Scotland Sets New Temperature Record–In Middle Of Car Park!
By Paul Homewood
Must be global warming!!
Scotland has recorded its hottest ever temperature, according to provisional figures from the Met Office.
On Thursday 28 June, a temperature of 33.2C degrees was measured in Motherwell, North Lanarkshire.
It exceeds the 32.9C recorded in August 2003, at Greycrook in the Borders.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-44683637
On interrogating the Met Office, it turns out that the Motherwell reading comes from Strathclyde Country Park, and the co-ordinates given by them put the thermometer either bang in the middle of either a concrete or tarmac car park, or on the building roof sat in it. (I assume its not in six foot of water!)
As any half competent meteorologist will tell you, this is the last place you should site on. For instance, Weather Works advise:
Place the thermometer over a grassy or dirt surface. Concrete and pavement attract much more heat than grass. That is why cities are often warmer compared to suburbs. It is recommended to keep the thermometer at least 100 ft. from any paved or concrete surfaces to prevent an erroneously high temperature measurement.
I have also asked the Met Office how long the thermometer has been at Strathclyde Park, but so far they have not responded. Given that park was only developed in the 1980s, I doubt whether that it has been there long, making any “record” utterly meaningless.
There is an automatic weather station at Salsburgh, which is a tiny village only about 10 miles from Strathclyde Park. In other words, just the sort of place you should be taking temperature readings.
The Met Office have advised me that the top temperature there that day was only 29.4C.
OK, Salsburgh is at an altitude of 277m, compared to 22m for Strathclyde Park, so a difference in temperature should be expected.
According to UCAR, what is called the “lapse rate” is 6.5C per 1000m. In other words, Salsburgh should be 1.6C cooler. Therefore, given Salsburgh was 29.4C that day, we could expect Strathclyde Park to be about 31.0C.
It is hard to see how local weather conditions could have been so different between two sites so close together, so the only reasonable conclusion is that the UHI effect at Strathclyde was responsible for an extra 2C of warming.
The late Philip Eden, senior meteorologist and past Vice President of the Royal Meteorological Society, was adamant that the “UK record temperature”, set at Faversham in 2003, should never have been officially recognised, because of poor siting. The Met Office of course ignored his advice and gleefully declared the record.
Since then they have done the same with the July “record” at Heathrow in 2015, and will doubtlessly do the same again this time.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
The Wet Office cheats – forevah.
It is totally bogus to measure such a temperature in the middle of a heat island like a car park.
Such a measurement (to be legitimate) has to be taken out in the middle of nowhere in order to measure only ambient air temperature.
No doubt the next record will come from under a car hood.
😉
Now rejected! Well done!! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-44725830
Thanks. However, there must be some kind of disaster to report, to save the red faces:
“The temperatures were so hot on Thursday 28 June that the “weatherproof” membrane on Glasgow Science Centre’s roof melted and dripped black “goo” down the building.”
“Black goo”! And all because of our co2-emissions.
Are they sure the ‘black goo’ was not ‘carbon’? /s
Memo to Met Office. In future do a bit of quality assurance work before trumpeting a new record. It will ensure you won’t look so stupid.
I wonder, Was the retraction given out on main BBC news like the claimed record, or just tucked away on the website
“Scotland’s highest ever temperature reading has been rejected by the Met Office over fears it could have been affected by a parked vehicle.
On Thursday 28 June, a temperature of 33.2C degrees was measured at Strathclyde Park in Motherwell.
The Met Office now says a stationary vehicle with its engine running was parked too close to the equipment.
It said that although the measurement was “plausible” it could not rule out the potential for contamination.
It means that last Thursday was not officially the hottest day ever in Scotland.
A temperature of 32.9C recorded in August 2003, at Greycrook in the Borders, remains the highest ever.”
“plausible” er……………………..what a crappy pretext; “vehicle with it’s engine running parked to close to the equipment”. it belongs, in the ‘dog ate my homework’ category, the message is clear, T measurement, the thermometers should be placed well away from concrete./mettled surfaces and buildings.
Nice one Paul.
Latest results; Paul Homewood 1 – wet office 0.
What is ‘plausible’ is that the MetO is desperate for cheap headlines to give a false impression that we’re all going to overheat like never before, aka fake news.
yup, that is not just plausible – it is a given.
Can we expect to see a correction on the BBC with as much prominence as the original announcement?
Probably not!
I think the original MO news release has had the reference to Motherwell and the temperature record of 33.2c removed.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/2018/june-end-of-month-stats
Unfortunately I did not keep a copy of the original news release.
It might be worth noting that the same snake-oil “trick” is used Down Under at the Great Barrier Reef. The corals are underwater where the temperatures are normal. The air above them is summer-time hot. So the problem is obvious?… too much CO2 = “global warming”. Scientists conclude… the GBR is seriously endangered… like the iconic polar bear at the other end of the planet. Golly…act now! Get rid of CO2.
