Sensational New Measurements of Uncorrupted Air Temperatures Destroy UK Met Office Constant Claims of ‘Records’

Further dramatic scientific evidence has emerged to show that the UK Met Office’s 387-strong temperature network is hopelessly corrupted by unnatural heat influences and is effectively useless in providing credible guidance on many individual measurements and average trends. Since the Met Office has so few stations in pristine, uncorrupted CIMO Class 1 and 2 locations, where no errors are likely, nationwide ambient air temperature averages are impossible to gather, but Dr Eric Huxter has done the next best thing. He has examined over half a million 60-second measurements over the year at the Class 1 site at Rothamsted and produced a benchmark database against which the obviously unnatural ‘heat spikes’ that litter junk Class 4 and 5 sites can be compared. His results are truly shocking. One set of junk sites declaring daily spiked maximums since late April are on average well over 2°C higher than that expected at Rothamsted.

The main takeaway from this new crucial scientific evidence is that many daily maximum temperature spikes at Met Office stations are not genuine weather events but artefacts arising from careless, bad or even intentionally poor siting. At Rothamsted, changes from minute to minute follow a predictable natural pattern, with the vast majority of the 525,541 readings varying from -0.15°C to 0.25°C. Individual changes from the previous hour show an expected wider spread and, depending on the season, vary over the majority of the readings from around -0.35°C to 0.45°C. To give an idea of how dreadful some of Met Office data is, consider its declaration that the hottest ever UK May 1st temperature of 29.3°C was recorded this year in the urban heat jungle of Kew Gardens. The measurement occurred at 2.59pm and was no less than 2.6°C higher than at 2pm and 0.76°C above the 3pm mark – whatever was being recorded on that day, it is highly unlikely that it was the ambient natural air temperature.

At Class 1 pristine sites like Rothamsted, set in open farmland, we are indebted to Dr Huxter for revealing how natural temperatures behave. First, he shows in the graph below how they change from minute to minute.

The second illustration shows the change from the previous hour.

These two graphs show the variation of natural air temperature when it is measured properly under credible scientific conditions. The following table from earlier Huxter’s work shows how large the distortions can be when Met Office daily maximums, or ‘extremes’ as they are categorised, are drawn from badly sited stations. Listed below are 35 daily highs starting on April 26th this year and the difference from the recording at the hour. All but one of the recordings arise from CIMO Classes 3, 4 and 5, with internationally recognised ‘uncertainties’ up to 1°C, 2°C and 5°C respectively. The overall average ‘spike’ is 0.89°C, which is far higher than the overall average at Rothamsted.

It gets worse. Dr Huxter kept his daily maximum recordings going throughout the summer and, from 126 days of data, was able to draw further mathematical conclusions. He found that spikes at 67% of these daily recordings had only a 1 in 6 chance of occurring at a Class 1 site. The 126 recordings occurred at 45 different locations, of which only 13.3% theoretically had no additional error due to Class 1 and 2 siting. The average across the remainder was an astonishing 2.8°C, which Huxter notes “is not acknowledged by the Met Office’s public face”. Why should it, it might be asked. The Met Office is full of Net Zero activists, and they have weaponised temperature observations to scare the public witless and promote the fantasy that the world can get along fine without using hydrocarbons. Daily average temperatures are calculated using only the maximum and minimum recordings, and these provide a plentiful supply of ‘hottest evahs’ across days, months, seasons and years. After that, the figures are combined with similarly corrupted data from around the world to produce an inflated global warming figure.

And even worse still, Huxter notes that a contribution to the heat spikes is the use of new, highly accurate, electronic Platinum Resistance Thermometers (PRTs) in unaspirated Stevenson Screens. Two thirds of the 126 recordings were produced at stations with wind data, and it was found that these received only 28.3% of the minimum expected for such a device in the Stevenson housing. “Given the sunny dry summer, these PRTs are baking, producing data that does not represent a ‘true’ meteorological signal,” he suggests.

The Met Office does not seem to agree, or even care. It declared this year’s summer in the UK was the ‘hottest evah’, pushing the glorious 1976 experience, measured by the old mercury-in-bulb instrument, down to a lowly sixth place. Meanwhile, a recent Freedom of Information request revealed that over the last 18 months it has increased the percentage of 4/5 junk sites in its nationwide network from 77.9% to a frankly ludicrous 80.1%. Seemingly not content with that, it has added 11 new classified stations that have been deliberately placed in the 4/5 junk dump.

Huxter concludes that the Met Office is providing a “misleading picture” of UK maximum temperatures. Over the years, he argues, it has become the standard bearer for ‘weather fear’ based on its anthropogenic climate change belief system. ‘Feed the fear’ has become a common thread in its public communication. He also notes the “close links” with the BBC and like-minded media outlets, “to whom any apparent ‘record’ is immediately communicated with the simple subtext of ‘climate change’.”

The Met Office complained recently that a small number of people are undermining the integrity of its observations, “in an attempt to undermine decades of robust science around the world”. In fact, what has happened is that a UK Government science department, overrun by political activists, has weaponised the results of a temperature network and is using it in a way that was never intended. The existing higgledy-piggledy system cannot provide data with the precision required for the Net Zero political agenda. Activists often warn that every tenth of a degree centigrade counts, and meteorologists claiming to measure temperatures to within one hundredth of a degree give them crucial ammunition. 

Although mainstream media has ignored the scandal around the network’s improper use, the Daily Sceptic is aware of growing concern in both houses of the UK Parliament. The biggest fear, and one shared by many within the Met Office, is that political controversy around its junk temperatures will detract from its many useful roles in measuring local conditions from walled gardens to airport runways, and providing vital forecasts and warnings of forthcoming bad weather.

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