By Paul Homewood
Not only is the UK Met Office desperate to declare a new record temperature from an extremely dodgy site in Cambridge, but a newly claimed record temperature in Germany also appears to be a cheat:
During last week’s record-setting European heat wave, Germany’s previous record of 40.3C was impressively shattered by the measurement station located at the northwest city of Lingen, near the Dutch border, some 50 kilometers from where I live. The German DWD weather service and media loved it!
Controversial siting
Yet, controversy now swirls about the new record setting measurement since it has come to light that the measurement is fraught with some considerable siting issues.
As the photo published by T-online here shows, the station is located right near a DWD office building, is shielded from the wind by grown trees and is located not far from a public swimming pool.
Meteorologist Michael Theusner told t-online.de: “The monthly average of the daily highs in Lingen has been deviating more and more upwards from the average of the highs in Lower Saxony since 2010.” The station has become increasingly shielded and thus tends to heat up more.
Swiss veteran meteorologist Jörg Kachelmann wrote the extra heat possibly heating the station by 3 up to degrees!
DWD accepts overheated reading
Germany’s DWD national weather service has even confirmed that the station’s siting is no longer adequate and that a move to a new site had been already long planned. But despite the acknowledged poor siting, the DWD went ahead and confirmed the reading as valid. The 42.6°C reading now stands as Germany’s new all-time recorded high temperature, no matter how questionable the reading may be.
Valid? How does Lingen compare to other temperature stations located nearby? I did a check.
Fifty kilometers to the east of Lingen where I live (Quakenbrück), my home thermometer showed a high of 38.2°C. That’s unofficial of course, but it makes the Lingen reading suspicious. So I decided to compare Lingen to the other official stations nearby to see if their readings were as hot as Lingen’s.
The surrounding readings do indeed confirm meteorologist Kachelmann’s gut suspicion. Lingen readings are suspiciously 2 – 3C hotter than its neighboring stations.
Full post here.
Quite apart from this dodgy siting, it is a fact that there are many more sites where temperatures are monitored than there used to be. Thus there is much more chance of a local hot spot getting monitored.
National records should only be acceptable at sites with long records, at least 100 years, and with clearly identifiable high quality siting which is not impacted by urban or other biases.
Unfortunately for the integrity of science, the UK and German Met Offices are far too reliant on government climate funding to be relied upon to be honest and objective in these matters.
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July 28, 2019 at 04:04PM
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