Junk Sites Behind the Met Office’s So-Called Heat Records

The climate scaremongers: Junk sites behind the Met Office’s so-called heat records

PAUL HOMEWOOD

LAST week was even hotter than the summer of 1976, or at least that is what the Met Office keeps telling us. Is that really the case, though?

It was certainly extremely hot for a few days. We were inundated with daily claims of temperature records being broken, forecasts that temperatures could get close to 40C or 104F (they did not) and the obligatory red heat warnings informing us we might die if we step outside our front doors.

But where is the evidence that this heatwave was even more extreme than in 1976? Most people who remember the 1970s would probably say the Met Office is gaslighting us.

In 1976, temperatures hit 35.9C (96.6F) in Cheltenham on July 3. The Met Office reckons that this temperature was exceeded last week.

Top of the list are Lingwood and Santon Downham, both in Norfolk, which they say recorded 37.7C (99.8F) and 37.3C (99.1F) on Friday, a record for June. Santon Downham in Norfolk is, however, one of the most poorly sited weather stations in the country, even by the Met Office’s abysmal standards. It is a Class 5 site, the worst category, which the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says can add up to 5C of artificial warming. In other words, the temperature at Santon Downham might have been as low as 32.3C (90F) if it had been properly sited.

Lingwood, another Class 5, is even worse. It is just a few yards from a thick bank of trees and surrounded on the other three sides by tall hedges. It is a perfect sun-trap as there is no air circulation.

Class 5s mop up all the stations that don’t meet the criteria to be a Class 4, itself a junk classification. The WMO is absolutely clear – Class 5 sites should not be used for climatological purposes, which is exactly what the Met Office have done here.

Just behind Santon Downham came RAF Wattisham in Suffolk. It is now used as an Army helicopter base, flying Apaches. Wattisham, as with all airfield sites, is criss-crossed with runways, and is home to 2,000 troops, 300 HGVs, 200 Land Rovers and two air ambulances. Hardly a suitable rural site!

On the Thursday, the two highest temperatures were set at RAF Merryfield and RAF Yeovilton, two Royal Navy helicopter bases close together in Somerset. The latter is described by the Navy as ‘one of the busiest military airfields in the UK’.

Maybe you are seeing a pattern here! The day before, on the Wednesday, the Met Office claimed a June record of 36.1C (97F) in Gosport at, you guessed it, yet another helicopter airbase.

It says a lot about the predominance of junk sites in the Met Office’s station network. It also says a lot about helicopters. We are familiar with the artificial warming effect of tarmac runways, but helicopters add another factor – rotor wash. In essence, the rotors push the air downwards during take-off and landing, and that air includes hot exhaust gases. When this air hits the ground, it spreads outward in all directions, creating winds that can easily reach 60 to 100 mph. An excellent way, therefore, of spreading hot air around the airfield. It is well accepted that thermometers at airfields are there so that pilots know the actual conditions on the runway and should never be used as being representative of the wider area.

In fact, no pristine weather station beat the 1976 record of 35.9C. The Met Office claims of record temperatures are wholly derived from junk sites.

The highest temperature recorded last week at a Class 1 site was 34.3C (93.7F) at Rothamsted. This was a degree higher than in 1976 there. But here we have another problem – we are not comparing like with like.

In 1976, all thermometers were of the traditional Liquid in Glass type – the sort that we look at every morning in our hallway. During the 1990s, these were steadily replaced by Platinum Resistance Thermometers (PRTs), which record temperatures on a second-by-second basis. Nowadays all Met Office weather stations use PRTs.

PRTs can detect short term spikes in temperatures which the old thermometers were incapable of. Research has shown that these spikes can be a degree or more, and are more common at poorly sited stations. We simply cannot scientifically compare temperature data from 1976 with today’s, as the equipment was different then.

Much of this is counting angels on the head of a pin. But a look at the daily Central England Temperature should convince anybody still dubious about which was the hotter heatwave.

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In 1976, temperatures exceeded 29C (84.2F) every day from June 25 to July 8 – that’s 14 days in all. This time, the heat lasted just four days – Tuesday to Friday. As of writing, temperatures are back to normal and are forecast to stay so.

Even the peak temperature in 1976 was slightly higher – 33.1C v 32.8C.

This whole saga is a reminder of how worthless the Met Office’s temperature datasets have now become.

This article (The climate scaremongers: Junk sites behind the Met Office’s so-called heat records) was created and published by Conservative Woman and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Paul Homewood