How did we know that 2014 was “the hottest year ever”? This was based entirely on surface temperature data originally compiled by the US Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN), but then translated into their own versions by the compilers of three of the five official temperature records. But as I explained in two previous articles, a growing number of experts across the world have been discovering that something very odd has been going on with these records. Again and again they found that, checking them against the raw data originally recorded by weather stations, this had then been comprehensively “adjusted”, almost invariably in the same direction.