No, Met Office–A Dry July Does Not Mean Climate Change.

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By Paul Homewood

This really is quite fraudulent:

So far July 2022 has been the driest July in England since 1911. Up to 26 July there has been only 15.8mm of rain averaged across England; this is only 24% of the amount we would expect in an average July.

At this stage in the month we would expect to have seen well over three-quarters of the month’s rain to have already fallen in an average July.

The situation for the UK is a little better. As it stands, July 2022 is still the eighth driest July since 1836. With only 37.7mm of rain having fallen so far it is the driest July since 1984. Scotland has been closer to average in the north and west, but drier conditions have prevailed for south and east Scotland. Overall Scotland (71%), Wales (39%) and Northern Ireland (43%) have been dry, but the most extreme conditions are in East Anglia and southeast England.

Mark McCarthy, Head of the Met Office National Climate Information Centre, said: “It is not just July that has been dry. Since the start of the year, all months apart from February have been drier than average in the UK too. The result of this is that the winter, spring and summer of 2022 have all seen less than the UK average seasonal rainfall.

“England has seen the lowest levels during these periods and, rainfall totals for the first six months of the year are around 25% below their long-term average, with the driest regions in the east and southeast.”

Climate change

Mark McCarthy continued: “Met Office climate change projections highlight an increasing trend towards hotter and drier summers for the UK, with the driest regions anticipated to be in the south and east. While trends in summer temperature and heatwaves are very apparent in the climate records of recent decades, the large variability in our rainfall means that it is too soon to be able to detect the pattern in summer rainfall.”

July 2022: a dry run for UK’s future climate?

To even mention the possibility of climate change being responsible for the dry July is ridiculous as well as dishonest. The Met Office’s own data shoes that Julys are not getting drier; indeed they have been much wetter in the last two decades than the 1970s to 90S:

Furthermore, most of the really dry Julys occurred prior to 1920. The driest one was in 1911, followed by 1868 and 1869. Note also that the period up to 1920 was dominated by big fluctuations in rainfall from year to year, from very dry to very wet. In contrast, the weather lately has been much less extreme.

Needless to say, there are no trends to drier summers either:

The Met Office are simply playing their usual trick of taking one month’s weather and pretending it is climate change.

What is interesting too is this chart:

A graph showing 2022 2022 monthly rainfalls for England compared to average. The graph shows that every month other than February have seen below average rainfall.

Notice that some of this year’s shortfall was in January. This, of course, cannot be due to global warming, which the Met Office keeps insisting is making our winters wetter!

Just to complete the picture, this spring was not unusually dry, and again there is no trend to drier springs. And we can say exactly the same for June: