By Marco Silva
Climate Disinformation Reporter
False claims suggesting that the BBC has been misreporting temperatures in southern Europe have been spreading on social media.
A clip of Neil Oliver, a GB News presenter, accusing the BBC "and others" of "driving fear" by using "supposedly terrifying temperatures", has been viewed more than two million times.
For the past few weeks, an intense heatwave has been sweeping through parts of southern Europe and north Africa, with extensive wildfires breaking out in Greece, Italy and Algeria - leading to more than 40 deaths.
Speaking about the fires on Rhodes on GB News on Monday, Mr Oliver accused the BBC, and other broadcasters, of trying to "make people terrified of the weather".
"Those supposedly terrifying temperatures that were being predicted, all starting with a four... 40 this and 40 that... were obtained using satellite images of ground temperatures," he said.
"That's never been the temperature that's used in weather reporting and forecasting.
"On the contrary, those figures are the air temperature, a couple of feet above the ground surface ...the true temperatures, the air temperatures which actually happened, were in the 30s."
Mr Neil's claim that the BBC was using ground temperatures is false, as several BBC weather presenters have pointed out.
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