Porthmadog Weather Station
By Paul Homewood
Ray Sanders makes this comment:
On a serious note, would it be possible to bring some form of legal action against the Met Office with regard to them knowingly producing inaccurate/(false) data?
As an example this from them regarding weather station site standards
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/how-forecasts-are-made/observations/weather-stations
Now take this quote from their blogpost ” This spring we saw 25.1°C at Porthmadog on 30 May. ”
https://blog.metoffice.gov.uk/2023/06/01/relative-lack-of-spring-rainfall-triggers-water-scarcity-alert/
The Porthmadog Station is actually in Morfa Bychan and is so atrociously sited it is probably less accurate than my car temperature sensor when parked on the track at Brands Hatch.
Here is the station from google street view (you may have to zoom in to see it):
https://www.google.com/maps/@52.9144848,-4.1589773,3a,15y,84.24h,90.11t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1syEsxq4tnTSEeM-tJhE7ZXQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DyEsxq4tnTSEeM-tJhE7ZXQ%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D85.54281%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu
This is clearly a ridiculous site surrounded by trees and in a totally inappropriate area being completely unrepresentative…AND THEY MUST KNOW THAT!
Therefore I deduce they are knowingly providing false data. Surely that cannot be permissible within their remit and can be legally challenged.
.
Porthmadog often appears in the lists of high temperatures, partly because of its location in NW Wales, and it appeared again the other day. It also brags the highest February temperature in Wales, set in 2019.
But as Ray points out, its siting is poor to say the least:
The Met Office’s rules are quite clear as to the standards required for weather stations:
Are the Met Office aware that Porthmadog does not meet these standards? If not, then how many others are equally poorly sited?
And if they are aware, then why are they still allowing it to be used for climatic purposes?
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
I guess the Met Office had been looking for other unreliable temperature sites to promote their fake Global Warming scam , as people were starting to realise that their previous ” highest evers ” were coming from airfields beside jet planes taking off .
I wonder, is it possible that weather stations based on airfields are state-of-art kit and as such use electronic temp sensors similar to those the BOM uses – the ones that were found to read high when in range of high freq radar signals…..and where is if likely for radar installations to be found??
I would say this doesnt also apply to The UK Met Office, I would cast my doubts globally, or at least in North America.
Anthony Watts did a recent survey of USA weather stations and most were incorrectly located, mainly as a result of urban sprawl. The report is available through the Climate change weekly blog. The UHI effect is being underestimated everywhere it appears: but “they are all honourable men…”
WUWT also did a survey of worldwide weather stations to see which were reporting a few years back and which were reporting in recent times.
It was clear that sites located in the extreme northerly and southerly latitudes had been removed/closed down along with many at high altitudes over time; these had not been replaced.
Some ‘closed’ stations retained their names in the record but had reporting figures ‘amortised’ from other inappropriate sites hundreds of miles away to give the impression they were ‘live’
and, not surprisingly, warmer.
Instant global warming has been fixed and locked-in permanently.
One wonders if the current ‘scare’ had been for a new ice-age
whether the old stations would have been re-instated and some of the UHI contaminated ones moved ?
Sorry, just me being cynical…..
Ken’s Kingdom ran a cloud survey of the BOM sites in Australia in 2020 and found that 49% did not meet the BOM requirements.
It is an interesting site which would interest readers on several matters. I lost sight of the WordPress site after the survey but will be going back there again.
Can the BBC get some of its 60+ Verify Experts to check out the record breaking weather stations?
I reckon that there are at least 2400 person hours per week available to do the work. The BBC loves sending correspondants around the globe at the drop of a hat to report at midnight when everyone has gone home on some minor event or other. A few trips round the UK should be ideal.
But they have much more important things to do
Don’t forget their fact checkers or their pompous “The BBC has not verified this claim” statements all over their “reporting. Funny how that all goes out of the window when the report is regarding some unverified tosh output from a believer and they dutifully regurgitate the nonsense word for word with the weasel get out if challenged “The BBC is only reporting what others have written or said”. The fact they have a list of weasel fob offs shows they know what they are pushing is biased or simply unsubstantiated.
“The BBC is only reporting what others have written or said”
A version of that is often used in their response to a complaint.
We checked with the Met Office, National Grid, Ørsted etc and they said it was true.
Never heard of Mandy Rice-Davies
Hi Ben, this is what I have posted to the BBC asking them to contact me.
“I wish to discuss whether the Verify unit would consider checking/investigating clearly spurious data from a section of the UK Government. This will certainly be somewhat controversial but it is reasonably easy to “verify” that certain official “records” are grossly inaccurate and misleading and knowingly so (thus deliberate). I can supply evidence.”
Further on these Met Office stations, in summer 2019 I parked in a designated bay of the car park at the coastguard station at Langdon Bay St. Margarets, Dover. The car next to me had its engine running to keep the aircon going whilst the occupant had his lunch on a very hot day. The car’s exhaust was less than 3 metres (10 feet) from the official Met Office recording station! Very, very few of these stations are in even remotely acceptable sites now.
