns out to have been no different to many other winters in the past.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

After three months of apocalyptic media stories, flood warnings and amber alerts, you would be excused for thinking we have just had the wettest winter in the UK since Noah slipped anchor! Even now the Met Office are describing it as “among the wettest on record”.

But the Met Office numbers tell a different story. In reality, it turns out to have been no different to many other winters in the past.

Over the country as a whole, it was only the 20th wettest on record since 1836. As always, some parts have been wetter than others.

Weeks on end of bitter, polar air over much of the US pushed the jetstream far south of its usual track, while at the same time firing it up. As a result, storms have homed in on the southern half of Britain rather than further north. But even then, no region broke any rainfall records, nor even came close.

Desperate to keep up the alarm however, the Met Office have decided that the West Midlands, Cornwall and Leicestershire all experienced their wettest winter since records began in 1837. There’s only one problem here – there are no current stations in any of these regions which have data as far back as 1837, or even the 19th century for that matter. In Leicestershire, for example, they have just one official weather station – Market Bosworth, which has only been open since 2002! There is no data at all to support their assertions, which only originate from their dodgy computer models.

We do however have a long-term record at Radcliffe College, Oxford, which has been keeping meticulous records every day since 1767. The Met Office database, which begins in 1853, confirms that there was nothing at all unusual about this winter’s rainfall there.

This totally contradicts their claim that this particular area of the country had one of its wettest winters on record.

metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/stationdata/oxforddata.txt

There are in fact very few long running weather stations in the UK. Four others have data going back to the 1800s, and none back up the Met Office claims that the winter was one of the wettest on record – Armagh, Durham, Sheffield and Cambridge ranked 14th, 35th, 19th and 24th wettest respectively.

The Met Office continue to claim that climate change is making rainfall more extreme:

While this winter’s weather has been heavily influenced by natural variability and atmospheric patterns, climate change provides important context.

A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, approximately 7% more for every degree Celsius of warming. This means that when it does rain, downpours can be heavier and more intense.

Dull and mild February brings wet winter to a close – Met Office

But their own data fails to bear this out. For instance, if we look at the wettest months in England & Wales, those with more than 170mm of rain, they are not occurring more often than they used. Nor are they becoming wetter.

The wettest month this winter was January, with 144.3mm, not an unusually high monthly total at all. In fact, it is more than two years since we had a month with more than 170mm.

Met Office Hadley Centre HadUKP Data Download

Last year, we had a dry, sunny start to the year. This year, it has been dank and miserable.

But neither have anything to do with climate change. It is just weather.