Is the Absence of Pollution Causing Temperatures to Rise?

Pollution isn’t causing Britain’s record-breaking high temperatures. Rather, it's the absence of pollution.

Compared to the late 1960s and early 1970s, over a typical January we now enjoy almost 50% more hours of sunshine. Over the whole year, we get about 13% additional hours of sunshine. That amounts to more than 30 extra minutes of sunshine per day.

Ironically, these changes appear to be rather more to do with the absence of pollution than because of it. And surprise, surprise, more sunshine equates to higher temperatures.

Climate change is not really my bailiwick, so apologies to our in-house boffins, Ben Pile, Tilak Doshi and Chris Morrison.

However, sunshine is an area where I have skin in the game. We’ve just spent our first summer in a house with three, metre square skylights in the kitchen roof. Unless you too have skylights in the ceiling you’d struggle to imagine how much heat they generate, by breakfast time the kitchen is effectively a no-go zone. We largely solved the problem by covering the skylights with car covers, creating shade. Instantly the temperature dropped from tropical to temperate. The difference is, literally, night and day, dark and light!