50.93815 -0.49362 Met Office Assessed CIMO Class 5 (error margin by siting up to 5 °C) Installed 1/1/1995
Recent Climate reporting by the Met Office appears to have switched focus from reporting “average” temperatures to highlighting the crossing of arbitrarily set “thresholds” and by suggestion “tipping points”. The former metric clearly became untenable after a dismal and chilly May 2024 being declared the “hottest” ever. The Met Office even toned its report down to just the “warmest”
The public kicked back against this “average” as it clearly did not represent the reality of the May weather. They also started to ridicule such claims and accused the Met Office of “gaslighting“
Clearly this had to be addressed so the Met moved onto “crossing thresholds”
So where does the likes of a rural West Sussex weather station come into this? Well…….
30.0°C now appears to be a sufficiently high number to cause public alarm and health warnings according to the modern Met Office – in the “old days” it used to be 90°F but that is presumably now considered too high a threshold to regularly cross.
It has become essential to proclaim, on a daily basis, “Extremes” (formerly known as “daily highs and lows”) and hit the target numbers by any means possible even including using sites known to be wildly inaccurate. Here is a close up of the £Multi Million Met Office Wiggonholt site back in 2017.
The site simply has to be categorised as the lowest possible standard of 5. The hedge predates the Stevenson Screen and is now in 2024 seriously overgrown. It is definitely not flat. Whether or not the canvas screening is still there or what may have replaced it is not known, but it is quite obviously not a “secure” tamper free site. It is, in fact, an appallingly poor site. No expense spared eh!
So what of its data recording? The site used to manually record data using staff from the local RSPB Pulborough Brooks site though it is now an automatic site. Below is an extract from just a small part of the remarks section in the CEDA Archive when it was manually recording data. I recommend viewing the whole remarks section for more concerning comments.
I sincerely hope that “OOPS” is an operational term – I suspect it’s not.
The station was automated some years ago. Many automatic sites report their data on the Met Office’s own Weather Observations Website but Wiggonholt (though highlighted under the site’s search index) does not. For the Met Office to be somewhat coy in disclosing their data comes as no surprise to anyone who has tried to delve into their covert world. Probably rather disturbingly for the Met Office though is that a separate international agency does freely broadcast this information live at hourly resolution.
The highest figure recorded on the hour was 28.91°C for 1/9/2024 with an atypically sharp rise and fall in the readings around that time. If 30°C was reached it could only have been for a very brief period indeed, a phenomenon often indicative of extraneous heat effects. The nearest private weather station to Wiggonholt that reports on WOW only achieved 27.9°C . Perhaps “OOPS” is more apt than previously realised.
How does this site perform overall? This local online newsletter article is very interesting indeed. It would appear Wiggonholt is capable of producing any “Extreme” required on demand. The hottest or the coldest seem to be no problem.
https://www.sussexlive.co.uk/news/sussex-news/west-sussex-village-wiggonholt-cold-7938408
I found the line “Home to one of the Met Office’s weather stations, temperatures are more accurately recorded there than in other areas,” somewhat amusing in the circumstances. I also fail to see how this site can meet the Met Office’s “strict” requirements for siting and accuracy.
I contend that it is inappropriate for the Met Office to so publicly proclaim what are obviously suspect figures and this practice should cease immediately. Such figures are far too unrepresentative and indeed unreliable to be included in the historic temperature record.
The public expect and deserve their tax payer funded agencies to operate to the highest possible standards – this example demonstrates the Met Office is not doing so – why?
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
September 2, 2024 at 08:31AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 