In a couple of weeks’ time, the Met Office is likely to announce another ‘hottest year evah’ in the UK. The message will be broadcast faithfully by trusted messengers in mainstream media, keen to prop up the fading Net Zero fantasy, but greeted with howls of derision across social media. Eye-opening investigative research over the last two years has revealed a national temperature network mainly composed of ‘junk’ inappropriate sites and massive data inventions across over 100 non-existent stations. Now the British Government has stepped in with the suggestion that questioning the Met Office’s shoddy measuring systems “weakens trust in science”. Misinformation is said to have proliferated on “conspiracy networks”.
Step forward Lord Patrick Vallance, the former Government Chief Scientific Adviser at the heart of the Covid lockdown panic but now an unelected Science Minister in the Labour Administration. “There has been a growing online narrative in some online and social media spaces attempting to undermine Met Office observations and data,” he observes. Vallance’s conspiracy claims echo similar comments made earlier in the year by the Met Office. The investigative efforts of a small number of people were said by the state meteorologist to be an “attempt to undermine decades of robust science around the world ‘s changing climate”.
Only in the world inhabited by Vallance and the Met Office can a conspiracy be whipped up when rigorous examination and questioning is applied to scientific data. From Covid to climate, it seems the scientific process is a closed book to state scientists following the settled political narrative. One of the ‘conspirators’ is citizen sleuth Ray Sanders, who has undertaken a forensic examination of nearly 400 individual Met Office recording stations. Commenting on the official ministerial response, he observed that not one word constituted a scientific approach. “It is a political monologue of the lowest order,” he opined.
Regular co-conspiratorial readers will of course be aware of the reporting problems at the Met Office. Over the last 18 months, the percentage of sites in junk CIMO Classes 4 and 5 with ‘uncertainties’ due to nearby unnatural obstacles of 2°C and 5°C respectively has climbed from 77.9% to over 80%. In that period, the number of pristine Class 1 sites capable of measuring an uncorrupted ambient air temperature over a large surrounding area has fallen from 24 to just 19. Ray Sanders has catalogued most of the unsuitable sites producing measurements taken by airport runways, in walled gardens, near main roads and in the middle of solar farms. Daily high unnatural heat spikes, amplified by the recent introduction of more accurate electronic devices, are an obvious unaddressed problem, but they are often fed into the official statistics. One such 60-second spike in July 2022 pushed the temperature at RAF Coningsby up to 40.3°C, a declared national record that is widely publicised.
Meanwhile, temperature databases are awash with non-existent stations and invented data. Explanations that the ‘estimates’ are taken from ‘well-correlated neighbouring stations’ might be more convincing if those stations could be identified. Freedom of Information (FOI) efforts by Ray Sanders seeking such details have been dismissed as “vexatious” and “not in the public interest”. The picture has emerged of a very rough-and-ready network, suitable for specific local temperature reporting at places such as airports, but unconvincing in promoting widespread average temperatures down to one hundredth of a degree centigrade.
The Vallance explanations are contained in a letter written to the Conservative MP Sir Julian Lewis following concerns raised by Derek Tripp, a local councillor in his constituency. He notes that in September, the Met Office decided to remove estimated data from three non-existent stations on its historic temperature database. “They recognised that confusion could be caused when there appears to be a continued flow of data on this website from stations that have closed,” he said.
In fact the confusion was caused by the Daily Sceptic seeking FOI details in November of well-correlated neighbouring stations responsible for data at one of the stations, namely Lowestoft. The well-correlated explanation is often used by the Met Office and formed the basis of an earlier ‘fact check’ by Science Feedback that seems to have relied exclusively on text provided by the Met Office. Sanders had earlier determined that there were no such stations within a reasonable distance of Lowestoft. The Met Office admitted under FOI that it did not use such stations but rather made estimates using its HADUK-Grid. This was little more than passing the buck since HADUK-Grid inputs temperature information from nearby stations, none of which it seems can ever be identified.
Vallance went on to note that the historic dataset was for “general interest only and is not intended for climate monitoring purposes”. Curiously, Vallance failed to point out that this was a very recent explanation since it only appeared on the Met Office historic page after the Daily Sceptic submitted its FOI.
