From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
I published this graph the other day. It showed that January 2026 was nowhere near as wet as a lot of other months in N Ireland, despite the BBC’s claim otherwise.
But the graph also indicated that wet months have become more common since the 1960s. It is a step change, and I am always deeply suspicious of step changes.
It turns out that before 1960, there were just six weather stations which are still in use in N Ireland, ones that are used for climate purposes. Then came a splurge:
It is not an exaggeration to say that the dataset since 1960 bears no resemblance at all to what went before. No matter how much you homogenise, no matter what sophisticated computer models you run, rainfall trends since 1960 cannot be compared with those before. The station mix is completely different.
The four oldest stations, Armagh (1836), Edenfel (1865), Aldergrove (1926) and Hillsborough (1930) are all still in use and offer good, long term rainfall data. So why not simply use these for long term trends?
The Met Office is obsessed with calculating the “average” temperature or rainfall for an entire country. In reality, there is no such thing. It is a mirage, a chimera. And in doing so, they introduce all sorts of anomalies, arising from station changes, UHI, poor siting and simply comparing sites that are radically different.
Ballypatrick, for instance, was opened in 1961. It is a high altitude, coastal site, prone to heavy rain, which often features at the top of rainfall lists, as does Katesbridge, opened in 1983, which is near the coast.
How can sites like these be compared with the older sites, which are in much different geographical, often drier locations?
So let’s look at the wettest months at Armagh, and compare with our NI graph at the top:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/historic-station-data
You will see straightaway that Armagh plots months with 140mm or more, rather than 190mm. This is deliberate – rainfall last month in Armagh was 140mm, compared to the national total of 195.6mm. This should tell us that many of the newer sites are intrinsically wetter than Armagh, which of course should automatically invalidate long term trends.
But the Armagh graph also shows no evidence of that step change in the 1970s, which appears to be simply an artifact of changing station mix.
So let’s finish by looking at the annual rainfall trends:
There is no comparison!
According to the Met Office, rainfall in N Ireland has been steadily increasing throughout the record. Yet the Armagh Observatory data confirms there is no long term trend whatsoever.
We know that the Met Office’s long term temperature record is massively corrupted by poor siting and UHI. It seems that their rainfall datasets are also equally corrupted and worthless.
Always after me wonky charts! They’re tragically pernicious!
WUWT keeps me alert. I need a dictionary to keep up with you guys! Can I call that baleful or deleterious?
Use the same tactic as those who have been deprived of local elections…withhold payment !
If it’s junk science it’s in the student rag
Northern Ireland has recorded its wettest January in 149 years according to the UK Met Office,
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/09/why-is-the-uk-so-rainy-this-year-and-how-is-the-climate-crisis-making-matters-worse
Faithfully parroted. Their explanation for natural variation?
Scientists think fossil fuel pollution is making the jet stream more erratic, allowing extreme weather systems – from heavy rain to heat domes – to become stuck over the same areas for prolonged periods, amplifying their impacts.
Quelle surprise.
This is right up there with those 1960s cigarettes ads on the tele –
“Scientists say that Marlboro’s new longer filters are better for your throat and lungs . . . “
The Met Office is obsessed with pushing falsehoods for their gov’t who are in the grips of a failing NWO. Their weather reporting is almost useless along with their website which seems to change like the wind. The Met Office is massively corrupted because of poor appointments and poor management.
This gravy train will soon be rotting away in a siding and only those who rode this gravy train will miss it. ‘Global warming’ RIP.
They apparently have made yet another major upgrade to their computer systems which allow more accurate forecasting for cloud and fog.
One of the main beneficiaries will be the airline industry and the management of flight schedules 🙂
Paul Homewood is single-handedly exposing the MET Office as a bunch of amateurs.
There is also Ray Sanders over at Tallbloke’s, who is surveying the MO sites hence the 103 non-existent stations.
The Met Office is obsessed with calculating the “average” temperature or rainfall for an entire country.
These are average people so what do you expect?
Less than average honesty
It’s got electrolytes!
What claim did the BBC make? In the post Homewood is referring to, the BBC said N Ireland had its “wettest January for 149 years”; not its wettest ‘month’.
But instead of comparing only previous January rainfall totals, Homewood selects rainfall totals for ‘all months‘ then suggests that the BBC is making a false claim. A simple straw man argument – build a case against a claim no one is making then declare victory.
