By Linnea Lueken
A recent article in the Financial Times (paywall) features a discussion between author Attracta Mooney and Celeste Saulo, the current Secretary-General of the United Nations World Meteorological Organization. The post makes claims, among other things, that 2023 and 2024 were the hottest years on record, that recent global wildfires and droughts in parts of the Mediterranean were caused by climate change, and that extreme weather events in general are getting worse. These claims are false. Data often undermine and directly contradict such claims.
The article, titled “Meteorologist Celeste Saulo: 'Climate change is not a movie. This is real life,'” is largely a flowery biography of Saulo, with whom the author met for an insultingly decadent French lunch in Geneva, Switzerland, while they discussed the need for the rest of us to significantly reduce our standards of living. Author Mooney begins the article by discussing how hot it was in Geneva, implying that “nearly 30°C” (86°F) is very hot for August. A quick online search shows that while temperatures are on the higher end of the scale, they are still within the normal range for August in Geneva; highs above 27°C are not unusual for Geneva toward the end of summer.
Mooney writes:[w]Wildfires are raging in Greece and Turkey, large parts of the Mediterranean are parched while a drought is spreading across the region, all just weeks after the world experienced its hottest days on record.” He went on to say that 2023 “was the hottest year on record and 2024 is expected to be even warmer.”
Saulo agreed with Mooney's account. Mooney goes even further, reporting that the UN Secretary-General, Saulo's boss, agrees that “we must begin to adapt to a warming world in which wildfires, heat waves, floods, droughts and other extreme weather events become more severe.”
The problem is that this is all wrong, and as a meteorologist, Saulo should know that.
For one thing, wildfires are neither becoming more intense nor more widespread. Global wildfire monitoring by NASA satellites and the European Space Agency shows that the global burned area is gradually decreasing, not increasing. (See figure below)
Total area burned by fires annually between 2003 and 2015. The red trend line indicates a steady decline. Source: “NASA Finds Decline in Global Fires,” NASA website, June 29, 2017.
Drought is also not becoming a major problem, and the region Mooney chose to focus on, the Mediterranean, is specifically known for its hot, dry summers. The Mediterranean is even named after a climate type, the “Mediterranean climate,” which describes a climate with “irregular rainfall and most precipitation in winter.”
The United Nations, where Saulo works, also reports with “high confidence” that rainfall has indeed increased, at least over the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, but has “low confidence” about global negative trends, as discussed in “Climate at a Glance: Drought.”
As for the “hottest year on record,” much of the media hype was just that – media hype with no factual basis for the claim.
Numerous pieces of evidence, such as carbon dating of medieval trees recently exposed by retreating glaciers, suggest that other periods in recent history were warmer than today.
Moreover, many of the “record heat” measurements were only tenths of a degree warmer than previous measurements, which is hardly alarming. They are likely either statistical anomalies resulting from reanalysis of data from faulty climate models, or the result of the distorted urban heat island effect, as discussed, for example, in the article “Climate Realism” here, here and here.
Data has also been misused; for example, many articles in July 2023 breathlessly claimed that July 3 and 4 were the hottest days on record, based on a “dataset” that did not reflect actual measured temperatures or any data at all, but rather modeled temperature simulations. The claim comes from the University of Maine's Climate Reanalyzer. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Organization publicly distanced itself from the claim, stating that the model results were “not appropriate” for using real temperature measurements to keep climate records.
There is indeed a trend toward increasingly extreme weather, as Saulo must know, otherwise the only evidence she cites for her claim would be the alleged “28 catastrophic events” in the United States, each “costing at least $1 billion in 2023.” As a Financial Times writer, Mooney surely knows that the cost of disasters is not necessarily evidence of worsening disasters; there are other factors at play, too, such as rising property values and the growing bullseye effect. Climate Realism has highlighted this numerous times, including here, here, and here.
Juxtaposing the two topics of climate change and politics discussed throughout the article, including how people need to change their eating habits and vacations, with frequent interruptions to discuss how good their lunch was in affluent Geneva, was a bizarre writing choice for a journalist trying to emphasize the urgency of climate action. The Financial Times should stick to what it is known for – financial news and analysis – and leave the climate change eulogies to other media, especially when its climate coverage amounts to uncritically publishing falsehoods.
Originally published on ClimateREALISM
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