Met Office Climate Report More Scare Story Than Science

Apocalyptic headlines and shaky data make the Met Office’s 2024 climate report read more like a scare story than a work of science

The UK Met Office has just published its annual State of the UK Climate report for last year. It reads more like a political pamphlet than a scientific one.

The Press Release sets the tone at the very start:

Record breaking and extreme weather has become increasingly commonplace in the UK as our climate has changed over the last few decades.

The latest assessment of the UK’s climate shows how baselines are shifting, records are becoming more frequent and that temperature and rainfall extremes are becoming the norm.

Most people think of extreme weather as events like the winter of 1963, the Great North Sea Flood, the 1987 storm or the heavy snowfalls and floods in 1948 – not a mild February or sunny day in April.