EXCLUSIVE: Met Office in Denial as It Rates Almost all its Temperature Stations as ‘Excellent’, ‘Good’ or ‘Satisfactory’

Further alarming disclosures have come to light about the Met Office’s U.K. temperature measuring network following a recent freedom of information (FOI) request seeking details of its internal rating system for its 383 station-strong operation. Denial is the word that springs immediately to mind. According to World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) international standards, almost eight in 10 Met Office stations are in junk Class 4 and super junk Class 5 with possible errors of 2°C and 5°C respectively. But it turns out that over nine in 10 stations are internally rated by the Met Office as ‘Excellent, ‘Good’ and ‘Satisfactory’. Just 27 stations are considered ‘Unsatisfactory’.

It might be hoped that the Met Office is rushing to upgrade these unsatisfactory stations not least because they produce numerous ‘record’ highs, or ‘extremes’ as they are now termed, that litter the database. It is not a good look to be caught promoting all-time ‘extremes’ from recordings that you consider internally to be unsatisfactory. Nevertheless, two of the four national temperatures records were produced by this small band of unsatisfactory stations – on July 18th, 2020, Hawarden Airport in Wales recorded 37.1°C, while on July 21st, 2021 a temperature was recorded of 31.3°C in Castlederg, Northern Ireland.

The WMO applies strict standards on temperature stations and rates them from Class 1-5. Corruptions of natural air temperature from any source determine a rating. Class 1 and 2 are pristine, Class 3 has ‘uncertainties’ of 1°C followed by classes 4 and 5. Super junk 5 has no requirements for siting, meaning it can be based anywhere. Let us refresh our memories of how the Met Office sites rate under rigorous WMO standards.

Now look what happens when the Met Office marks its own homework.

According to information released under an FOI request to the investigative journalist Paul Homewood, the Met Office will only quote records from WMO Classes 1-4. Also known as CIMO ratings, the Met Office states categorically that the records “must” be between 1 and 4. “CIMO 5 will mean data from the site will be flagged and not quoted in national records,” adds the Met Office.

Presumably the instruction is not fully understood across the entire organisation. For instance, in a week analysed last June by the Daily Sceptic the Scottish Class 5 station Leuchars provided an area ‘extreme’ on four out of the seven days examined. In England, the Class 5 station at Killowen also featured four times, while Usk No.2 and Durham made the top spot on three occasions. From the Met Office’s own tiny ‘Unsatisfactory’ list we get Kinlochewe, which provided the highest January temperature ever recorded in Scotland at 19.6°C, and London St James’s Park, which holds the record for England SE and Central S. In fact, this record of 40.2°C on July 19th, 2022 was only pipped for 60 seconds near the runway at RAF Coningsby where 40.3°C was achieved at around the time three typhoon jets were attempting to land. Seemingly besides itself with excitement, the Met Office lauded the breaking of the 40°C barrier as “a milestone in climate history”.

The Met Office appears to be in denial about its temperature network. It notes that WMO Class 5 is not the same as its own ‘Unsatisfactory’ inspection, “which ultimately determines the ongoing use of a site”. The internal system is said to tell the Met Office how much confidence it can have in the data. Rather a lot, cynics might observe, given the continued presence of ‘Unsatisfactory’ stations producing well-publicised and frequently politicised ‘extremes’.

Is it legitimate to ask how much confidence we can have in the Met Office data used to spread alarm and promote the Net Zero fantasy? The BBC’s green activist-in-chief Justin Rowlatt noted in July that the Met Office had “confirmed” that climate change “is dramatically increasing the frequency of extreme high temperatures in the U.K.” In a period of gentle warming it might be expected that temperatures would rise a little, with unnatural urban heat corruptions warming both day and night-time measurements. But as we can see from an analysis of the source Met Office data, the alleged confirmation of soaring high extremes is an imaginative interpretation somewhat challenged by the underlying scientific work.

We might have more confidence in the Met Office’s ability or wish to provide uncorrupted figures if we did not recently learn that over eight in 10 of the 113 temperature measuring stations opened in the last 30 years were deliberately or carelessly sited in Class 4 and 5 locations. Shockingly, the situation was just as bad over the last 10 years, where 81.5% are rated Class 4 and 5, and it beggars belief that in the last five years, eight of the 13 newly-opened stations are at similar junk sites. Both Iver W. Wks and Stowe are to be found on the Met’s own small naughty step despite opening in 2016 and 2012 respectively.

We are obliged to citizen sleuth Ray Sanders for this latest FOI request to the Met Office that confirms the level of internal denial about the state of its temperature network. Noting that the Met Office says its own standards form the “official benchmarks” for assessing the suitability of temperature sites, and hence the data for the long-term climate record, he observed: “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?”

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.