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Barrera | 3 years ago

> The runway also “melted” at the RAF Brize Norton, military air base in Oxfordshire, west of London, on Monday as the UK struggled to cope with the weather.

That word "melted" seems unjustified. CNBC reports:

> The RAF didn’t specify why it suspended flights, but a spokesperson said “the runway has not melted” as early media reports indicated.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/18/london-flights-suspended-aft...

discuss

order

ibejoeb|3 years ago

Totally unjustified, sensational nonsense.

> The UK’s highest of 38.7C was recorded in Cambridge in July 2019.

This isn't remarkable.

>the record temperature of 100 degrees was reached at Greenwich on August 9

This was in 1911, from: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/115352761/9911357

chimprich|3 years ago

> Totally unjustified, sensational nonsense.

I wish we had a pithy term for people underplaying exceptional events (complacency-mongering?) to show off how unflappable they are, because it would be nice to use it in this case.

Temperature records being broken are, by definition, exceptional events. In this case, the UK's temperature record was broken by 1.5C, which is a huge increase.

> This was in 1911

Cherry-picking a data point. There's a very significant trend of hotter days and record breaking occurring in the past few years. One outlier in a century of data doesn't mean very much (and your source of a paragraph from an Australian newspaper in 1911 seems to get the value wrong).

gnabgib|3 years ago

Are you, perhaps, unaware that these are in different units? 38.7C is 102F. The UK switched in the 60s to centigrade[0]. I'd also be suspicious of the accuracy and method of temperature collection in 1911.. the Met Office didn't start collecting data until 1914, and of the source accuracy.. Wikipedia[1] seems to suggest 98F (36.7C) and in another town. It certainly was extremely hot that August in 1911... especially without modern conveniences.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_King... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1911_in_the_United_Kingdom

snthd|3 years ago

https://digital.nmla.metoffice.gov.uk/digitalFile_1f3ce836-7...

>Monthly Weather Report 1911

Last page (140):

>In England 90° was exceeded on several days, the hottest being AUGUST 9th, 97° at Camden Square, London, Woking­ham and Hillington, 98° at Raunds, and 100° at Greenwich (in the Glaisher screen; the value recorded in the Stevenson screen was 97°), the highest ever recorded in this country.

AFAIK Stevenson screens are now the standard, and Glaisher stands tend to record higher maximums, so the 100 isn't directly comparable.