Scarcely a Day Passes Without the Met Office Announcing Another ‘Record’ Temperature. But How Many of its Weather Stations are Next to Airports and Solar Farms?

From THE DAILY SCEPTIC

BY CHRIS MORRISON

Last week, the weather was pleasant and often balmy across the U.K., and to take full advantage of the gently rising warmth, there was no better place to be than Heathrow Airport. This was the spot where the hottest day U.K. record was secured on no less than five occasions. Further north, heat lovers could have headed for Hull East Park, where the Yorkshire and Humber regional day record was observed no less than four times. Of course, heat lovers might welcome the hot air blast from countless jet engines in the first location and the presence of what appears to be a solar farm located a few metres from the measuring station in the later venue. They certainly don’t appear to be much of a problem for the Met Office either, which compiles these ridiculous figures and claims seemingly for Net Zero political purposes.

Every day, the Met Office publishes the highest recorded temperature for a number of areas across the four countries in the United Kingdom. Every day, many of the same sites feature at the top of the various local lists. Last week, in Scotland, the measuring station at Edinburgh Botanic Gardens, Glasgow and Leuchars featured on four days out of seven, along with Inverbervie on three. In England, Heathrow and Hull East Park were joined by Killowen on four days, along with Usk, Durham and Pershore College on three.

Could this be a coincidence that, on a large island, the hottest days more often than not only occur in very specific geographical locations? Just a few places are so blessed, despite the nationwide Met Office network that numbers around 380 individual stations. Of course not. The obvious clue is at Heathrow and Hull Park East (see photo below) where enormous human-caused heat corruptions are to be found. 

Type in the Met Office supplied co-ordinates for Hull East Park into Google Earth, and the red marker at the bottom locates the measuring station barely a few metres from what looks like a large solar complex. Whatever it is, and it might be connected to nearby animal activities in some way, does not seem very natural. For their part solar farms chuck out a lot of local atmospheric heat. In a paper published in Nature, scientists found radical changes in nearby air temperatures and areas were “regularly 3-4°C warmer than wildlands at night”. The Met Office has previous form in declaring local heat records next to solar farms. Last month, the highest temperature in the U.K. was to be found at Chertsey, slap bang next to what was a newly-installed solar facility.

The oddities in Hull, which is near an Animal Education Centre, have attracted the interest of the investigative journalist Paul Homewood and his band of citizen sleuths. Ray Sanders noted that the University of Hull recorded a temperature 2.6°C lower at a site only a few hundred metres away. He observed that this variation is “implausible”, particularly as two other private sites were said to have agreed with the University reading.

The elephant in the Met Office Room is that, needless to say, almost all of these heat readings occur at stations classed 4 and 5 that come with very large ‘uncertainties’ between 2-5°C. These ratings and uncertainties are set by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and reflect the human impact on temperature measurements caused by nearby activities, buildings and other structures.

As regular readers will undoubtedly recall, the Daily Sceptic obtained a list of these classes earlier in the year under a freedom of information (FOI) request. So, we are now able to disclose that 39.1% of all heat records declared last week were in near junk Class 4 with uncertainties of 2°C, and 37.3% arose in junk Class 5 with possible errors up to 5°C. Add in a contribution of 8.2% from Class 3, and its uncertainties of 1°C, and nearly nine out of ten records are heavily flawed by human-caused corruption.

It might be noted that Heathrow is a generous Class 3, since it is not clear if the engine exhaust is taken into the rating account. It can be reported that the 110 figures compiled last week showed little change after a couple of days, and they might be regarded as providing a reasonable indication of results over a longer period.

The appearance of Pershore College no less than three times in last week’s heat records is a big disappointment. This is a Class 4 site but it is one of only three stations that currently constitute the 350-year Central England Temperature (CET) record. The CET is unique in the meteorological world since it has provided a continuous record since 1659. It was described recently as a “world treasure” by Professor William Happer. The project is currently in the care of the Met Office and stuffing the database with Class 4 near-junk data is something to be regretted. In fact, with the inclusion of Stonyhurst, two out of the three constituent sites are Class 4. Is it not beyond the wit of the Met Office to find three Class 1 sites in the whole of Central England to ensure the scientific integrity of this valuable dataset, handed down over many generations?

Many of the Class 4 and 5 locations have been corrupted over time by urban heat, although the tiny number of pristine Class 1 sites suggest that the Met Office has not made it a priority to move them to gain more accurate and natural measurements of air temperature. This might surprise, of course, since the Met Office uses these figures to catastrophise recent increases in national and global temperatures, using measurements down to one hundredth of a degree centigrade.

It might be expected that new stations would be carefully sited in Class 1 locations, but this does not seem to be happening. Citizen sleuth Ray Sanders noted the opening of a station at Neatishead in December 2022 and was surprised to discover it had a rating of Class 4. Observed Sanders: “ This raises a very serious issue. Why is the Met Office introducing new weather stations into its network that are of such poor quality?… Someone of a suspicious mind might think they are deliberately adding these junk sites simply to make current U.K. temperatures artificially higher!”

Ray Saunders also reveals an FOI that he made to the Met Office seeking information on the assessment of individual stations. He was told that each weather station was assessed against both the WMO and Met Office inspections standards. But it was disclosed that it was the Met Office standards that are used as the “official benchmark” for assessing the suitability of sites to provide data for the long-term climate record.

Saunders leaves us in no doubt what he feels about this decision. “Screw international standards ISO 19289:2014(E). We are going to use our own standards that we decided on; you cannot question them, and we will not allow any independent assessment of… What do you mean we helped arrange the ISO standard with the WMO… Who cares? So what you gonna do about it, eh?”

Harsh words, but then the gathering storm across social media about the scientific scandal surrounding the temperature gathering methods of the Met Office – and other State-run meteorological operations around the world – has, to date, met with a deafening silence.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor