Philip Eden Throws Out Met Office Record Temperature Claim
By Paul Homewood
Another interesting piece from Philip Eden in the latest Sunday Telegraph, this time looking back at some of the weather extremes in August.
What particularly stood out though was:
The reading of 101.3F (38.5C) at Faversham, Kent is now widely discounted.
I have heard of doubts raised about the Faversham record before, but this is the first time I have seen it officially raised in this way.
Which then raises the question – why are the Met Office still declaring it as their all-time record high?
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/climate-extremes/#?tab=climateExtremes
The “national record” of 100.6F at Kew, which Eden now recognises, can also be put into perspective by the temperatures measured in August 1911. In particular, 100F at Greenwich.
This really shows just how little things have changed in the last 104 years.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Keep batting away, Paul. We appreciate your efforts.
Yet on the BBC weather reports today, the claim that a new record was set during July was repeated often. To the warmist supporters, it doesn’t matter if the Heathrow record is shown in the future to have been a result of UHI or 747’s, in the run up to Paris it will have served it’s purpose of whipping up climate change hysteria.
Philip is one of many who are unhappy with the Brogdale, Faversham, record because it exceeded the temperature of surrounding stations by up to 2C. The main problem with the site, which at that time submitted its data at the end of the month, is that the screen is very close to a tall conifer hedge and, therefore, doesn’t satisfy WMO guidlines.
The 1911 reading taken at Greenwich was recorded using a Glaisher stand – it is widely accepted that this method of recording may have been as much as 3F too high on the day – the true figure would have been 97/98F
There was a paper published in the (UK) “Meteorological Magazine”, vol 106, 1977, by Joyce Laing that looked at temperature records in the UK. This confirms that the temperatures at the Greenwich Royal Observatory were recorded from 1841 in a “Glaisher Stand”, introduced by James Glaisher, the Superintendent at the Observatory. The stand was a vertical board 4 feet above the ground, on which the thermometers were mounted, sheltered from above. The stand was rotated on a central pivot so that the thermometers were always shaded from the sun, but this depended on the conscientiousness of the observers.
In 1863 Thomas Stevenson designed the louvred “Stevenson Screen”, but this was not used at Greenwich for many years. There was a debate through the 19th Century about which type of screen gave the most accurate results for air temperature and a test was organised by J.G Symons (of British Rainfall fame) at Strathfield Turgiss, Hampshire, in 1868-70. Following these experiments the UK Meteorological Office recommended the use of Stevenson’s Screen as the standard screen in the UK. However, at the Greenwich Observatory the Glaisher Stand continued to be used until 1938, to preserve the homogeneous record. A Stevenson Screen was in place at the observatory from about 1900, but the readings from it were not published and the Glaisher Stand was only replaced as the formal recording location in 1938.
The comparisons of the screens found that, in summer, often the Stevenson Screen recorded maxima about 1F lower than in the Glaisher Stand, although on some days the difference was as much as 3F. The Met Office no longer now appears to use the temperatures recorded at Greenwich in the Glaisher Stand in the historical record, so the 100F recorded on 9 August 1911 at Greenwich is no longer regarded as almost the highest temperature in the UK. The suggestion is an equivalent Stevenson Screen temperature on that date would have been 96.6F.
Re; Brogdale
I would agree with the comment about the Leylandii windbreak that is very close on the western side of the screen. I know the site well and have several photographs of it, taken about the time of the record. It also has a tarmac farm road very close on the Eastern side.
As an ex-fruit grower we would plant Leyandii windbreaks to create a micro climate in the orchards to increase the temperature. The screen is on edge of the orchards.
Thanks
Do we know what screens were used at Raunds, Epsom and Canterbury? These were apparently all recognised as the all-time record prior to Cheltenham in 1990?
I’m not sure I will need to do a bit of digging. I would have thought that Stevenson screen’s were in use for the records to stand.
So what he’s saying is if we give up driving, coal, oil, modern conveniences we can return to temperatures that were common during the Little Ice Age….and that’s supposed to be a good thing?!?!?!?!
These people still haven’t figured out that we are actually only just above the COLDEST period of the whole of the current interglacial.
THANK GOODNESS there has been some small amount of warming out of the LIA.
A couple of degrees more would be highly beneficial, because it would mostly occur in the higher latitudes, opening up land and water for agriculture and fishing. etc.
Add in some extra CO2 for enhanced biogrowth… even better.
OT. Steven Goddard got featured on the Drudge report..
Threads on his site have gone MANIC.. particularly the one on temperature fraud.
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/07/27/mind-blowing-temperature-fraud-at-noaa/
Lots of mindless new trolls to play with, of course 🙂
the met office will state a lot of things, many of them a lot of crap. take note of north sea surface temperatures at the moment. http://project.ncof.co.uk/B4G/indicator.php?indicator=sst and from personal experience even these may be on the optimistic side.
i see no headlines on the bbc citing the massive unprecedented drop in summer sea surface temperature as seen around the uk at the moment. they will not be able to ignore it this coming winter though.