Red-shifting

Whatever's been happening with the weather, something's certainly been happening with the reporting of it.

You can confirm this for yourselves by looking up YouTube videos of BBC weather reports during the 2003 heatwave when 37°C was hit and seeing how the same temperatures which 19 years ago were shown in shades of yellows and light orange have now been been ramped up into flaming oranges and dangerous deep reds.

This fine tweet from Jamie Jenkins, a stats guy who has previously worked for both the ONS and the BBC, encapsulates the spin perfectly:

📺☀️ Video of two BBC weather forecasts 19 years apart

1️⃣ 2003 it was warmer than planned this weekend and most of the map yellow /orange.

2️⃣ 2022 nearly the whole map in red.

They didn’t seem to alarm the country back in the day as much when we hit some warmer days. 🤦‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/mpana3qiHE

— Jamie Jenkins (@statsjamie) July 14, 2022

Whether you think it's justified or not, there's some serious 'nudging' - aka 'manipulation' - going on here, isn't there?