Millions of Pounds of Cold Weather Benefits Could be Lost Due to Unreliable Met Office Data

by Chris Morrison

Some of the poorest and most vulnerable members of society are losing out on millions of pounds worth of cold weather payments in England and Wales due to official reliance on data from corrupted Met Office temperature measuring stations. In 2022-23, cold weather payments of £130 million were made to around five million households, but it’s possible that the annual figures would be much higher if more accurate local temperatures measurements had been used.

Cold weather payments are automatically paid to those on a number of means-tested benefits and triggered by seven days of average temperatures below 0^oC. (A different system is used in Scotland.) Temperature measurements are taken from 63 Met Office stations in England and Wales but over half of these sites have internationally recognised ‘uncertainties’ of between 2°C and 5°C. Payments in the rural areas around Sheffield depend on readings from a City-based site where the station is rated Class 5 by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) with a 5°C margin of error. The site, which is by the A57, is blanketed with urban heat corruption and will record much higher temperatures than those found in the surrounding Peak District.

Estimates of urban heat corruption vary, with the EU weather service Copernicus suggesting it can lead to temperature measurements “up to 10^oC higher than in rural areas”. A recent science paper written by 37 scientists from 18 countries found that urban heat accounted for around 40% of the recorded warming since 1850. In startling and detailed research, they found that a rural/urban blend of temperatures showed a long-term warming trend of 0.89°C per century, while a rural-only collection produced a rise of just 0.55°C per century.

The WMO, in which the Met Office plays a significant role, rates temperature stations in five classes. Classes 1 and 2 are judged pristine and come with no uncertainties. Class 3 has a +/- margin of error of 1°C, while junk class 4 has +/- 2°C and super junk class 5 is set at +/- 5°C. As Paul Homewood points out, these negative and positive errors don’t tend to cancel each other out, as they do in other fields due to their random nature. “With temperature recording,” he says, “poor siting nearly always adds to underlying temperatures.”

The Met Office scores very badly on the rating front, with the Daily Sceptic discovering through a recent freedom of information request that nearly eight out of 10 of its stations are in classes 4 and 5. In addition, the Met Office runs its own internal classification. But this seems more forgiving of nearby heat corruptions, with only 27 out of 380 sites said to be “unsatisfactory”.

Cold weather payments, not to be confused with the winter fuel allowance paid to pensioners which the new Labour government has done away with, give £25 for a period of cold weather to those deemed financially or physically vulnerable. Extra consideration is given to families with children under five. During 2022-23, a number of areas made three payments from November to March. But luck of the draw seems to play a part in these disbursements. Four of the weather stations used to record low temperatures across England and Wales are so bad that even the Met Office thinks they’re ‘unsatisfactory’. These include Hawarden Airport, home of Wales’s national temperature ‘record’, Little Rissington, Redesdale and Pembrey Sands.

The payment system works by allocating postcodes from the surrounding areas to specific sites. Heathrow Airport has the largest number of postcodes attached and seems to extend over most of London. Heathrow is a Class 3 site with 1°C uncertainty, but this is regarded as generous by many since it is one of the busiest airports in the world. Not a great deal of frost is likely to settle on most nights of the year with temperatures boosted by the release of warmth collected during the day by miles of concrete and tarmac. In common with most cities, night time temperatures at airports are likely to be higher than surrounding uncorrupted areas. Copernicus notes, for instance, that cities such as London and Paris, “regularly” record temperatures of around 4°C higher than rural surroundings.

It is likely, indeed almost certain, that temperature recordings in cities and airports will reduce the number of seven day 0°C average temperatures periods over wider areas. If so, many of the poorest and most vulnerable in rural locations are missing out on this financial help.

We are obliged to citizen journalist Ray Sanders for drawing our attention to this wholly avoidable scandal. Commenting on the high number of triggering sites found in areas known to be affected by urban heat, he noted: “The Met Office must know of this issue, they surely cannot be that naïve or just maybe they never gave it a thought – just drew some lines on a map. Whatever, the responsibility must lie with them as they are supposed to be the experts in the field and the DWP [Department of Work and Pensions] simply refers to them for advice.”

As we have seen in many past articles, the Met Office is at the forefront of promoting the Net Zero fantasy. But it might be argued that the acquisition of supercomputers and the use of climate modelling have been at the expense of investment in a robust network of stations that can provide an accurate measurement of the natural air temperature. The basics – the day job one might say – have not been given the care they require. The network is littered with unsuitable sites such as airports, solar farms, car parks and electricity sub-stations. Even worse, little thought seems to have been taken when it comes to the placements of new sites, which are often in class 4 and 5 locations. Garbage in means garbage out, regardless of how politically convenient it is for narrative-driven mainstream activists. Producing readings that supposedly measure temperatures down to one hundredth of a degree centigrade, as the Met Offices does with this flawed data, is little more than a scientific joke.

To date, the obvious problems surrounding the Met Office’s temperature measuring abilities have been ignored. To discuss the matter risks opening a pandora’s box since it would subject data that backs Net Zero to greater scrutiny. It will be interesting to see if this position holds following suggestions that its figures could be depriving poor and vulnerable members of society from collecting much needed cold weather payments.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.