51.16182 1.75457 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 5 Installed 1/1/1930
MOD Boscombe Down is a fully functioning military aviation site operated by QinetiQ on behalf of the MOD. Originally built in 1917 as a small aerodrome it now has a 3,205 metres (10,515 feet) main runway capable of taking the largest aircraft. The weather station has manual records dating back to 1931 with digital archives running from 1957 for temperature readings. Most unusually for aviation sites it does not appear to have been relocated at any time in those recorded notes since 1931. From that point of view this should be a very valuable site for mid to long term historic temperature records. Rather a shame the site is so very poor.
When Tim Channon reviewed this site in 2012 he actually felt it may be as good as Class 3, however, I do feel he may have overlooked the 2 metre fencing running alongside the site from the south-southeast to north-northwest. This tall structure is not normal barrier fencing but high security heavy gauge wire with reinforced concrete posts to keep unwanted intruders out of the entire site. Additionally the remaining enclosure fencing is also very robust.
Although airfield sites are by definition very flat, often the perimeters reflect earth movement to have created that levelled area. Military sites also have many (typically unmarked on maps) bunker type constructions for operational purposes. Although the screen is not visible from the roadside, in the image below it sits just over the brow of the slope behind the second set of security fencing just above and to the left of the security warning poster.
The Met office themselves rate this site as the lowest possible CIMO rating of Class 5 and it is very relevant to the use of data from this site to reiterate the level of inaccuracy this demonstrates.
2.6 Class 5 (additional estimated uncertainty added by siting up to 5 °C)
Site not meeting the requirements of class 4.
Boscombe Down has a long record from the same site BUT a particularly unreliable and inaccurate one that was, until recently, not openly available to the public to view. A consequence of this inaccuracy has a remarkable impact on the lives and finances of that self same uninformed public.
These “Weather statistics” may outwardly appear to simply be a recording system, but the data is used/manipulated to provide a wide range of further details that have major effects on the public.
Now the issues of “renewable electricity generation” and “heating degree days” suddenly have attached importance to temperature recording. So firstly how is the data for “temperatures” compiled? As I partially covered in my review of Leconfield national temperature data is supplied by the Met Office (DSIT) for the benefit of the DESNZ and is based on selected weather stations only as below.
The Met Office has used just 17 weather stations, “double counted” 4 of them (Hurn, Rostherne, Leconfield and Nottingham) and used probably the most bizarre geographical representation imaginable. Why on earth would any rational organisation use two aviation sites within 26 miles of each other? Would any rational person add data from the wildly inaccurate CIMO Class 5 Boscombe Down to the “double counted” inaccurate Class 4 Hurn that typically looks like this below?
Bear in mind that how many days a “typical” home is heated (and all the cost calculations thus derived) is calculated from this sort of massively distorted “data” that the “Government” does not want the public to openly know. Whether or not more “renewable electricity generation” is needed to power those compulsory heat pumps or determine the compulsion for new build hosing solar panels is equally determined from what can only be described as junk readings. As I have tried to highlight in other weather station reviews there are implications from all this very poor and unreliable data that the unfit for purpose Met Office is involved in.
In summary Boscombe Down is yet another Met Office acknowledged unsatisfactory weather station for climate reporting purposes that is producing data for non meteorological objectives that it was never originally intended for. All this could be remedied quickly and easily by a specific, dedicated climate reference network of weather stations as has been established in the US.
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/land-based-station/us-climate-reference-network
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
June 10, 2025 at 06:16AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 