On the 80% junk nature of the Met Office’s temperature sites, Vallance rushes to the aid of the party. “It is misleading and inappropriate to interpret the CIMO classifications in isolation to question the quality of the Met Office’s observing network or the integrity of the UK’s climate record,” he states. What pompous piffle. In-house activists have been allowed to leverage the reputation of the Met Office to produce a flood of dubious measurements and statistics designed to create mass climate psychosis with the aim of promoting a hard-Left Net Zero agenda. The World Meteorological Organisation could not be clearer in stating that a CIMO Class 1 location can be considered as a “reference” site giving a true air temperature over a wide surrounding area. “A Class 5 site is a site where nearby obstacles create an inappropriate environment for a meteorological measurement that is intended to be representative of a wide area,” it notes. A site with a poor class number can still be valuable for a specified application, it adds.
In other words, a Class 5 is useful for giving jet pilots a vital runway temperature, but less so for telling us that the annual temperature in the UK was 0.06°C cooler in 2023 than the ‘record’ year of 2022.
Vallance also claims that the Met Office “follows a structured, requirements-driven process to identify and establish new land observing stations”. It is reasonable to ask what “requirements-driven” process is being used by the Met Office, given that a large majority of sites started over the last 30, 10 and five years are to be found in the junk 4 and 5 Classes. Even worse, the Daily Sceptic has disclosed using FOI information that 20 new sites have opened since April 2024, and of the 17 that have received CIMO classifications, a frankly incredible 64.7% started life in the Class 4 and 5 junk lane.
And they say we are the conspiracy nuts.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.
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As I’ve said before when this comes up, what is the end game?
The MO may be a dog’s breakfast, but they vomit up the right answer.
Discrediting the MO is not going to undo the fact that the UK climate has warmed in recent decades and the magnitude stated is about right.
The end game is to stop the MO &BBC using the data from class 4 & 5 weather stations to announce propaganda “records” for UK weather. Both Paul Homewood and Ray Sanders have been highlighting their deceit for years.
Irrelevant, that’s not an end game.
Every sensible person knows such records are just ‘ pub talk’. Curious ‘facts’.
Really? You have no idea at all who is behind the Surface Stations Project. There are several Doctorates and Professors in highly relevant subjects. You may be an idiot but my colleagues and I most certainly are not.
That’s how the left argues. They simply declare that anyone who disagrees with them lacks the credentials to even have an opinion.
Regardless of actual credential, the fact that they disagree discredits them.
“They simply declare that anyone who disagrees with them lacks the credentials to even have an opinion.”
An accurate take, Professor. Now what “credentials” do you think would be required to “disagree” with your unsubstantiated “opinion” of the Second Law of Thermodynamics?
Mr. Sanders: I’m not sure, but you may know- when Bellman, Stokes, Eclang et al post numbers and charts in comments here, do they rely on the “data” that Mr. Nasty now says is just for pub talk?
Translation: I can’t defend the mangled mess, but I’ll pretend I don’t have to because everyone agrees that the end result is correct, regardless of how it was generated.
Mr. Nasty: “Every sensible person knows….” Translation- “When I speak for everyone, you deniers speak for no one.” You’re not even competent at trolling.
Wouldn’t it be nice if their work had some kind of meaning instead of being ‘pub talk’?
“but they vomit up the right answer.”
Utter unscientific tripe….
Why is it leftist activists like vomit !!
Nearby sites that are basically unaffected by crap sites and massive urban development show the 1930s,40s was warmer on average than the first 2 decades of this century.
The Met Office discredits themselves with such shoddy anti-science garbage… no other help needed.
You mean the answer that is wanted? Yes, that’s definitely true.
Right, based on what? Your feelings? Your backyard thermometer? Or the MO provided ‘data’?
I certainly haven’t noticed any increase in temperature at all in 60 years.
Anyone protesting that the UK climate hasn’t warmed isn’t in touch with reality.
It’s warmed a bit the end of the world is nigh and you guys in the UK need to save us Net Zero tomorrow please 🙂
I am sure with a few more stupid policies you can shoot the leg right off.
