Sixty Years of Temperature Averages Declared at UK Met Office Station With Only EIGHT YEARS of Actual Observations

The UK Met Office takes great pride in its public-domain historic station database where 37 selected sites provide average temperature data going back many decades. One of the chosen few is Valley, although it is better known as the Class 3 RAF Valley station on Anglesey. Curiously its ‘historic’ data stretches back to 1930, but this is 11 years before it became an operational military base. But on the separate location temperature database, check out the nearby station of Cwmystradllyn which is recorded to have opened in 1974 and stopped taking manual measurements after just eight years. Yet at this site, monthly averages are claimed back to 1961 and continue to this day. Here the Valley fabrication pales into insignificance compared to around 50 years of imaginary data at Cwmystradllyn. Yes, citizen sleuth Ray Sanders is on the case again, digging deep into Met Office and public archives to reveal further horror stories about the State meteorologist’s temperature collection methods.

This all matters since the compilation of long-term temperature averages over at least 30 years is a core component of the study of changes in climate. It is heavy weaponry in the hands of activist bodies such as the Met Office, which leverages its scientific reputation to promote the Net Zero fantasy.

Here is the archival evidence that Valley only started recording temperature data in June 1941.

So where did ten years of data back to 1930 come from – data shown to this day in the historic record under the same co-ordinates as RAF Valley? Again, sleuth Sanders came up with the answer, having found in another archive that the information was compiled six miles away at Salt-Holyhead.

The Met Office knew where the data arose, but for some reason it has failed to correct its historic data. The public and the wider scientific community are left uninformed on the matter. “If this type of completely incorrect attribution is going unnoticed, what confidence can the UK public have in any of this below being correct?” Sanders asks. “Almost certainly none at all,” he offers as a reply. This, of course, is the problem that the Met Office now faces. Its highly political role in using its data to promote climate psychosis in the interest of the Net Zero fantasy is leading to increased concern about the underlying figures. As a result, ‘extreme’ recordings from its mostly junk, unnatural, heat-ravaged locations are becoming something of a national joke. In a recent interview with your correspondent on Talk, Julia Hartley-Brewer ended up calling it an “extraordinary scandal”. Subsequently posted on YouTube, it collected around 800 comments, few if any praising the Met Office for its help in saving the planet.

Sanders’ reference to “any of this below” brought up a Met Office list of “nearby stations” to Valley. Sixty-year monthly temperature averages are provided for Cwmystradllyn, yet the archives show that it recorded temperature data for only eight years between 1974 and 1982. According to the archive at the Centre for Environmental Analysis (CEDA), the station is still open. The evidence below shows an interesting interpretation of the open claim.

The message type DLY3208 refers to daily manual temperature recordings, and the eight-year period is clearly shown at DCNN 7726, the station code for Cwmystradllyn. For over 40 years, the monthly averages have been invented by CARLOS, a process described by the Met Office as “monthly and annual climatological averages, calculated by NCIC [National Climate Information Centre]”. In earlier work, Sanders discovered that during Cwmystradllyn’s short recording life, over 10% of the days were missed and temperatures were rounded to the nearest whole number. Thus, eight years of actual data – poor quality to say the least – form the basis for 60 years of temperature averages calculated to one hundredth of a degree centigrade.

The Met Office needs to produce 30-year rolling averages to have any claim to be able to assess changes in the climate. But as we have shown at the Daily Sceptic on numerous occasions, its 380-plus active weather stations are too corrupted by unnatural heat to be taken seriously. Nearly 80% of its stations are so poorly sited they attract Class 4 and 5 ratings that come with huge internationally recognised ‘uncertainties’ – up to 2°C for Class 4 and 5°C for Class 5. In addition, stations open, close and move at regular intervals. Long-term, uninterrupted and accurate data recorded in one place are a rarity. In short, it is very difficult to produce with much confidence a natural ambient air temperature for the United Kingdom – let alone the planet – but that doesn’t seem to worry the Met Office. It regularly makes seasonal and annual claims based on data measured to two decimal points. Without its constant Net Zero proselytising, it might not matter so much – take out the politics and it could just be accepted that, like its weather forecasts, sometimes its claims are right, sometimes less so.

And it is CARLOS that is responsible for much of the two-decimal-point stuff that lies behind claims that “well-correlated neighbouring stations” provide data for its 103 non-existent stations. It is the NCIC that estimates data from closed stations using nearby sites. Alas, although the process is said to be peer-reviewed, the Met Office is unable to disclose the names of the neighbouring stations. In fact, recent Freedom of Information requests from Ray Sanders asking for this vital input information have been dismissed on the grounds that they are “vexatious” and not in the public interest.

The NCIC uses its information, observed and estimated by CARLOS, to write reports such as the annual ‘State of the UK Climate’, a publication eagerly awaited by activists keen to set off another round of doom and gloom. Quoting the last report, the BBC’s lead weather reporter Ben Rich asked: “Has the British summer changed beyond recognition?”. Without the massaged Met Office messaging to hand, the answer is a likely no. Temperatures are a tad higher, get over it.

Interestingly, the NCIC notes a role in developing “attribution studies linking events to climate change”. Here we see the Holy Grail of climate alarmism in action – comparing imaginary atmospheres on computer models with computer-generated observations to send all the children to bed crying. 

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