If you spend some time grubbing around in the UKUK The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. gridded temperature series from the UKMOUKMO The Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy that extends back to the year 1884 as I do, you might find that the highest mean temperature for a 12 month period didn’t actually occur in the year 2022, but the 12 month period that ended in April 2007. The mean temperature of 10.41°C was considerably higher than that of 10.03°C for 2022 that has been bandied about so much in recents days by the media.
There’s no reason to think that the UKMO weren’t aware of this fact, but they obviously kept shtum about it, not wanting to detract from making an even bigger splash with a headline “Warmest year on record” or the climate crisis version of it “Hottest year ever!“.