Guess what, it absolutely is an exaggeration to say that. And you don’t need a sophisticated computer model to prove it, a simple spreadsheet will do. The current trend in annual rainfall in N Ireland over the 67 years since 1960 is +18mm per decade. There are several 67-year long periods pre-1960 when the decadal rainfall trend was higher than that. 1837-1903 and 1854-1920 both had increasing annual rainfall trends of +21 mm per decade, for example. Use the link above and check it for yourself, like Homewood obviously didn’t.
Homewood next decides that because Armagh has lower rainfall than N Ireland as a whole this demonstrates that “...many of the newer sites are intrinsically wetter than Armagh, which of course should automatically invalidate long term trends“. Talk about a non sequitur! No, it does not follow that, because inland Armagh has lower rainfall than coastal areas, therefore the long term national trend is “invalidated“.
Just because the four oldest N Ireland sites happen to all be inland doesn’t mean that it never had any coastal sites before these newer ones came on line. There were literally dozens of coastal stations around the coast of Ireland, including present-day N Ireland, since the early 1800s onward (see chart below and follow the link). Most of these have reliable records that can and have been used to inform the Met Office’s estimates for ‘N Ireland’ rainfall since 1836.
Finally, the good people of Katesbridge in Co Down will be surprised to learn that they live “near the coast“. Katesbridge is located in a hilly region ~20 km from the nearest coastline which, to give it an English context, is like saying that Preston or Ipswich are ‘near the coast’. Given that NI is about 110km at it’s widest point, proportionately it’s like saying that York is ‘near the coast’.
Homewood has plunged new depths of silliness here which, for him, is impressive.
It’s in the Guardian, too.
Don’t you wish!
How many times must you be told that a “mean” is a center value OF A DISTRIBUTION. A mean by itself is meaningless. You don’t even claim that the distribution is Gaussian. It could be some other shape which has an entirely different definition of “center value”
The distribution you are describing has a Standard Deviation that is used to display values above and below the mean. One sigma would indicate that 68% of the values lie within that range. What is the Standard Deviation?
Too many people, including you, would have everyone believe that the mean rainfall over a large area applies to all the covered geography regardless of topography and other factors. Why don’t you explain the variance?
The mean and Standard Deviation calculations are very susceptible to outlier values. Have you checked to see if the locations with higher rainfall lie within acceptable values for a Gaussian distribution? How about other possible distributions?
Your analysis process is high school level. Don’t criticize others.
What gibberish are you talking now?
Homewood specifically states “… rainfall trends since 1960 cannot be compared with those before.”
He’s talking about trends, not the “mean” or “centers OF A DISTRIBUTION” or “Standard deviations”. He’s talking about “trends“. “T.R.E.N.D.S.” It’s right there in his post. Do you have difficulty reading?
So I responded, using trends from the data set he was referring to, and showed unambiguously that Homewood is, once again, talking utter nonsense.
The fact that you fell for it does not surprise me.
Quit the arm-waving and try actually reading the posts you’re responding to.
Mr. Homewood said this.
Then you come along and say.
Hmmmm. “+18 mm per decade”. Gee, that looks a lot like an average, i.e., mean value to me!
Maybe you need to get straight in your head exactly what a mean value actually is.
Add to it, what a mean value is in relationship to an average.
“wettest January for 149 years”
So it’s been just as wet, or wetter, in previous years. Big f’ing deal.
Let us welcome our resident flame warrior.
“I published this graph the other day. It showed that January 2026 was nowhere near as wet as a lot of other months in N Ireland, despite the BBC’s claim otherwise, despite the BBC’s claim otherwise.”
Erm, can someone here tell me where the BBC “claimed” that this last January was wetter “than a lot of othr months” ?
In this: ….
“Northern Ireland, south-west and southern England, and the east of Scotland all had one of their wettest Januarys on record.
With 70% more rain than average Northern Ireland experienced the wettest January for 149 years. Culdrose in Cornwall recorded two and a quarter times its average, while Aboyne in Aberdeenshire had nearly four times its January average of 68.9mm.”
You cant – because it doesn’t!
“According to the Met Office, rainfall in N Ireland has been steadily increasing throughout the record. Yet the Armagh Observatory data confirms there is no long term trend whatsoever.”
