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

Gone with the wind

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 clear on 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.