EXCLUSIVE: Almost All ‘Extreme’ Temperature Highs in UK Now Being Recorded at Junk Sites with Massive Possible Errors

From THE DAILY SCEPTIC

by Chris Morrison

Over the last few days the UK has experienced balmy spring weather with temperatures often settling in the low 20s Celsius. The Met Office has been out in force colouring the maps orange and declaring ‘extreme’ highs all over the green and pleasant land. Or more accurately, a remarkably few chosen spots across the g&p land. Net Zero promotion demands ever higher temperature recordings so only unnaturally heat-ravaged sites provide most of the daily records. I looked at the last nine days of Met Office records to Sunday May 18th and can reveal that nearly nine out of 10 local ‘extreme’ daily temperature highs were posted in junk Class 4 and super junk Class 5 sites with internationally-recognised ‘uncertainties’ of 2°C and 5°C respectively.

Certain locations crop up constantly in the records. In nine days the Scottish sites at Aboyne and Tyndrum recorded area highs eight and seven times respectively. In England, Coton-in-the-Elms recorded seven daily highs while Kielder Castle posted six. Of course the recording of highs in these corrupted sites didn’t mean the air temperature was representative of the wider surrounding area. It just meant that the sites were poorly located next to unnatural heat sources and were producing a false natural air record, recently re-badged by the Met Office as a so-called ‘extreme” high. Until the Met Office sorts out its largely junk-class 380-plus weather station network, these records and recordings are largely meaningless.

Every day the Met Office posts a daily high temperature for 16 locations around the UK. In the nine consecutive days under review, I initially found that 83.8% of the highs were recorded in Class 4 and 5 sites rated by the World Meteorological Organisation to have the large ‘uncertainties’ up to 5°C. No less than 36.6% of records came from Class 5 sites that have no qualifying criteria for accuracy and can be located anywhere. Quite how any Class 4 and 5 site can be used to calculate a national let alone a global temperature has long been a mystery, and their central use to promote the Net Zero fantasy is a scientific and political scandal. But I looked further into the claimed records and found the overall picture was even worse than it first appeared.

The above picture from Google Earth shows the location of the Kirkwall weather station marked in red. It is claimed to be a Class 2 site, a pristine rating with no ‘uncertainties’. The Met Office has very few of these Class 2 rated sites, with 78% of its stations to be found in the bottom two junk categories. But there is no way this is a Class 2 site. It is located at Kirkwall airport, barely 50 metres from what appears to be the aircraft park. Nearby buildings, car parks and roads provide ample opportunities for heat corruptions. Yet six times in the last nine days Kirkwall was said to hold the temperature record for Orkney and Shetland. I removed the supposedly ‘non-junk’ Kirkwall from the overall calculation with the result that no less than 87.4% of daily highs are in the junk classes.

Of course it beggars belief that on a large island comprising four different nations and wide variations in geographical locations the same old suspects keep recording the hottest daily temperatures. Was nowhere warmer for seven days in the East Midlands than Coton-in-the-Elms? What is so special about Kielder Castle that on six days it was hotter than everywhere else in North-East England? Should heat lovers in Northern Ireland and Wales move to Castlederg and Porthmadog respectively where they would have enjoyed five days of record highs? Scotland is often on the chilly side, so can we assume that house prices have a premium in Tyndrum, where in the nine days under review it only twice lost the highest temperature spot in the Central, Tayside and Fife region?

Earlier this month, citizen super sleuth Ray Sanders examined the central England Class 5 weather station at Coton-in-the-Elms and concluded: “There are worse sites … but not that many.”

Late last year, Science Feedback ‘fact checked’ articles published by both the Daily Sceptic and Ray Sanders detailing the junk status of most of the Met Office sites and its invention of temperature data from over 100 non-existent sites. Written largely by the Met Office, the ‘fact check’ suggested that stations rated internally as ‘Unsatisfactory’ did not meet the required standards for data validity, and recordings would not be used in the official records. A recent Freedom of Information request revealed that just 27 sites had been placed on the meteorological naughty step. As they used to say in the Wild West days of the City of London, self-regulation. like self-abuse, leads to exceedingly short sight. Nevertheless if the Met Office, marking its own homework, says the 27 sites are rubbish, who are we to argue?

