The Global Warming Policy Foundation has called on Reuters to withdraw or correct a misleading fact check, which they published on July 14th, called “Met Office says UK temperature data shows increase in last two decades”.
The fact check concerns a report in the Daily Sceptic, claiming that average U.K. temperatures had not increased over the last two decades. This was based on a chart from our recent publication, “The UK’s Weather in 2022”, shown below:
As the Daily Sceptic correctly noted, the 10-year average has barely changed since 2007.
The Met Office claim that their “preferred smoothing pattern” clearly shows warming over the last two decades. However the use of 10-year averages is common in these sort of studies, and the Met Office themselves often use decadal averages.
Reuters also justify their fact check by reference to the Met Office’s claim that the ten warmest years in the UK since 1884 have been in the last two decades. This, however, is a red herring – it does not mean that temperatures have carried on increasing.
We call on Reuters to correct their fact check to reflect the fact that decadal temperatures have flatlined in the last two decades, as the observational data clearly reveals.
Paul Homewood, author of The UK’s Weather in 2022 comments:
“If UK temperatures in the last 20 years were increasing as rapidly as the Met Office suggest, it should be obvious from their own data. Yet according to the Met Office’s State of UK Climate 2022 report, published today, UK temperature between 1998 and 2007 averaged 9.35°C, compared to 9.44°C between 2013 and 2022, a statistically insignificant change.”