This is the “satellite” (really aerial) view of the station.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Langdon+Bay/@51.1335089,1.3433732,27m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x47dea51d31361aa5:0x45259ce28493f9d9!8m2!3d51.1315294!4d1.3489115!16s%2Fm%2F02x56q0?entry=ttu
How pathetic can you actually get.
You beat me to it, Ben.
And if they are aware, then why are they still allowing it to be used for
climaticweather purposes?I spent part of a boyhood summer running the town weather station i.e. recording the readings from the max/min thermometer and the rain gauge. And a fine, conscientious, diligent job I did of it: my numbers are entirely trustworthy.
Except: the siting was less than ideal – too close to the school canteen. I suspect, but do not know, that more stations are badly sited than well sited. I mean: airfields, for heavens sake!
In 1970’s Scotland we had a weather station in our secondary school. I have no idea if it was official or simply an exercise for the Geography dept. however, it was sited some 6 feet away from a large overhead shelter and maybe 20 feet from a two story wall of glass fronted classrooms.
The Stevenson screen for the instruments I read on rotation at school was located towards one side of a very large croquet lawn surrounded by hedges on three sides. We did not have an anemometer. I believe it was gifted by a former pupil who worked for Negretti and Zambra who made most of the instruments that included wet and dry bulb and max/min thermometers and a clockwork barograph which had to have its recording paper changed weekly and its nib refilled. There were graduates for the rain gauge which sat in the lawn a few yards away. I think care was taken with the installation and we were certainly taught high standards in taking the readings.
Ever since the Cambridge weather station hit a high a few years ago, despite it being totally inappropriately sited, I have been wondering about how easy it would be to compile a dossier on each station that the met office uses, showing how well it complies with proper standards.
I’ve got time on my hands now.
So, how do I set about getting the info to know where all their sites are?
If Ray Sanders is ready, please can he give me some pointers as to how to get hold of the locations of official sites?
I went to the Met Office site and found the Weather Observations Website, but it is not obvious whether this is a map of all weather stations, both official and unofficial or what it is.
I looked at Porthmadog and found a weather station there. There is a link to a website of the Welsh Highland railway which appears to run the site. There’s a weather cam there, it seems too.
So now I am really confused, which was why I did not pursue this project a few years back.
Is the official met office site at Porthmadog WHR station or at Morfa Bychan? And if the latter (which makes sense as a weather station at a railway station is daft) then how do did Ray Sanders get the relevant info?
I also went to the BBC and tried to use the lat and long for their Porthmadog station, locating it on Bing maps, but that produced somewhere different yet again. Is this because Bing maps and the BBC use different projections?
Help, please!!!
Hi Felice, good news is that a large part of the investigative work has already been done for you. Over on Tallblokes Talkshop you will find this section.
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/index-page-surface-stations-project/Met Office sites.
It is quite amazing how terribly sited most of them actually are.
A couple of points worth noting. The Cambridge Botanic Gardens site showing the then “record” in 2019 was actually removed from the world’s longest running temperature record (the Central England Temperature series) for being unreliable due to Urban Heat Island effect…back in 1932!!!!! There has since been huge development of the area including massive amounts of air con exhausts blowing onto the Stevenson’s Screen.
The Met Office WOW site shows both Met Office and private sites. The station in Porthmadog is a private one and you can clearly see from its online data that it never exceeded 24°C whilst the “official” Met Office one in Morfa Bychan (which theMet office bizarrely name as Porthmadog) was over a degree higher due to its poor/dreadful site.
I really could go on and on about this subject and I am not a meteorologist – but I can see rotten data a mile off.
Best assume all the sitings are suspect to some extent, unless/until proven otherwise by qualified people other than the ones in charge of it.
Thanks for the link Ray. Some good work was done back in 2012.
I am beginning to understand some of the source of my confusion. I was using the coordinates as given by the BBC weather page (very foolish, I now realise). Virtually none of them are accurate. I would hazard a guess that at some point, someone converted degrees/minutes/seconds to metric rather than looking at the original location. The result is that the site per the BBC can be anything up to 1000m away from the actual site. When I use the Met Office site, locations are accurate.
Another interesting point. Met Office lists 2 sites for Cambridge – the Botanic garden site and the NIAB site. In contrast, BBC uses Cambridge Airport as its weather source!
Further to my link to Tallblokes website, click on Surface Stations Project.
A word of caution about “Ever since the Cambridge weather station hit a high a few years ago …”. I read several intelligent, critical pieces about that. They were, however, marred by the author confusing the two Cambridge weather stations i.e. NIAB and the Botanic Garden. The second is down in the river valley, surrounded by city; the first is on higher ground to the NW and is (or was) part of a ribbon development so that there were fields aplenty nearby.