It is therefore a surprise to see that Castlederg is on the  ‘Unsatisfactory’ list and, as noted above, it produced a recent local record five days out of nine. It is possible the list has been updated in the last few months and Castlederg has been removed. It would be interesting to discover if it was on the list on July 21st 2021, when a Northern Ireland record temperature of 31.3°C was declared at the site. Other unsatisfactory sites quoted in the last few days include Redesdale Camp and Hawarden, the latter being a Class 4 airport location that holds the national temperature record for Wales set on July 21st 2021.

Why is all this relevant and important? As we have shown many times at the Daily Sceptic, this super-heated data is fed into the mainstream to promote the political needs of Net Zero. Just one example out of many saw Justin Rowlatt from the BBC reporting last July that climate change is dramatically increasing the frequency of “extreme” high temperatures in the UK, “new Met Office analysis has confirmed”. Rowlatt also observed that there had been a 40% increase in the number of “pleasant” days, defined as around 20°C. “These changes may sound positive,” wails the BBC activist-in-chief, “but the UK’s shifting climate represents a dangerous upheaval for our ecosystems as well as our infrastructure.”

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

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Quilter52
May 22, 2025 6:12 am

I wonder when we can start prosecuting public servants for fraudulently misleading the public. After the Met Office are public servants with the same incentives as the rest to dramatize how important their jobs are to keep themselves employed.

Reply to  Quilter52
May 22, 2025 6:47 am

Didn’t doing anything to them for Climategate

Neil Lock
Reply to  Quilter52
May 22, 2025 7:20 am

Any deceit towards the people they are supposed to serve, by anyone whose job is paid for by taxpayers, should be a dismissal offence with loss of pension rights.

Tom Halla
May 22, 2025 6:15 am

I am more and more sympathetic to Tony Heller. Occam’s Razor would be deliberate malfeasance by the Met Office. As their political bosses are True Believers, sucking up is quite possible.

Reply to  Tom Halla
May 22, 2025 1:44 pm

USA installed the USCRN network, establishing a network of well space “pristine” surface sites.

In the UK, most of the sites installed this century have been class 3-4 at best. !!

The Met Orifice, and its former employees, are culpable in overseeing the fact that the surface sites are now mostly totally unfit for any purpose except climate propaganda.

It is either gross incompetence… or deliberate maleficence… take your pick!

strativarius
May 22, 2025 7:05 am

They tell us a massive load of bolleaux and don’t bat an eyelid.

May 22, 2025 7:20 am

Official weather stations are usually located at airports. DC-3’s had two 1200 HP engines. A single GE90-115B engine, of which 2 are used on modern 777 airliners, can produce over 110,000 horsepower each. Could warm engine exhaust be affecting temperature readings ? Turbulence affecting how late in the day before sensors are exposed to cooler nighttime air ? Possibly more tarmac to taxi these behemoths absorb will more sunlight, asphalt being much darker than grassy dirt ?

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  DMacKenzie
May 22, 2025 7:35 am

You need to ask the “fact checker.”
/sarc

atticman
Reply to  DMacKenzie
May 22, 2025 8:15 am

I think you mean 110,000 lbs of thrust, not 110,000 bhp.

Reply to  atticman
May 22, 2025 8:50 am

That was from one internet source. Here’s another. Still makes my point of comparison to DC-3’s. Of course manufacturers don’t like to rate turbofans in horsepower cuz from a pedantic physics viewpoint, big thrust at low velocity such as take-off is actually low “power” and it’s the thrust that’s important….
“Boeing 777 is fitted by two GE90-115B turbofan engine and each engine is of 52,000 hp and produces a total thrust of 115,300 lbf (513 kN).”
So each engine can blow around 40 times as much air on takeoff, probably a lot more in comparison just taxiing, due to the basic thrust required to roll big airliners around, plus most civilian airports probably have 10X the traffic they did in DC-3 days…..

