Data taken from handwritten 130-year old rainfall
observations from Met Office archives has revealed that
extreme weather events are nothing new.
United Kingdom’s national weather service, The Met
Office published the data on Friday gained from
millions of archived rainfall records. But long-
standing environmentalism skeptics told The Epoch Times
that this further undermines the case that climate
change is driving extreme weather events.
130 Years
The Rainfall Rescue project was launched by the
University of Reading in March 2020 which used the help
of 16,000 volunteers to help digitally transcribe 130
years’ worth of handwritten rainfall observations from
the Met Office archives. This increased the amount of
pre-1960 observation data available for climate
scientists and researchers by six-fold.
The detailed accounts of the amount of rain that fell
go back to 1836, the same the year Charles Darwin
returned to the UK on the Beagle with Vice-Admiral
Robert Fitzroy, and a year before Queen Victoria took
to the throne.
The results revealed the UK’s driest ever year on
record is 1855, the third wettest month is December
1852 in Cumbria, and November of the same year the
wettest month on record for many parts of southern
England.
Climate Alarmism
But after reading the Victorian data set,
environmentalism skeptic Ben Pile, co-founder of the
Climate Resistance blog, told The Epoch Times by email
that the Met Office’s new extended dataset “shows us
what many have been trying to tell the Met Office and
its scientists for a long time: real-world data is far
more important than computer simulation, and real data
shows that we faced warmer, colder, wetter, drier and
winder conditions in the past and that we grew better
at coping with these challenges.”
“The hundreds of millions of pounds the Met Office have
spent on supercomputers to try to detect humanity’s
influence on the climate was a waste of money. We know
that weather in the British Isles is extremely variable
and even if they could detect trends, they would be of
little value to planners. The historical record debunks
climate alarmism, and shows us that we should rely on
facts from reality, not on computer games,” he added.
Extreme Weather
In terms of linking climate linked to extreme weather,
the Met Office noted that there is evidence of a human
contribution to changes in temperature extremes, heavy
rainfall events, and an increase in extreme high sea
levels in a number of regions. It added that
attribution science, the practice of linking weather
events to human-influenced climate change, is adding to
this evidence all the time.
Professor Ed Hawkins, Rainfall Rescue project lead and
climate scientist at the University of Reading said
that as “well as being a fascinating glimpse into the
past, the new data allows a longer and more detailed
picture of variations in monthly rainfall, which will
aid new scientific research two centuries on.”
He added that it also “increases our understanding of
weather extremes and flood risk across the UK and
Ireland, and helps us better understand the long-term
trends towards the dramatic changes we’re seeing
today.”
However, Andrew Montford, deputy director of the Global
Warming Policy Forum told The Epoch Times by email that
he believed that “there is very little evidence that
extreme weather events are becoming worse, and even
less than any changes are outwith what would be
expected from the large natural variability.”
The UK-based critical think tank on climate and energy
policy was founded by former Conservative Chancellor
Nigel Lawson. “I have no idea what Professor Hawkins is
talking about when he mentions ‘dramatic changes.’
There is little in the UK weather data that merits such
language,” added Montford.
The Epoch Times contacted Hawkins for a comment.
Intense
Paper records studied by Rainfall Rescue volunteers
contained observations between 1677 and 1960, based on
rain gauges located in almost every town and village
across England and Wales. One gauge included in the
transcription was located next to Beatrix Potter’s Hill
Top farm in the Lake District, where she wrote many of
her most famous books.
Met Office spokesman Grahame Madge said that to try and
use the unearthed Victorian data to state that “climate
change isn’t happening or that we have seen more
extremes in the past compared to what we are seeing now
is not the case.” He added that the Met Office had
indications of rainfall becoming considerably more
“intense” on average.
“We’ve always had rainfall, we always will. But there
is a broader alignment that a warmer atmosphere can
hold more moisture, therefore we look for the trend to
show increasing rainfall associated with climate
change. We are beginning to see the fingerprint of
climate change in the rainfall record, but given the
natural variation of the UK rainfall record, it’s
harder, more challenging to see that signal, but it’s
still there,” said Madge.
PA contributed to this report.
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