Translation: We don’t need no stinkin science, we already know what the right answer is supposed to be.
Can you explain how you think you can know that for a fact?
Nevermind. Somebody already took your feet out from under you below.
Why does this warming not show up in temperature series from pristine sites?
How do you know?
Multiple sources, satellites, instruments, including my own. My own experience. It’s beyond doubt to any sane person.
Your own experience? I must assume then that you have your own weather station. Have you investigated what has increased? Is it Tmax or Tmin? Tavg only hides important scientific data from sight.
And if you have your own weather station, can you show that it is Class 1, or is it Class 5?
It is an off-brand and no class proffered in the manual. I suspect it is of Chinese manufacture. However, monitoring nearby stations, I would say it is within the range of ASOS, something like ±2°F. I do have two other Lacrosse thermometers and all three are within a degree or two and their high/low differences are not consistent which should tell you what microclimates do to temperature.
I don’t know if you are familiar with Weather Underground but you can set up a free account and see a map of stations that report automatically and that are near to you. I recently bought this station and it is the first I have had that will report over the internet to WU. However, I have monitored WU for years to see how my non-internet station compared. As you watch the map, it becomes noticeable that between the quality of stations and the topography that there is quite a bit of variation over a several nearby counties.
Here is a recent map from WU that I put up on my image sharing site.
As you can see, there is a large difference. Some is weather station uncertainty and some is topography.
I live next to a large tributary of the Kansas River and over time it has created a valley. East and west of me the valley rises 100 – 150 feet over 3 miles. I am always colder than the stations that are above. That has convinced me that homogenization and other algorithms are not reliable presentations of the measurement uncertainty and resolution.
Translation: I don’t need science, I already know what the right answer is supposed to be.
Mr anonymous, when did you last do a calibration check? Scientists like us contributors at the Talkshop are actually experts at details like that. This is what verifiable scientists know, and rank idiots like you, do not.
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/12/04/dustaffnage-addendum-the-story-on-the-ground/
The UK is much warmer than other places at similar latitudes. Take Hudson Bay, for instance, it’s much colder and ice covered most of the year. That has been true for the total recorded history of the UK, and long before any fossil fuel was ever burned. The UK average temperature has also fluctuated wildly during this time, as recorded in historical documents. There is no possible way that “your experience” can divine the cause of any present minor variation.
The Gulfstream warms the UK and much of Western Europe. Hudson Bay is very far from any similar source of warmth.
Indeed, so is the climate of the UK dependent on the Gulfstream, CO2, Solar variance, magic or models?
Trouble is, your “own experience” is totally meaningless as a reference temperature.
It is also severely tainted and corrupted by your AGW activism.
Your “religious dogma brainwashing” tells you it has got warmer… therefore you think that it has.
“It’s beyond doubt to any sane person.”
Time to stop reading. The sophistry is strong in this one.
“..the UK climate has warmed in recent decades..”
Yes, it has warmed a bit and that’s a good thing. Warming was inevitable after the end of the Little Ice Age.
“..the magnitude stated is about right”
How can you possibly know that? Clearly UHI is a massive problem. Many of the weather stations are located on airports which never even existed a hundred years ago. Not surprisingly, many records come from airports, particularly Heathrow. The only question about some of these Heathrow “records” was whether they were caused by a passing 747 or A380….
Have you heard of the CET?
Again not perfect, but any UHI is marginal, shows about the same warming as all the declared ‘junk’.
Is that why the Talkshop managed to find recording discrepancies of over 14°C in official Met Office files?
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/11/28/dalwhinnie-no-2-addendum-extreme-variations/
The quote from the experienced meteorologist in the post comes from the Director of Research at one of the world’s most prestigious Universities. The only “Pub Talk” comes from idiots like you.
Not perfect? Is that good enough to justify trumpeting temperature changes to the 1/100ths of a degree, especially when the resolution at best is only 1/10th of a degree Celsius.
Hmm, fascinating how the junk is irrelevant when he wants it to be, but gospel when it is useful.
