51.55521 -3.72132 Met Office Assessed CIMO Assessed Class 5 Installed 1/2/2013
Although this is a “Number 2” station, the original site did not record temperature and humidity and closed 47 years prior to this site opening. Located within the grounds of the Field Studies Council owned Margam Discovery Centre, it is a recently installed manually reporting station whose data contributes to the national temperature record – or maybe not.
Whatever the merits or otherwise of this site are, the following record of daily readings per year since installation is the most important. Out of the potential 365/6 readings required, the first full year, 2013, resulted in just 163 observations. In 2014 just 240, 2015 – 349, 2016 – 313, 2017 – 299, 2018 – 286, 2019 – 195, 2020 – 46, 2021 – NIL, 2022 – 60, and the last archived year 2023 just 198.
From a required total readings days of up 4, 017 just 2,149 (53.5%) were actually taken.
So why on earth is it that the Met Office can accept such an appallingly bad record of observations? Margam is one of many at Field Studies Council sites and I have highlighted this problem of their poor observational records before such as at Mickleham. This prompted reader, Dave Woolcock, to ask that very question of the Met Office…..their response:
“Good Morning Dave,
Looking at Mickleham it is a Field Studies Council site.
This means that it has a high turnover of staff usually with a new observer each year. They tend to need to have one committed member of staff to keep engagement going, even if they are the supervisor not necessarily taking the readings. When they move on engagement drops off sharply. I would guess that is what happened at this site.
Over the last 10 years or so, there has been a general drop off in observations from all of our FSC sites. We get peaks when a new person starts and is enthused, then it drops off again as they get busy with other duties.
I hope that helps answering your query.
Kind regards,
Marc
Weather Desk”
At least this response is honest but what this is admitting is that the £multi million Met Office has sites whose data is added to the national historic temperature record that is on a maybe, maybe not, as and when, whatever basis.
To quote Catherine Tate’s alter ego, Lauren, “Am I bovvered?” Well yes, we should be extremely “bovvered”. Taking such partial readings is a truly pointless exercise in everything other than knowingly wasting money. I am willing to stand corrected but I fail to see any possible benefit accrued from taking readings whenever anyone can be bothered. A station not being read is effectively a non existent station. It certainly offers no plausible historic record data benefit though quite bizarrely, as I demonstrated in previous examples, the Met Office still see fit to derive AND PUBLISH UNDER FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST annual averages from such incredibly incomplete data.
Perhaps more to the point, inclusion of such partial data with reliable data can create huge distortions. For example as I demonstrated at Millport: Great Cumbrae the station in its manual reporting days closed from before Christmas to the New Year resulting in up to two winter weeks unrecorded. The result of missing out colder weather readings (when all high summer readings were complete) clearly slews the averaging to a warmer level. I seriously doubt such “slackness” was a feature of early 20th Century observers with which many modern readings are compared.
The Met Office consider this station the lowest Class 5 by siting, they seem casually unconcerned about the lack of observations but carry on distorting their better quality units with these detrimental inclusions. This is a complete waste of money exercise providing data distortion effects. Why is this allowed to carry on?
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
February 2, 2025 at 09:49AM
