By Paul Homewood
Ray Sanders left this comment about the Met Office’s weather station sites:
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This is the old site in 2012, tracked down by the late Tim Channon. It looks to be about 40m from the roadway:
Now it is just a few meters from the road junction:
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
It would be so easy to retire such sites as urbanisation encroached upon them. If the Met office had any scientific integrity.
There is actually nothing at all wrong with this site with regard to its original purpose of providing immediate weather condition reporting for pilots taking off and landing at an airport. What is fraudulent is using its data for climate reporting purposes as it is obviously not anywhere close to being representative of natural conditions.
The relocation, however, is exceptionally hard to justify for aviation reporting purposes and obviously can have nothing to do with climate. It can only have been for record chasing and/or propaganda purposes. But try telling the BBC that.
If only scientific integrity brought in as much cash – and personal honours – as eco-activism does,
Lots of nice hot, black asphalt in the summer sun.
I don’t have much of a problem with the original, 2012 location. Presuming a SW-W prevailing wind, most readings should be natural, wind coming across the field. Any “record” should be examined for unusual wind conditions, like blowing over the tarmac.
New/current location is surrounded by tarmac and dark earth. Fine for pilots, but useless of meteorological record purposes, Class 4 station at best.
What? No AC heat-dump exhausts?
Questions I have.
1. The purpose of airport weather stations was and is to provide information to pilots landing and taking off which is specific to that airport. As far as I can ascertain they were never intended to be part of the now politicised network of weather stations across the country. My question is, when were they repurposed and by whom and for what reason?
2. The trajectory of the Met Office appears to be on the path of advocacy making free use of “some” of the data they handle for “the cause”. How did this happen? Who are the people responsible and for what reason was this allowed to happen?
3. A united front of advocacy appears to be shown by the whole of the MetOffice (no dissenting voices). Is this because of pure cowardice or is something much more sinister going on?
I have been doing a lot of investigation into this subject for quite some time now but please note I have no specific meteorological qualifications.
Like you I find it very surprising how difficult the Met Office deliberately make access to much of their information – why they should is quite a mystery to me. However it was NOT always this way and you can find some interesting admissions archived from other sources. Example (to answer your first question)
https://artefacts.ceda.ac.uk/badc_datadocs/ukmo-midas/ukmo_guide.html
Section 2.1 states
“It is unavoidable that some sites do not meet all these requirements, particularly where a station set up for one purpose gradually takes on a different role, for example an airport site originally established for aviation observing may become a key synoptic or climate station while suffering the effects of urbanisation. A few sites are in city centres and may be unsuitably located close to large obstacles or even on the roof of a building.”
Yes you did read that correctly, they actually do have weather stations on the roofs of buildings. I have personally visited this site
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-climate-averages/u10kkf645
The “FC” in the name stands for Football Club and the instruments really are on the top of Gillingham’s Priestfield Stadium. This is one of the many OFFICIAL Met Office climate “monitoring” stations.
BUT now the official Met Office line regarding aviation sites from their current website is this total pile of lying BS.
“For example, official weather stations are often located at airports as they have plenty of open space making them a good place for observations to take place. However, the observation equipment is set an internationally-agreed distance from the runway to ensure no external factors can influence readings in any way.”
I could go on and on about this, for now I shall just say the Met Office knows damn well they are cheating, and I am working on a case to conclusively prove that and then take appropriate action against them. After all we still do have some laws left in this country don’t we?
As an aside, some years ago I met a former TV weather presenter and Naval Meteorological officer who lives locally to me (Ron Lobeck) and asked him about many Met Office stations. He pointed out that historically there were regularly “freak” figures from many stations but these were routinely ignored as all weather people knew they were complete rubbish. Now, however, he says they deliberately look for them and will even relocate stations to “enhance” figures – the above example of Hawarden Airport is nothing compared to some other moves.
In Hertstmonceux East Sussex there is a fully manned Regional Met Office site. They actually moved the weather instruments from the middle of the site to alongside the office buildings (air con exhaust and all) and by the car park.
From this aerial image it is quite easy to see where the path led to the old site and the marker shows the new site. So why did they move it? Guilty as charged in my book.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/50%C2%B053'27.6%22N+0%C2%B018'59.9%22E/@50.8910101,0.3140599,686m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m4!3m3!8m2!3d50.8910067!4d0.3166348?entry=ttu
If you think that’s bad you should see some of the others. Adjacent a major electricity substation, by water treatment and sewerage plants, in Victorian walled kitchen gardens, artificial ski slopes, the back garden of a local post office…….quite unbelievable.
Western government agencies get bored with what they were created for. Many are now involved in HOBBIES. The Met Office doesn’t do weather anymore, they do ‘climate.’
Note that US no longer protects its borders, the purpose for which it was formed. And your police arrest people for mean speech. The people – taxpayers – aren’t getting what they are paying for. That can’t go on forever.