52.01448 -0.59612 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 3 Installed 1/1/1882
Woburn is one of the four sites run by Rothamsted Research with others being Brooms Barn, North Wyke and Rothamsted itself. These are all run impeccably with consistency of readings throughout both manual and automatic periods of operation. Woburn was automated in 2000 with over 100 years of reliable manually recorded data. Another good quality site that is, oddly, only rated class 3
The site is visible from the roadside in flat open countryside with no shading from trees or buildings on fields annotated on the Ordnance Survey sheet as designated for “research”. Historic images do not show cropping rather just occasional pastureland use. Heathrow Airport site is class 3 and I find it astonishingly difficult to feel this site is no better than the perimeter of one of the world’s busiest international airports. The 30 metre delineated area for Class 2 is shown below – technically this site probably does not meet Class 2 on the basis that hardstanding covers marginally more than the maximum permitted 10% though it is a very close thing. I doubt the site is problematic to the reading’s overall accuracy.
An important point to note is that this is not the original site but I cannot find when the relocation occurred. The CEDA digital archive records for temperature going all the way back to 1898 show the current coordinates and elevation.
This is incorrect and required going back to copies of the original handwritten documents to confirm this as below.
The coordinates given convert to a digital 52.03058 – 0.59316 and are 2 kilometres distant with the relocation clearly necessary due to development of the site into a business park by the M1/A421 junction.
This relocation probably did not affect the temperature readings being at almost exactly the same elevation and back then (from the 1945 Google historic site image) was in equally open countryside. I do consider it important though that such moves are openly noted and not “disguised” by the change over to digital recording. Most of the older long term sites have been relocated over time, some with significant changes of surrounding environment, and this is important information not to be lost. I already suspect many modern day meteorologists are misled by this failure to record site moves as highlighted in my report on Benson site. There, the original location was in the village “frost hollow” site though this feature is not reflected in its modern site on high ground at the RAF base. {I have chosen to emphasize this point relative to an ongoing query with the Met Office regarding the “doctoring” of historic records at Waddington}-
The important thing about Woburn is that like Benson, South Newington and Stowe amongst a few others, it is well away from large urban areas, inland and in reasonably open countryside. Such sites should well reflect central England but there are disproportionately fewer of these than coastal sites and urban ones. This map from weatherobs clearly displays the very high concentration of eleven sites in tiny sector of west London and very few in “mid England”. Consider a 40 km radius circle centred on the modest sized town of Aylesbury compared to one centred on the massive Urban Heat Island of central London. A large number of these non coastal sites are in cities with classic examples at Oxford and Cambridge with major UHI distortions.
To find stations such as Woburn, Rothamsted or any of the aforementioned rural stations highlighted as the daily “High” is exceedingly rare, conversely, as I have recently emphasized they are often recording “Lowest” as below.
Woburn is definitely one of the few worthy sites for inclusion in the national historic temperature record compiled from a regulated geographic spread of sample points rather than the current haphazard and ill defined system currently operated by the Met Office.
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
March 17, 2025 at 02:43PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 