You may have noticed the media backlash to this weeks news that May 2024 was the warmest 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. since at least 1883. I think the ferocity of the backlash surprised most people at the BBCBBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is the national broadcaster of the United Kingdom, based at Broadcasting House in London. It is the world's oldest national broadcaster, and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees, employing over 22,000 staff in total, of whom approximately 19,000 are in public-sector broadcasting. and Met OfficeUKMO 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.
For the first half of May, the warmest of the weather occurred across northern Scotland, and because 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 and BBC have a seemingly inbuilt reluctance to report extremes for places other than in the south of England, news of +6°C anomalies didn’t get much of a mention, either on Twitter/X, in YouTube videos or in TV forecasts.
Here are just a few of my Tweets from the middle of May to try and highlight the exceptional early warmth across the Highlands:
I believe one of the main reasons for the backlash is the inability of the UKMO and BBC to monitor evolving climate stories across the UK. If the UKMO had incorporated climate news, similar to some of my Tweets, at the start of their ‘Deep Dives’, ’10 Day Trends’ or video forecasts, and the BBC had done the same in ‘Weather For The Week Ahead’, then news of a record warm May might not have come as such a big surprise!