Mean Central England Temperature for September 2018 turned out to to be 13.7C. This puts September 2018 in the entirely unremarkable middling territory between the coldest and hottest Septembers ever recorded, being 10.5C in 1674 and 16.8C in 2006. In point of fact, the very first time we had a warmer September (i.e. 13.8C) in Central England was 269 years ago, in 1749!

Looking at the figures for the UK as a whole – which data series only goes back as far as 1910 – we discover that September this year has also been boringly very average as far as mean temperature is concerned: 12.4C, poised midway between 15.2C in 2006 and 9.9C in 1952.

Looking at the UK trend for September, we see that the month has had its ups and downs throughout the last 100 years, peaking in 2006, gradually declining since, though overall still significantly warmer than during the early 20th Century.

September 2018 is still below the 1981-2010 average however.

But of course, Central England and the United Kingdom is but a tiny part of a big bad warming world, so what’s been happening on the global warming front? The answer, again, is nothing really much at all, in fact slight cooling compared with August, continuing the cooling trend from the all time high of Feb 2016 at the height of the super El Nino. UAH global mean surface temperature for September is +0.14C, the coolest September in the last 10 years. The northern and southern hemispheres have both cooled since August, whereas the tropics have warmed, probably in response to an upcoming weak El Nino.

In a few days time, no doubt we’ll all be hearing about the “climate crisis” outlined in the IPCC Special report on global warming of 1.5C. Pity that, at the present time, there isn’t one. We’ve got 30 years for it to warm another half degree, which isn’t looking too promising, it must be said, when global temperature is currently threatening to head back into post 2000 ‘pause’ territory.