The UHI is marginal? Have you done any measurements across a city to determine the magnitude of the UHI? I have. I took actual measurements, not estimates or calculated temperatures. The temperatures from were early morning, before sunrise, thus they were as close to Tmin as possible.
I found a measurable UHI even in small towns. In cities the UHI was larger than the stated warming since the mid 19th Century. The UHI estimates that I have seen from MO and other similar agencies are quite low. It appears to me that such agencies strive to marginalize UHI so that they can ignore it. This allows them to use temperature stations which are strongly impacted by UHI.
This is the sort of report that the UK Met Office conveniently overlook
https://www.arup.com/news/londons-most-extreme-urban-heat-island-hot-spot-compared-to-five-other-global-cities-in-new-survey/
“any UHI is marginal”
WRONG again.
Population growth / urban contamination makes up basically ALL the warming in the CET fabrication.
Here is a comparison between the Urban CET and a nearby pristine site.
Translation: They’ve been telling us lies for so long now that it feels like the truth. And I’m ok with that.
Goebells
Enjoy your island prison. May your chains set lightly on you.
Like Starmer’s government treads lightly on our lives…
Well now, we know how much Patrick Vallance is being paid to lie, how much are you being paid?
Typical, declare that the mangled mess is correct, because it agrees with what you want to believe.
Maybe you should look in the mirror, Professor. How, precisely, did you determine that the “mangled mess” in your head that passes for the Second Law of Thermodynamics isn’t just “what you want to believe”? Since no one besides you believes it?
LOL . . . Really? What exactly is the “right magnitude” of warming for the UK? I’ll accept a value stated in °F, °C or K.
I have it on good authority that the IPCC and many other AGW/CAGW alarmists maintain to this day that the “right amount” of warming is 0.000 degrees in whatever units.
Now, you were saying something about vomiting . . .
Mr GM doesn’t even understand the term Magnitude.
Climate is a statistical artefact. It cannot warm since it has no temperature.
Your statement is nonsense.
Why have I noticed no noticeable warming across this time frame in next door Ireland? As an old man I am unaware of any climate zone in my lifetime changing from one climate zone to another – now that would be real climate change. Perhaps you are confusing weather conditions with climate?
Climate is the new word for weather.
Well, the MO, and partners in crime BBC, will continue to provide decent and accurate weather forecasts: Heat death, drownings, hurricane force winds and wild weather.
It should be noted that Valance has no more training in climate related science than a house cat.
His opinion is worth about the same as that of a house cat..
He is also a far-left socialist/Labour stooge, who is heavily invested in the Net-Zero scam.
He is part of the rancid scourge that the UK must get rid of if it wants to survive.
Actually, house cats have the presence of mind to seek warm places. It appears that Valance doesn’t. This suggests that Valance doesn’t even have the presence of mind of even house cats.
Vallance is a stuffed shirt who provides a superficially convincing “scientific” justification for British politicians.
It is really a good thing that ‘Sir Covid’ Vallance has been chosen to validate the ‘truths’ of the Met Office. This is a perfect signal that we can safely ignore anything said or done by either entity.
He will be telling us we must wear face masks to protect us from deadly heat next.
No, as this kind of lie would be too obvious, and the population still havent got the necessary number of mrna vaccines to dumb them down that much.
– they’ll simply release a new virus.
And they already started to pave thenarrative way last year.
“Next pandemic is around the corne – expert warns ”
Sky news
and when we look a bit further into the text
” global warming (what else?! ) and deforestation(= guilt,always man made cause) are also making it increasingly likely that a viral or bacterial agent will jump from from animals to humans and cause another pandemic ”
“We(guilt) are creating a situation that is rife for outbreaks (future)”
Dr Nathalie MacDermot has set the narrative foundation for future outbreaks.
The 2 global propaganda branches(warming + pandemic) finally united into a combined warfare,
including even future lockdowns ,
+ the same old, same old (currently used to prepare people for war).
” The next pandemic(or war,or climate cisis) is around the corner.
We need to stay vigilant and prepared and ready to make (what this is all about)
SACRIFICES AGAIN”
The sad reality is that he almost certainly did not even read the letter himself! It will have been put in front of him by his Parliamentary Private Secretary just for signature. It will originally have been written by the Met Office. Given they refuse to even talk to me, they really do not have any defence at all.
