Lizzy McNeill

speaker

375 appearances 10 recordings 1 series first heard Dec 2018 last heard 18 Jul

Lizzy McNeill’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 7 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 5.

Appearances

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More or Less · Does a fall in the UK's healthy life expectancy mean what you think it means? · 27 May 2026 podcast

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let me play you the whole sting.

More or Less · How weird was the Mediterranean Sea heatwave? · 16 Aug 2025 podcast

Hello and thanks for downloading the More or Less podcast. matched

We're the programme that looks at the numbers in the news and in life and in the sea. matched

And I'm Lizzie McNeill. matched

Listener John O'Malley emailed in to moreorless at bbc.co.uk, which, by the way, anyone can do, to ask about a tweet that appeared to be making a somewhat staggering claim. matched

The post, seen by more than a million people and or bots on the social media site, was from an account called At Met Forecast UK. matched

Talking about how hot the Mediterranean Sea got at the start of July, they stated that... matched

This, as the Post pointed out, was a significantly longer period of time than planet Earth has been in existence. matched

Indeed, it is many more times than our best estimates of the age of the entire universe. matched

The massive scale of this anomaly, so the account claimed, proved that climate change was real. matched

So, does the statistical logic make sense? matched

This is Jules Keiter, a physical oceanographer working at the National Oceanography Centre in the UK. matched

Now we're talking about degrees centigrade here, and Jules is comparing the temperature now against the average sea temperature at the same time of year in that period from the 1980s to the noughties. matched

But why start in the 1980s? matched

Well, that's when the good quality data starts. matched

Satellites in space measuring the temperature of the sea might sound a bit balmy. matched

Basically, everything emits infrared radiation according to its temperature, which a sensor on a satellite can, well, sense. matched

This top layer of the sea is warmer than the depths, particularly if it's not stirred up too much by waves and storms. matched

This data set has the advantage of always measuring the same thing. matched

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