Whitby DCNN 2289 54.48090 -0.62576 Met office assessed CIMO Class 4 Installed 1/1/1939
Whitby Coastguard 54.48989 -0.60596 No CIMO Assessment Installed 1/1 1961 Closed 29/1/2002. {Oldest available image from Google Earth Pro just after closure.}
Assessing Met office weather stations for the Surface Stations Project should in theory be simple – but then there is the Met Office presentation to consider and things can become very complex indeed.
A weather station referred to as “Whitby” appears on the Met Office Historic Data as below
The first confusion starts with the naming, the site currently known as just “Whitby” (DCNN2299) was installed in 1939 whilst it was the site known as Whitby Coastguard (WMO 03282) site that was installed in 1961. On the basis of this installation date it would reasonable to assume the data comes from the Coastguard unit but the given coordinates approximate to the Whitby original. Studying the actual data reveals the following very small print at the top which does indeed own up to the two different stations used over time.
Thus rather than splicing together data from a relocation such as at Braemar or Southampton the Met Office has spliced data from two separate concurrently running sites for 1961 to 1999 (Coastguard site which continued operating to 29/1/2002) onto the Whitby site from 2000 onwards. The pre-1961 data from 1939 is seemingly irrelevant . {n.b. Author’s comment – how many students studying a “climate science” related degree analyse to this depth of small print – that I do draws allegations of spreading “Disinformation”}
The now defunct “Coastguard” site is coastal influenced facing the North Sea, the current “Whitby” is 1,600 radial metres away in a sheltered, inland location by a sports pitch. The two locations are not even remotely similar – contrast that bracing 60 metre high exposed coastal clifftop walk with the 41 metre elevation, tree lined avenue stroll to this site below.
The Met office claims this is CIMO Class 4 which is another of their tape measure assessments like Bingley or Grangemouth. However, they seem to willfully be ignoring some rather large heavily shading trees. A 5 metre circled area below “proves” class 4 is probably acceptable for distance but is it really acceptable to be enclosed by a 2 metre high hedge to the west, with trees to the north and south close by? Should Stevenson screens really be that close to metal railings?
Did nobody at the Met Office producing this “Historic ” data not stop to think that bonding two completely different data files from one undoubtedly colder recording coastal site onto a warmer recording sheltered inland site from 2000 onwards might just cause an uplift in their overall rolling 30 year climate averaging? It would surely have been considerably easier to simply supply the oldest site continuous record from 1939 to date without any gerrymandering after all.
Proof of dramatic anthropogenic global warming or anthropogenic data manipulation?
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
February 10, 2025 at 11:13AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 