Weather 
A May heatwave across Europe has shattered temperature records and sparked a wave of familiar claims online that attempt to throw climate science into disrepute.
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One post on X, viewed thousands of times, claims that historic heatwaves, such as those in London in the summer of 1976 and in 1921, prove that the current high temperatures are nothing unusual.
Other posts allege that temperature records are misleading, either via a real phenomenon known as the “urban heat island” effect, or through outright manipulation or deception.
Climate scientists say that these claims are not only misleading but can contribute to hostility and harassment directed toward researchers.
Sonia Seneviratne, professor of climate science at ETH Zurich, told Euronews’ fact-checking team, The Cube, that she has personally experienced hostile reactions linked to her work.
“Every once in a while, I would get emails or some letters,” she said, noting that it was particularly visible on social media.
“At some point, I realised on Twitter (now X), it got quite bad,” Seneviratne said, adding that she had seen climate change denial messaging appear on her feed within seconds of posting, which she suspects could be bot activity.
Others have reported similar experiences. Climate research lead at Stripe and research scientist at Berkeley Earth, Zeke Hausfather, said that, “the most I’ve got in terms of harassment is people hurling invectives at me online, thankfully, but many of my colleagues (particularly female ones) have experienced much worse.”
Bart Verheggen, senior climate advisor at the Dutch meteorological institute KNMI, said he had also encountered hostility.
“In the past, I have frequently encountered verbal abuse and harassment, but not intimidation or threats,” he told The Cube.
Misinformation at the core
Verheggen said misinformation remains an important factor in public discussions about climate change, and its nature has changed over time. “The science is getting clearer and clearer and increasingly accepted by a larger group in the middle,” he said.
“At the same time, the forces that work against these policies seem to have hardened their stance,” he added.
According to Verheggen, climate denial has increasingly shifted away from disputing whether the planet has warmed and moving toward questioning the consequences of climate change and the policies designed to mitigate it.
These experiences are not isolated. In January, Spanish authorities described an uptick in online abuse directed at climate scientists and meteorologists, describing the increase as “alarming”.
Many of the hostile messages directed towards experts sharing verified information were found on X.
Environment experts receiving harassment is far from a new phenomenon. For example, climate scientist Michael E Mann previously described receiving threats and being targeted by campaigns aimed at discrediting his work that indicated unprecedented global warming in 1998.
The US-based Union of Concerned Scientists documented what it described as efforts by fossil-fuel-linked groups to attack and undermine Mann.
Verheggen said that these dynamics are not unique to climate science. “Science denialism is a proven way of stalling policies (going all the way back to the tobacco wars),” said. “So yes, misinformation and disinformation play a large role.”
Familiar false arguments follow heatwave
Climate scientists say that several false claims circulating about the heatwave follow familiar narratives peddled by climate change deniers.
Posts claiming that heatwaves in 1921 and 1976 show that extreme temperatures occurred long before modern climate change concerns misunderstand how climate change influences extreme weather, scientists say.
Seneviratne said heatwaves such as the one in 1976 were also severe, but argued that today’s heat events are occurring more frequently, affecting larger areas, and reaching levels that would have been highly unlikely without human-induced climate change.
“We start experiencing heatwaves that are so extreme in recent years that some of them would have had a near-zero probability of occurrence without human-induced climate change,” she said.
Other posts allege that global temperature records are unreliable because cities are warmer than the surrounding rural areas.
This phenomenon is known as the “urban heat island” effect and occurs because dense urban infrastructure, such as buildings and concrete, absorbs and releases heat much more than plants in the natural landscape.
According to Seneviratne, the urban heat island effect can “further amplify temperatures locally but does not explain the global observed trends.”
Other scientists confirm that the effect is well-documented and already accounted for in measuring and collecting data on the change in temperature over long periods of time.
The same can be said for posts that allege, without evidence, that temperature records are “imaginary”.
“We now have nine different groups of scientists from the US, UK, EU, Japan, and China that all separately provide global temperature records, and they all agree quite well despite using different datasets and approaches,” Hausfather said. “There are few things in science as well validated as the temperature record.”
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