Taking just one location and claiming it’s more representative of an area, (one fave way of denying the weight of the mean here), otherwise know as cherrypicking the data you like.
The areal distribution of January 2026 rainfall …
Map of N Ireland:
Armagh is fairly central and surrounded by high ground.
This map shows the Mean annual precipitation distribution for Northern Ireland (1961-1990) …
Yes I know it’s out of date but the general distribution of rainfall geographically will not be materially different if averaged for the 90’s to 20’s.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Mean-annual-precipitation-mm-for-Northern-Ireland-NIR-1961-1990-after-Betts-2002b_fig1_250220908
Notice how Armagh is in the 3rd lowest category (800-850mm yr) in a 13 category scale ranging from 700-750mm to 1600-1700mm.
The differences are as a result of topography.
Something Mr Homewood is ignorant of as pertaining to meteorology. Well he is ignorant of all meteorology in the available evidence posted here.
Massive Cover-up Launched by U.K. Met Office to Hide its 103 Non-Existent Temperature Measuring Stationshttps://dailysceptic.org/2024/12/09/massive-cover-up-launched-by-u-k-met-office-to-hide-its-103-non-existent-temperature-measuring-stations/
The Met Office is Unable to Name the Sites Providing ‘Estimated’ Temperature Data For its 103 Non-Existent Stations
Over to you, Mr Banton.
Every time I read comments here from AB and/or TFN, I’m reminded of that riveting scene in “The Caine Mutiny” where Capt Queeg (Humphrey Bogart) is in the witness box having a melt-down about how his insubordinate crew refused to accept Queeg’s self-described brilliance in the way he solved the case of the missing strawberries.
The panel of judges were clearly uncomfortable with Queeg’s mental state.
Been debunked on here before, Including by Roy Spencer.
The MetO explain the methodology at the point of origin.
https://www.drroyspencer.com/2025/12/the-record-hot-uk-summer-of-2025-validation-of-the-ukmo-methodology-but-the-record-was-only-in-tmin/
“There has been criticism of the UK Met Office’s methodology for monitoring long-term changes in UK-average temperatures, starting with Tallbloke’s (Ray Sanders’) blog post on 31 October 2024. A major criticism that Tallbloke has is the fact that most UK stations do not meet the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) criteria for a good climate monitoring station. The UKMO doesn’t actually use the WMO quality classification system, but their own 4-tiered system. Another criticism is that many UK stations have closed in recent years, and so those stations are, in effect, estimated (“fabricated”?) from surrounding stations.
On the additional subject of replacing a closed station with estimates from surrounding stations (which NOAA also does because so many of their UNHCN stations in the U.S. have closed, a process that has also been criticized), I believe it is a little disingenuous to claim those data are “fabricated”. Rather than continuing the closed station record with estimates from surrounding stations, one could just use the surrounding stations, which is the same thing.”
The data is NOT on any climate index and is clearly marked as estimated from surrounding stations. The purpose being, is as Roy states above and for those especially interested in the data.
The MetO is merely performing their remit of providing info for the UK public and NOT, as you seem to think, in biasing the world’s climate data.
Finally you, of course, are aware of the above, as it’s in a few fairly recent posts of mine referencing the bollocks of Sanders utterences on the subject, and you chose to ignor it. As was expected, after all it’s essential in order to keep your confirmation bias intact.
Posting from the science side in his place is ultimately a futile exercise as the above is the MO of 95% of denizens.
Some may come here and be neutral in opinion however, and not post (ie skeptical and not science deniers that is). So me, TFN and the 5% may actually be serving a purpose.
Besides its fun calling bollocks on the likes of Homewood and Sanders.
Over to you Mr strati
“Rather than continuing the closed station record with estimates from surrounding stations, one could just use the surrounding stations, which is the same thing.””
Thanks for admitting they are making up data.. Just as claimed.
The real problem for the Met Office is that many of the sites they “make up data” from.. have also stopped operating.
You really hate the fact that the MetOffic’s deliberate maleficence when it comes to bad sites and fake data has been exposed.
Trying to defend that fact, isn’t working.
Guess what? If Spencer really wrote those quotes, he is just as guilty of Fake Data as you lot.
Yep, the Met Office has very little uncorrupted data left..
They like it that way. !
With a multi-level classification system, what is the additional uncertainty for each level? Has the META ever provided this information?
