I have already reviewed Astwood Bank (as well as Cardiff and Aboyne) however, following yesterday’s outrageous and frankly dishonest claims by the Met Office, I feel I should go into further depth to expose their deliberate disinformation agenda. No credible meteorologist could accept that Astwood Bank reading is in any way reliable but, of course, this has nothing to do with either meteorology or indeed even any science. Political ideologies must rule.
Firstly another site aerial image to help orientation. Google maps and aerial images run north to top, south to the bottom. The site address is a domestic house known as Alwynne, 48 The Ridgeway Astwood Bank Redditch. I do not wish to be the cause of any upset to the owner, however, the Met Office itself freely publishes all this information and the homeowner is fully aware of the details being in the public arena.
The north of this site is a spur off the main road (The Ridgeway) down which the Google Streetview camera partly went. This is what is shown of that northern boundary.
To give an idea of the scale the brick pillars are 22 brick courses high – the working height of a brick is 3 inches so those pillars are 5 feet 6 inches (1.67 metres) plus capping stones. I conservatively estimate the wind barrier to the north in the region of 12 feet (3.7 metres) high. Another image angle offers a different perspective.
Very obviously indeed the tree to the end of the hedgeline is much taller again. The front of the house is shown to be a large area of concrete driveway and parking. This elevation is particularly important given the wind conditions of the afternoon of 11th July in this region. There is no anemometer published data for Astwood bank but the wind direction is. What very light breeze there may have been was from the north.
To gain a very good indication of wind speed, the nearest official site with an anemometer is the fully equipped Pershore site (formerly RAF Throckmorton hence very sophisticated wind speed and direction recording equipment) just 8 miles to the south south west.
This confirms a northerly very light breeze measured at 10 metres above ground level ranging from 6 kph down to dead flat calm throughout the record period. This will be discussed in detail later, however, it is blatantly obvious that any wind there was at the Astwood Bank area would have been completely blocked by the significant perimeter hedging and trees to this site.
The general eastern side to the screen is firstly the wide ranging house with the extensive concrete driveway and parking area. The property is single storey but with an elevated roof section indicating loft conversion and a ridge height in excess of 5 metres. Further treess, shrubs and conservatory extension form a total wind block to this side.
Now consider the length of shadow by the house and relate that to the shadow cast by the predominantly south hedge perimeter.
It is again obvious that this southern hedging is very high probably higher than the ridge of the house at 5 metres. Again a total wind block.
The final west elevation is a similarly well manicured thick hedge that sits just 3.5 metres from the screen. A differently timed image indicates the level of visual shade this hedge creates.
All of the above is to confirm beyond any doubt that this site is completely sheltered from wind from any angle and that in layman’s terms this is a “suntrap” garden. The relevance of this is that it is perfectly well known that in low wind speeds (and in this case at Astwood Bank it was guaranteed dead flat calm) Stevenson’s screens will (not possibly, nor maybe) in strong sunny conditions, overheat. This defect was in fact ascertained in 1884 in the same year that the Met Office formally adopted this type of instrument screen. Scottish meteorologist John Aitken identified this overheating effect which later adopted his name “Aitken Effect”
The Met Office itself used to openly acknowledge this problem. Their “Factsheet 17” entitled “Observations over land” specifically states “Anomalies may arise when the wind is light and the temperature of the outer wall is markedly different from the air temperature.” Clearly the term “anomalies” is a euphemism for overheating.
Dr Eric Huxter elaborated on this well known overheating problem and cited research by internationally regarded meteorologists of the Royal Meteorological Society and Reading University such as Dr Steven Burt. This research unequivocally supports the fact that Stevenson screens in such low wind speeds and sunny conditions will not give accurate representations of the real world temperature.
Is there any more real world further evidence to substantiate this as an over-recorded reading?
One of the nearest weather stations to Astwood Bank is the Class 2 site at Wellesbourne. I have not reviewed Wellesbourne yet as I was actually saving the good quality sites until the latter part of this project. Whilst I have referred to the likes of Rothamsted (England), Thomastown (Northern Ireland), Trawsgoed (Wales) and even Craibstone (Scotland) as good quality sites, these reports were partly to relieve the monotony of reporting on so many junk sites. There are in fact several very good quality sites to review shortly and Wellesbourne is one of them. Without going into details now, simply contrast this site’s location with Astwood Bank.
There certainly is nothing breaking the wind in this open site. Even in low wind speed conditions Wellesbourne is much less likely to encounter any Aitken Effect.
Wellesbourne peaked at 32.6°C which is 2.1°C lower than recorded at Astwood Bank.The latter’s figure undoubtedly the result of the well noted likely effect of Aitken warming effect – and the Met Office must know that. If not they are incompetent.
How this Astwood Bank site even came into its adopted Met Office existence reads more like a tale of a cottage industry than latter day 20th century science. The official public record is here, with this from the local newspaper
Hold this thought……..a hobbyist’s “passion” is now proof of the anthropogenic global warming narrative according to the UK tax payer funded Met Office from a 100% Junk site giving known corrupted readings.
I challenge any meteorologist to defend using this Astwood Bank site readings in this way.
This is political disinformation and marks the death of Met Office credibility.
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
July 12, 2025 at 01:20PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 