December 15, 2020

expert reaction to update to the HadCRUT global temperature data set, announced by The Met Office and the University of East Anglia

The Met Office and the University of East Anglia have announced a major update to key global warming temperature data set, HadCRUT.

Prof Piers Forster, Professor of Climate Change and Priestley Centre Director, University of Leeds, said:

“This is an important update by teams at the Met Office and the University of East Anglia filling in missing values in the historic record.  Note that the higher level of warming does not mean that global warming or the impacts are worse than we thought, it is more that the label for the climate of today has changed.  We are now giving today’s climate a label with a higher number.”

Prof Ed Hawkins, Climate research scientist, University of Reading, said:

“Assessing how global temperatures have already changed is critical for understanding the risks from climate change.  The datasets underpinning these assessments are continually improved and this update includes a more detailed understanding of how sea surface temperatures have been measured over the past 170 years and by better accounting for regions which are warming quickly but have been less well observed in the past.  HadCRUT5 shows more historical warming than the previous version of the dataset which makes it more consistent with other datasets produced by different groups around the world.  The planet is warming and this is yet another reminder that restricting global warming to the levels specified in the Paris Agreement will require rapid and deep cuts to our greenhouse gas emissions.”

‘An updated assessment of near-surface temperature change from 1850: the HadCRUT dataset’ by C. P. Morice et al. is published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres at 15:00 UK time on Tuesday 15 December 2020.

Declared interests

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