So you guarantee that the MET keeps the data separated and that it never makes its way into any official compilations of average temperatures for climate research?
Why are those stations called “climate monitoring stations?”
Temperature is weather.
Do the stations also record wind, humidity, rain, pollen, sunlight, etc., etc.\
Even if they did, they would still be weather stations.
And here we go, right on cue strat arrives, studiously avoiding the points being made and attempting to direct attention away from Homewood’s latest transparently idiotic post. Clockwork.
Seems Paul is totally correct, Ant’s map proves it.
3 or the 4 long-term sites are in drier regions.
As you add more and more sites in wetter regions, the Average goes up. (started in 1960)
This is so basic even a 10 year old would understand it.
Paul is totally correct
Your view of the MET Rainfall indicates a very large Standard Deviation across the entire area. Values from 20 to 200.
You need to do a better job of analyzing the data and displaying it if you want everyone to do more than assume that the mean was dependent on some localized heavy rainfall.
Mr. Homewood is trying to show you that claiming the whole of N. Ireland received a record rainfall, is torturing the data.
“You need to do a better job of analyzing the data and displaying it if you want everyone to do more than assume that the mean was dependent on some localized heavy rainfall.”
No, I show you that his cherry-pick of Armagh is in the 3rd to lowest category of rainfall totals (3rd out of thirteen) and hence is no way repesentative of the mean
rainfall over the province. And you are just doing your usual muddying of the obvious conclusion by wittering on about variances in order to somehow score a *win* ( which is v easy to those here who swallow up anthing posted without a skeptical inquiry).
The distribution map shows plainly that rainfall is not localised (as in the much lesser)
The distribution map shows plainly that rainfall is not localised (as in the much lesser) – it cannot be as it’s an average FFS. It is the greater majority of the Province (blue colours), with Armagh well below the median..
“Mr. Homewood is trying to show you that claiming the whole of N. Ireland received a record rainfall, is torturing the data.”
LOL, he’s trying to convince the faithfull (not that it’s difficult with only me & TFN on this post fact-checking him – Skeptics? LOL)
So no down a rabbit-hole comment abut his lies re the Beeb/MetO saying it was the highest for all months rather than just for January?
Surely you can find some obfuscating and hair-pulling excuse/reason?!
I showed you how corrupt the MO is and you singularly failed to defend it.
Translation:
“I tried to misdirect from Homewood’s latest nonsensical post but you wouldn’t play!“
You are funny. A new double act
Banton & Nails
In fact, Ant has actually shown how correct you were.
Its quite a comedy act they have going. 😉
rainfall over the province.
Does the mean rainfall occur over the province? That is the issue you need to address.
You didn’t address the issue of Standard Deviation at all. “3rd out of thirteen” should make you ask yourself about the applicablity of using the mean value to describe the entire area.
Look closely at the two maps you provided. They both show brown to dark blue areas. That is localized. Mr Homewood should have the opportunity to make that known. I am sorry it makes your “mean value” have little consequence, such is life.
Ant’s blue and orange map is a dead give-away.. thanks Ant. 🙂
3 of the 4 long term sites are in lower rainfall regions. (orange)
As more and more sites with higher rainfall are added, (which started around 1960). the “average” rainfall gets higher also.
Its bizarre and quite hilarious to watch the climate wonks trying to dispute this basic fact.
Paul Holmwood is absolutely correct.
What Paul is also showing that there is NOT a reliable 149 year record..
In fact that the old record happened when the main stations were in the dry regions,
… and that many “wetter” region rain gauges are now being used…
… shows there the rain event 149 years ago was probably MUCH larger than this year..
Thanks for the map, Ant.
The 3 of the 4 original sites mentioned are in the orange/brown area.
Sites have then been added in far wetter areas, starting around the 1960, 70…
Just as Paul has said. You have confirmed his summary.. Well done.
Deliberately adding in wetter and wetter sites, is just like the Met Office’s practice of adding in horrendously bad sites which they know will give warmer reading.
From a scientific point of view, it is totally indefensible.
But you keep trying to defend it… because you know just how bad it looks.
It’s not working.
Now tell us about the new stations, how long have they been operating, What is their individual trend as opposed to the historical stations etc. you know -DATA.
This comes as absolutely no surprise.
ps.. and it would not surprise me if the same thing was found in England, Wales and Scotland
It is the Met Office “way”.