What is the Point of the UK Met Office?

Temperatures are forecast to rise this weekend in parts of the UK and the Met Office will no doubt be out in force promoting its climate change scare stories. Existential threats may well be aired and Net Zero will be noted to be the only solution. Alas, as the sun shines down on the green and pleasant land (weather maps coloured dark purple for agitprop purposes) there are growing fears that the only existential threat on the horizon is to the Met Office itself.

The state meteorologist blows through about £300 million a year but it has faced devastating disclosures over the last 12 months that it runs a temperature measuring service full of junk data, invented readings and retrospectively adjusted numbers. It claims accuracy to one hundredth of a degree centigrade to weaponise its stats for the Net Zero fantasy, but operates a nationwide measuring network that is more suitable for limited agricultural purposes such as identifying when the seasons change. If it is just another political cheer leader for Net Zero but fails to run a robust recording network, then what’s the point of the Met Office?

This question was asked 10 years ago in a BBC programme narrated by Daily Mail journalist Quentin Letts. At the time, concern was rising about the unsubstantiated claims made by the Met Office linking individual weather events to alleged human-caused climate change. Labour MP Graham Stringer cast doubt on claims made about flooding in the UK in 2013-14, noting: “The Chief Scientific Officer [at the Met Office] said that this was undoubtedly due to climate change, but most of the scientists even in the Met Office looked askance at that, because there’s no scientific evidence whatsoever that rain was related to climate change.” Stringer was correct and his analysis is confirmed by later work issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Needless to say, confected outrage from the Green Blob ensured that the programme was taken down and it has not been seen or heard of since.

So what is the point of spending upwards of £300 million on an organisation devoted to promoting climate scaremongering – hardly a commodity in short supply these days – that is patently unable to properly do its day job of measuring ambient air temperature? Around 80% of its 380 temperature sites around the UK are deemed by the World Meteorological Organisation to have measuring class ‘uncertainties’ from 2°C-5°C, while long-term average ‘location’ temperature data rely on the invented input from over 100 non-existent stations.

Everyday the Met Office declares ‘extreme’ temperatures around the country. Earlier this week, a high of 18.5°C was recorded in Grampian at Dyce, or as it is often known, Aberdeen airport. The site of the Dyce measuring device is shown below by the red marker.

Every picture tells a story – a story of sites ravaged by unnatural heat, boosted by the recent introduction of electronic thermometers able to instantly pick up every corrupted temperature spike caused by extraneous factors. Thus we have the Met Office’s Chief Scientific Officer Professor Stephen Belcher claiming that between 2014-2023 the number of days recording 28°C in the UK had doubled, while those over 30°C had tripled compared to 1961-1990. Professor Belcher is keen to call on the government to “stabilise the climate” but in the immediate future he should perhaps be more concerned about stabilising his own shonky statistics.

The Met Office not only faces stiff competition in the climate Armageddon stakes but also in its bread-and-butter forecasting business. Its forecasting of weather is reasonable but it doesn’t seem to stand out from its many private competitors in this market; competitors, it might be noted, that are not a weighty burden on the British taxpayer. Earlier this year, Which magazine, in association with the University of Reading, published the results of a two-week survey of weather forecasts provided by five popular apps.

There has not been much work done to date on comparing the forecasts of the main services but the Weather Channel appears to be a consistently strong performer. The Which survey found it performed well when forecasting the weather in the next few hours and was also strong for weather predictions later in the day. BBC Weather was found to be “especially poor” at predicting the forecast later the same day, and overestimated the amount of rain due.

The UK Met Office is not under any political risk at the moment with a Labour Government still seemingly committed to Net Zero. Needless to say, this project needs all the climate fearmongering help it can get. But its fat budget would be tempting to slash for any DOGE-inspired government that might come to power in future. In the United States, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is facing heavy funding cuts to its climate-related programmes as the Trump Administration looks for a 27% cut in its overall budget. Like the Met Office, NOAA is a world leader in driving climate alarm, so many of the cuts will be easy to make. In particular, the reductions, which will need to be passed by Congress, target the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, which could see its annual allowance for climate work cut from $485 million to $171 million.

The Met Office might be safe for the moment in its self-satisfied form, but for how much longer can it claim its unreformed nationwide air temperature network is fit for purpose? And how long will its climate alarm edifice last when Net Zero comes tumbling down, and serious politicians start look for easy cuts in bloated state operations?

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.