Last month was the hottest June on record, we are told, which comes as a surprise to those of us in the South East who shivered in unusually keen easterly winds for the first week or so.
In fact it was not the hottest June ever, in England at least. The Met Office records go back to 1884, but the Hadley Centre’s Central England Temperature (CET) series, which predates them, made June 1846 hotter with a mean temperature of 18.2C, more than one degree celsius above last month.
The Junes of 1676, 1762, 1798, 1826 and 1976 were all nearly as hot or hotter in the CET rankings. Apart from possibly 1976, none could be attributed to carbon emissions caused by industrialisation.
