Each month, the mainstream media reviews their files and realises it is time for another installment of weather-related news. For July, the focus was on reports that it was the hottest on record. This appeared in the Washington Post, supported by the BBC, Australia’s ABC and probably a bunch of others.
There is a theory known as GIGO (Garbage in, garbage out). When bad data sources are used, and then those data are extrapolated, the end result is… bad science.
Dr Roy Spencer from the University of Huntsville in Alabama monitors global temperatures using satellite data. He has analysed the purported ‘record July’ data and explains the fallacies in the data processing.
Yes, July was warm. It was the FOURTH warmest July, behind 2016, 2017 and 2002. This map demonstrates the distribution of warmer and cooler than average temperatures.