“Given they refuse to even talk to me, they really do not have any defence at all.” Typical response from the Left/Alarmists/Marxists when they know they are wrong …. crickets. One reason why they won’t do live interviews that are unscripted or with anyone that is a true reporter/journalist.
The temperature data from current AWS needs to be treated with a large pinch of salt. As they appear to be much more influenced by the sun’s warmth then a LIG thermometer is in open shade in the same weather conditions.
This can lead to AWS over stating the maximum temperatures by a significant amount when compared with a LIG thermometer in open shade.
Below l have listed the maximum daily temps recorded so far this December from a local AWS on Hatfield Moor and compared with my own readings here in Scunthope with a Six’s thermometer in open shade.
Dec (Hat) (Scun)
1st 13.4c 11.4c
2nd 10.3c 8.0c
3rd 6.8c 5.9c
4th 7.7c 7.1c
5th 7.8c 6.0c
6th 12.6c 8.8c
7th 13.2c 10.7c
8th 12.2c 10.5c
9th 14.7c 10.4c
10th 12.7c 10.3c
11th 11.2c 10.0c
12th 9.9c 8.8c
13th 8.6C 6.2c
14th 11.8c 10.5c
15th 11.9c 10.0c
16th 8.3c 9.2c
17th 10.5c 8.1c
18th 10.7c 9.3c
19th 10.7c 7.2c
As is clearly shown the difference between the results of the two methods of recording maximum temperatures can be quite striking.
Note also that only on 1 day has the local AWS recorded a lower maximum temperature then my Six’s thermometer (on the 16th).
Hi, Yes you are right. I and my colleagues at Tallblokes Talkshop have been doing a lot of work on this very subject and found some staggering discrepancies both through Aitken Effect (which you are largely describing) and Time of Obs protocol change. I have published lots of reports on this – try this one for a starter.
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/11/20/cassley-addendum-a-demonstration-of-how-changing-observation-artificially-creates-warming-and-the-implications-for-the-future/
I hadn’t known of John Aitken prior to your mention. There is a long pdf via AmetSoc titled “John Aitken’s Contribution to Atmospheric and Aerosol Sciences” by Josef Podzimek. Page 1543 mentions the effect of air ventilation on temperature measurement.
<a href=”https://journals.ametsoc.org/downloadpdf/view/journals/bams/70/12/1520-0477_1989_070_1538_jactaa_2_0_co_2.pdf”>LINK</a>
Coding drives me nuts.
The Covid criminal rewarded with a peerage and a job.
Interestingly, they’re currently hyping up super flu and showing TV journalists in hospitals with face masks.
The beat goes on. Vallance is the perfect anti-scientist for the role.
For a UK temperature check, I went to:
https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/countries/united-kingdom/average-temperature-by year.
The Tmax and Tmin data from 1901 to 2024 are displayed in a table. Here is the data for these two years:
Year——Tmax——Tmin——Tavg Temperatures are ° C
2024——12.9——–6.9——–9.9
1901——11.8——–4.7——–8.2
Change–+1.1——+2.2——-+1.7
After 123 years there has been a slight warming in the UK. This is probably due to a reduction in air pollution as result of the phase out coal after the killer smog in 1950’s, IIRC. I once had an light overcoat from London Fog.
For temperature data for a city, use: https://www.extremeweather.com/cities/city name/.
For city name, enter the name in lower case letters. If the city name is two words connect these with a hyphen For acquiring London temperature data, use: london-heathrow.
I will simply note that there are several ways of getting an “average” and while the mean of Tmax and Tmin has been used since day-one of thermometers, it is questionable. Also, one might question whether or not 1901 and 2024 are representative.
[I once had a London Fog but have no idea where it went to!]
From the article: “The investigative efforts of a small number of people were said by the state meteorologist to be an “attempt to undermine decades of robust science around the world ‘s changing climate”.”
The climate is cycling.