Reply to  DMacKenzie
May 22, 2025 3:42 pm

To be fair, I’ve been through Kirkwall Airport island hopping up to Sumburgh, Shetland. It only takes small prop aircraft. IIRC we were in a Viscount, which is as big as they go. There are small taxi aircraft (Britten Norman Islander and small Cessnas) for hops to other Orkney islands. I expect it probably saw the DC3 that operated Dyce to Scatsta, Shetland (next to Sullom Voe) on occasion. These are the current ATR turboprops used on the routes to Scotland:

comment image

taxed
May 22, 2025 9:47 am

Here is the daily maximum temperatures recorded up to the 21st of May here in Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire. I record this data myself with a LiG Six’s thermometer in open shade.

1st 25.0C
2nd 17.7C
3rd 15.7C
4th 11.1C
5th 12.1C
6th 15.3C
7th 14.1C
8th 13.3C
9th 17.9C
10th 20.0C
11th 20.0C
12th 20.6C
13th 18.7C
14th 15.5C
15th 15.5C
16th 15.5C
17th 19.0C
18th 16.0C
19th 17.1C
20th 19.5C
21st 16.7C
With the Mean Daily Maximum Temperature for the 21 days been 16.5C.

This will be a more realistic record of the sort of daily maximum temperatures that have been reached in Eastern England away from the coast.

Mr.
Reply to  taxed
May 22, 2025 10:28 am

How did you ever survive 1st May, it being 8.5C above mean max?

taxed
Reply to  Mr.
May 22, 2025 10:49 am

By retreating to the local pub to enjoy a glass or two of cold beers.😁

Reply to  taxed
May 22, 2025 1:34 pm

But you guys don’t drink cold beer.

taxed
Reply to  taxed
May 22, 2025 11:00 am

Just to correct an error the mean daily maximum temp was 16.96C not 16.5C.

Mr.
Reply to  taxed
May 22, 2025 1:46 pm

Glad you corrected that.
Nick was just about to pounce, and show you the error of your ways.

Reply to  taxed
May 22, 2025 5:25 pm

25C (77 F) is 12C below average human body temperature level of 98.6 F (37C) thus not a concern.

May 22, 2025 10:17 am

Since May 2022 the UK Daily Maximum Readings have been recorded as follows:

CIMO Additional Number % Total (1,090)
Error of Readings
1 70 6.4%
2 66 6.1%
3 +/- 1°C 187 17.2%
4 +/-2°C 492 45.1%
5 +/-5°C 275 25.2%

87.5% of the daily maxima are from weather stations with siting issues.

Given that 86.6% of the Meteorological Office’s Synoptic & Climate Network consists of CIMO 3/4/5 it is perhaps no real surprise, yet these supply data for ‘Climate Science’ to base their prognostications on.

They also provide the MSM with headlines when it gets a bit warm, although how warm is site specific rather than regional.

The top ten stations are:
Place Count CIMO Class
1 Scilly St Mary’s 78 4
2 Heathrow 54 3
3 Santon Downham 33 5
Plymouth Mountbatten 33 4
5 Wiggonholt 32 5
Gosport Fleetlands 32 3
7 Pershore 31 4
8 Kew Gardens 30 2
Cardiff Bute Park 30 5
10 Wisley 29 4

The only non site compromised station in the top 10 is Kew, although given its position in London CIMO 2 is perhaps generous, especially as in our ‘heatwave’ at the end of April beginning of May, which got all the MSM outlets very excited, it recorded 29.3°C at 14:59 (as confirmed by the Met Office enquiry desk) which was a 2.6°C spike from the reading at 14:00. Over the past 3 weeks the daily record stations have averaged 1.25°C rising temperature per hour and 0.82°C difference from 1 minute hourly maximum to 1 minute reported maximum, so Kew is an outlier, but it kept the BBC Climate Science reporters happy.

Reply to  EricHux
May 22, 2025 1:50 pm

It is obvious that the Met Orifice has ZERO interest in producing realistic “climate” data.

They could have created a series of sites like the US did with USCRN…

… but prefer to use sites that, unless they are grossly incompetent, they must know are totally unfit for “climate” purposes.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  bnice2000
May 23, 2025 6:33 am

Funny. The MET calls them Climate Stations.

Reply to  It doesnot add up
May 22, 2025 5:10 pm

That is not the Kew gardens site in question..

