Ross Clark Ross Clark

Yes, this is England’s hottest July day ever. But this tells us nothing about global warming

If you were deliberately trying to obtain a record high temperature reading an international airport would be a good place to take your thermometer. With huge concrete aprons and planes spewing out large quantities of hot air, airports have a microclimate of their own.

That is one reason not to get excited by today’s record July temperature of 98 degrees Fahrenheit (36.7 Celsius) measured at Heathrow. But there is another very good reason why the familiar clattering of broken weather records does little to reinforce the narrative of climate change. There are four countries in the UK, 12 months of the year and 4 main records to beat: hottest, coldest, wettest and driest. Given that reliable records go back little more 100 years, there is only a 20 per cent chance of getting through an entire year without one of those records being broken.

Take into account that there are 200 other countries in the world and thousands of cities and other locations around the world with recording stations (a remarkable number of which are at airports, by the way), it is inevitable that we are constantly bombarded with new weather records.

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