Yup, and there in lies the rub. Whenever the BBC/MSM/UKMO come out with more tosh about record-breaking data, I always check the neighbouring stations. It’s amazing how much the ‘climate’ can change over a distance of 20 miles or so! It is a joke… without the funy bit.
The NIAB site is being built around at the moment. The one at the Botanical Garden has also now become suspect because of the development around the station up to the road next to the gardens to the east as well as the Brooklands Avenue development to the south. Certainly one of the worst place to put a weather station.
I’m actually staying about 3 miles from Morfa at the moment and I know the area well. This area has a mini eco climate and you rarely get snow settling for any time at low levels.The prevailing South Westerlies keep the climate warmer before they rise over the mountains about 5 miles inland. When walking you come across mini valleys and hollows which seem to trap the heat and it looks like this weather station is situated in just such a spot. If I can I’ll go over and look at the situation but it is odd that Porthmadog gets so hot regularly. If anybody wants a beautiful peaceful area to visit I can fully recommend the place. Close to the weather station is a huge sandy beach that cars can drive on to and sometimes have to queue to get on. Maybe that has something to do with it.
See my comment below.
Apart from issues surrounding the Porthmadog site, a May maximum of 25.1 Celsius is completely unremarkable. Most of us in Britain are enjoying an extended period of strong sunshine but maxima have not been high. In most years May maxima will exceed 28 Celsius and 30 degrees has been breached a few times. I therefore dislike the Met Office wording, inviting as it does a “phew that is incredible” reaction.
John: How rightyou are. We have enjoyed a lovely couple of weeks of sunshine and lovely low twenties sun temperatures, but the north-north-east wind has kept it cool anywhere but in the direct sun and the nights have been really cool. What on earth are we looking for? Don’t average daily temperatures mean anything?
They continue to use because it suits their mad agenda.
Eric I would conservatively say that 75% of Met Office Stations do NOT meet the World Meteorological Organisations minimum reporting standards. Way back in 2004 the Royal Meteorological Society (lead by the chairman Phillip Eden) actually investigated some of the 2003 UK records sites. They found the Kew Gardens equipment set at the wrong height (accidentally too close to the ground? – I doubt it). Worse still the then record at Faversham was clearly a result where “Actions by persons unknown cannot be ruled out”. It was common knowledge locally (I lived nearby at the time) that a bit of “rascality” was more than responsible for the high figure.
1 – Yes, they are aware.
2 – They use it because it gives the ‘right’ data for climatic purposes. As opposed to the accurate data for climatic purposes…
The location, with the image from Google Earth Street View, is from 2011, and shows remains of asphalt (?) spaces. These are still there with 12 years of neglect showing significant vegetative growth. The location seems to be a remnant of early times. A visit with a local elder of the community would be interesting. When was the station installed? What was there at that time.
The patch of land is on the edge of a golf course, namely Golff Nefyn Golf Club (CLWB).
The current satellite image is dated 6/27/2018. The fairways are brown, meaning dry.
“Dry” means rapid change of temperature on clear nights and sunny days.
Being about 700 m. from the inlet, Afon Dwyryd, any change of wind direction from water to land, or reversed, would rapidly change the temperature.
The other point about Morfa Bychan/Porthmadog is that the soil/ ground conditions of Morfa Bychan is dependent sand, most unlike most soils in Wales. The sandy soil will have the effect of making summer maxima a few degrees higher than areas that are not on sandy soil. This was one of the reasons why the (in)famous Santon Downham weather station in the Breckland used regularly to have high temperatures on the sandy, heathland soils. Conversely Santon Downham used to be colder at night and used to be the record holder for cold night-time minima in England. There have been quite a few of these stations that the Met Office has (Gravesend was another one about two decades ago) that had almost been chosen to find very particular locations where high temperatures were almost guaranteed.
Chris, the Gravesend Station was originally installed in 1997. It was neither in Gravesend nor the local authority (Gravesham) area and was (note past tense it closed in 2018) at Broadness, Dartford. It was co-located with the the Thames radar station complete with aircon units blowing warm air from the computing systems onto the Stevenson’s Screen. Being just a stone’s throw from Littlebrook D oil fired power station, it really was a total effing joke of a site. Despite being removed for known phoney data years ago, it is still shown on the Met Office website as a current site. Here it is
How can anyone take this sort of crap seriously?
Reblogged this on Climate Collections.
Here in Ireland today in the sports round up I actually heard the National Broadcaster RTE describe 20°C temperatures in Dublin in June as “seriously challenging” to the athletes! Wtf!!!
So the heat island must have an effect on measured temperature. In their own words
The Daily Post, which is the local N.Wales newspaper had an article in Sunday’s edition extolling the virtues of the Porthmadoc micro climate and how visitors flock to the various holiday camps to enjoy its noted sheltered location.