The Kew Gardens site is in the middle of well kept grass area. but is highly suspect if the breeze comes from the NW over all the glass houses and amenities buildings, and still in the middle of the London heat dome and surrounded by trees

Possibly CIMO 2 or 3 rating

kew-gardens
Reply to  bnice2000
May 23, 2025 12:11 am

On the 1st of May the changes in wind direction produced 2 spikes in temperature at Kew, the 1st allowed the BBC to trumpet 28°C (breaking the 1990 daily record of 27.4°C set in Lossiemouth) at 1330, 2 hours before the hourly readings reached that temperature and then again at 14:59, dropping 0.76°C to the 15:00 reading.

May Day Madness – Frayedends Blog

It is fascinating to look at the huge range of hourly temperatures generated by the automatic PRTs. Unfortunatley weatherobs.com generally gives hourly readings (averaged over 1 minute) (with data drop out, usually at 13:00) so misses the peak temperatures but over the past 27 days the average difference max hourly to peak is +0.82°C. 1st May Kew is a definite outlier.

Reply to  EricHux
May 23, 2025 1:27 am

Thanks, interesting analysis. 🙂

Reply to  bnice2000
May 23, 2025 7:05 am

You’re right. I actually spent some time locating it a few weeks ago too. It is more or less directly under the inbound flightpath for runway 27R though. The site is just above the B for Botanic. With about 7 miles to run on a 3 degree approach the aircraft are at about 2,000ft.

1000001193
Mr.
May 22, 2025 10:35 am

Is this post suggesting that the PROBITY of temps measurements is problematic?

Who would have thought that such a situation could prevail when the very existence of planet Earth is under a cloud. (or two).

May 22, 2025 11:31 am

Where I live, this spring has been absolutely wonderful. If I believed that this was the result of CO2 going into the atmosphere from my car’s exhaust I’d be upgrading to something with a 5+ litre engine ASAP.

May 22, 2025 1:55 pm

If you go to Tallblokes Blog, you can find all the work done by Ray Sanders regarding the absolutely parlous state of the Met sites.

As well as the massively degraded, unfit-for-purpose status of many sites, they are also many phantom sites that, even though they don’t exist, still “produce data”

It is a complete farce. !!

Interested Bystander
May 22, 2025 7:06 pm

It’s the UK. They have made a suicide pact with themselves. Just step out of the way. Like a drug addict they have to hit rock bottom on their own.

Bob
May 22, 2025 8:51 pm

These crackpots from the Met make Baghdad Bob look like Einstein. Britain needs to straighten up there is no justification for accepting crap like this.

auto
May 23, 2025 2:55 am

A friend in Devon – not very far from Exeter – has sent me this table.
He says he got it from a contact at the Met. Office there: –

Meteorological Prediction Algorithm* [Who doesn’t believe an algorithm?]

RESTRICTED – Senior Met. Office Staff ONLY

Yesterday
It was worse than we thought – worst since records began, wa-a-ay back in the mists of time, the week before last! But the public can’t see those records – as they are a State Secret!
Today
Often reasonably correct – but look out of the window#.
Next 12 hours
65-90% chance of being [locally] correct on many days.
Do have access to a window#.
12-24 hours
40-60% chance of being correct-ish – have access to a window# and a brolly [this is Great Britain, you know – we have weather which includes rain!]
24-48 hours
Usually erring on the side of catastrophic weather – orange and red warnings for extreme heat, cold, drought and floods are likely – frequently on the same day.
48-72 hours
Forecasting is by throwing darts – the bull is ‘Worse than we thought’
72-120 hours
Darts are thrown by [partially-trained] chimpanzees
Over 120 hours
The chimps are having a good time, but are very drunk
2050
WE will ALL be dead, due to a trace gas which – to the nearest 0.1% – is not present in our atmosphere, and the terrible, unprecedented, horrific, record weather this obviously causes.

·      No chimpanzee was hurt in the research, consultation, discussion, homogenisation, documentation, or publication of this table. It is possible that more than one got promoted, though.
·      # – does not apply to forecasting staff within the Met. Office.

I’m not sure I believe in its veracity – I think it’s worse than that!

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