Information: The Vladimir Rusanov was expected to have passed Cape Dezhnev and through the Bering Strait at about 6pm BST today. Watch for news of the transit of the Northern sea route.
On the May BH record heat claim (that didn’t even beat the April record), I was watching the temperature feeds and at one stage all the hottest 20 places were airports or bases, at the end of the day the vast majority were, and RAF Northolt stole it!
How any of these ‘records’ can be honestly touted…………….?
Of course, the fact that temperatures at this site can apparently be so easily influenced by parked vehicles, must bring the temperatures recorded there into some doubt.
I guess there’s a paper to be written here: Temperature records based on the proxy of PISTON RINGS! That really would be effected by carbon.
Reblogged this on WeatherAction News and commented:
From the BBC article ;
The Met Office now says a stationary vehicle with its engine running was parked too close to the equipment.
It said that although the measurement was “plausible” it could not rule out the potential for contamination.
Unbelievable.
I was visiting Scotland on the weekend before the 28th, the Balfron area to be precise, in the Campsie hills.
It was a beautiful 24/25 degrees C, the only problem, or perhaps it was a blessing, was that at regular intervals during the daytime, the place was assaulted by a cool breeze, presumably from further north, that had grannies putting cardigans on.
We might also note that the “”weatherproof” membrane” of the Glasgow Science Centre is only affected in one isolated place, which would probably indicate shoddy workmanship rather than materials failure.
And nothing unusual about Gourock outdoor pool being full, my wife used to spend her school summer holidays in it. Her advice is, when that northerly wind blows, get in the water and stay there until it’s subsided.
According to Mark McCarthy of the Met Office, when I asked him on twitter if stations weren’t meant to be kept away from things like carparks, ‘Yes ideally. In this case its not a carpark and we will be looking at how to mitigate for future working with the site owners.’
Reblogged this on Climate Collections.
And how did the Scots deal with this unexpected fine weather ? They took off most of the heavy woolen clothing and raingear appropriate for the average Scottish summer and played football on the sand !
How dare they? What sort of example is that to give the younger , CAGW saturated , generation ?
They might become sceptics.
The MSM believes that they are so untouchable that they are now openly lying to maintain the narrative. Our national broadcaster, RTE, claimed tonight that the heatwave in Ireland was directly caused by man made global warming-this despite the fact that we haven’t had a hot summer since 1995. A climate “expert” i.e. a spokesperson for a partisan NGO, interviewed ludicrously and without a scintilla of evidence claimed that if a drought occurred in Ireland 100 years ago it would be less severe than now because of man made climate change! This ridiculous charade ended with a picture of a red hot globe and claims that high temperature records are being shattered all over the world. This piffle would be laughable if the consequences of such sophistry weren’t so serious for all of us.
55.784958, -4.022874
My bet is that the co-ordinates quoted by the Met Office are in fact just those of the country park which they’ve lifted off google maps. That would explain why the six digit version you’ve given would take you to the main entrance if you typed it into your sat nav.
If I plug those coordinates into google maps, it points at a lay-by opposite an access road to the car park. Looking at the shadows cast on the ground (photo clearly taken early in the day or late in evening) there is a long one for a lamp standard and a shorter one for … what? The automatic weather station?
As regards how the met office knew about a car parked with its engine running, suspicious minds might believe it was a met office van parked next to the weather station while the engineer checked the equipment or downloaded data onto a usb stick or something.
I have been pondering this overnight. The Met Office sure got lucky in that they had evidence that there was a car, with its engine running, by the sensor at the time of the maximum, and they were able to see it….
Perhaps they now have CCTV on all sensors all the time to check out the car parks etc. With a bit of luck they might even spot A380s at Heathrow in the future.
At the time of the 2015 Heathrow “record”, I did some analysis which suggested that annual temperatures at Heathrow had risen by about 0.76c,
and July temperatures had risen by about 0.96c more than CET since 1948-57.
Unless “global warming” is happening more quickly at Heathrow than in the rest of England, that can only be due to specific issues with Heathrow.
Have they considered putting the sensor against the side of a Weber Kettle Grill?
Visited site today. Much of what has been written here is crap (as usual). Problem isn’t a car but an ice cream van towing a generator. The cretinous owner seems to have moved official cones and parked illegally on the footpath next to the weather instruments. Can’t imagine the heat produced by this kit, so good decision.
Whew, thank goodness for that /sarc.
It’s OK chaps, Albert wasn’t eaten by a lion after all, it was a tiger.
The point, as I’m sure you are well aware, is that the result was contaminated, the site easily contaminable (despite being to WMO standards?) and it was still able to be “plausible” and trumpeted as a record.
Conformation bias, much?
I’ve added the exact location of the station and some photos at https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/07/05/scottish-high-temperature-record-denied-biased-by-auto-exhaust-from-a-car-park/#comment-2397968