The climate has a warm phase and a cool phase. We are currently experiencing the warm phase. This cycling does change the climate from one period to another, but the changes all come within a defined boundary of about 2.0+C between the warmest and the coolest temperatures, since the end of the Little Ice Age in the early 1800’s
What comes next? Well, according to history, a cool period comes next.
CO2-phobes claim the temperatures will continue to get hotter because more CO2 is continuously going into the air, but the temperatures are not getting hotter now, even with the increased CO2. The temperatures are currently cooler than 1998, 2016, and 2024. Climate Alarmists will assume this is just a small change in a continuous warming trend. But is it? Weather history says no.
the Met Office “follows a structured, requirements-driven process to identify and establish new land observing stations”.
No qualms about that statement of fact whatsoever but that’s the very problem dude.
So Patrick Vallance is just another paid liar. Got it.
Following Vallance’s reply to me I could not resist putting the closing caption on this one!
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/12/16/auchenflower-dcnn6510-an-admission-of-my-error-another-terrible-weather-station/
Minitrue strikes again. How Orwellian of them..
The wages of technocracy [gone wrong as ever]
Lord Vallance’s appointment as Science Minister has been criticised by experts who say he helped stifle discussion into whether Covid originated from a leak in a Chinese laboratory.
[Small world]
Before taking on the role of chief adviser in 2018, he was an academic and a consultant physician as well as the president of research and development at GlaxoSmithKline. – Daily Mail
One wonders why every politician and every newsoutlet in the west were so busy to stiffle discussion about the (very obvious) Covid origin.
Just as they all were so busy to tyrannically exploit the covid situation.
(of course a discussion would not have allowed to go full tyranny.)
Now we need to find out what in the world has caused this impossible covid response synchronicity and that of its precursor global warming?
What has the capacity to shift such a gigantic system into the wanted direction?
Rather than attack the skeptics data and science, they attack the skeptics motives.
Sure proof that even they know that if they focus on the science, they lose.
The weird absurdity of it all is that I only use Met Office data. When they criticise me they are, in fact, shooting themselves in the foot.
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/12/14/vallances-vanishing-act-official-response-to-stationgate/
As bad as the BBC
That takes some doing.
With a little editorial license:
The concerned people in the UK: “We want the TRUTH!”
The MET Office: “YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!!”
For the real emotion portrayed in this famous movie scene, cue the interval of 0m40s–0m47s in the movie excerpt at
The only ones involved in conspiracy are the Met Office and the other agents forcing their unscientific opinions on the wider public.
Having political apologists like Valance argue in favour of the Met Office’s legitimacy is about as unconvincing as it gets. If the Met Office wants to recover its reputation it could start by releasing all of its data along with the detailed locations the data originated.
He might view his job as absorbing and deflecting verbal abuse while unpopular policies continue for as long as required. Unpleasant remarks being made about him might instead be directed at the actual practitioners of said policies. He has taken the role of “person held responsible” so long as it pays well enough that his grandkids won’t have to work in an office.
What a laugh a worthless government official reassuring us the worthless Met is reliable and those who question the Met are conspirators. You can’t make this stuff up. The Met is disgusting, Vallance and all government officials like him are disgusting and should immediately be fired.
There’s extreme abnormalities from ‘mean weather’ most days of the year somewhere on earth. California will get extreme precipitation this week, Yukon has been having record-breaking cold this December, Switzerland has much, much less snow depths right now than normal, Russia’s far east has experienced extreme cold and snow during December.
It’s usually simple to find counter-examples somewhere on earth to whatever extremes the UK might be experiencing.
Back in the famous drought summer of 1976, we went on holiday to what is now Croatia, where they said they had had the wettest summer they could remember. Might be worth looking at the UK and SE Europe and see if their extremes tend to be opposite in nature….
Right now, snowfall totals are above average in Arizona, way below average in the Sierra Nevada and most of the US rockies, but higher than average in parts of Canada and the NE of the US.
Nowhere I have yet come across actually views climate from anything but a very small regional outlook.
Fact is in the UK, the one thing we cannot ever do is predict the weather this year.
You can simply be pretty sure that it will be quite wet or extremely wet in NW Scotland…..