Are Temperatures Becoming More Extreme?

By Paul Homewood

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2019/07/14/anchorage-record-was-not-actually-a-record/

Somebody left this comment about temperature extremes last week. It is a very common claim, but an utterly fallacious one, no doubt propagated by fake news propaganda from the BBC and co.

So let’s see exactly what the IPCC had to say about in AR5 back in 2013:

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/

To put in simple terms, heat extremes have increased in line with the rise in average temperatures, just as you would expect. But cold extremes have decreased in similar fashion.

In actual fact though, the IPCC have overstated the case, by using 1950 as a baseline.

For instance, the Federal Climate report published in 2017 finds that heatwaves are now much less extreme across most of the US than they used to be. As cold extremes have also declined sharply, it is evident that US temperatures have become less extreme at either end of the range.