Met Office Should Put 2.5°C ‘Uncertainties’ Warning on All Future Temperature Claims-Daily Sceptic
May 30, 2024
By Paul Homewood
It is “abundantly clear” that the Met Office cannot scientifically claim to know the current average temperature of the U.K. to a hundredth of a degree centigrade, given that it is using data that has a margin of error of up to 2.5°C, notes the climate journalist Paul Homewood. His comments follow recent disclosures in the Daily Sceptic that nearly eight out of ten of the Met’s 380 measuring stations come with official ‘uncertainties’ of between 2-5°C. In addition, given the poor siting of the stations now and possibly in the past, the Met Office has no means of knowing whether it is comparing like with like when it publishes temperature trends going back to 1884.
Full story here.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Worst and completely unforgivable has been their repeated fiddling with historical data 1. without publishing this action together with a bona fide reason and 2. then acting all defensive when challenged about it. The “changes “adjustments” have been made in one direction only making the present day “appear” much warmer than the past.
Could it be that their political masters told them to reverse engineer the REAL historical data so as to emulate the accursed hockeyshtik?
Seems we have scientists in influential positions who are politically compromised.
While studying Accountancy I was told that it was CRAP; Consistent so an error can be fixed once identified, treat as a Running concern using ALL data, Accurate (learn to count), Prudent in your forecasting.
For settled climate science:
Consistent….wrong consistently
Running concern….only use selected data only
Accurate…Round new temps up, old temps down & invent temps for blanks
Prudent….We’re all gonna die! Next year, the year after, or 10 years’ time
This is a problem in all developed countries. All inconvenient temperatures have been adjusted. The basic fact is, nobody can have any idea if those adjustments are correct or not. They are no longer “data” in an observational sense but an interpretation. There is therefore no longer an “instrument record” of the past.
That’s not strictly true Phoenix, there are manual copies of the handwritten records of original data going back thte 19th century. It is still possible to reconstruct a timre series from original hard data but (trust me on this!) it is a mammoth task.
It’s worse than we thought . . . the problems highlighted are universal, not just UK. Until satellite measurements began in 1979, we had no way to measure a global mean temperature.
Claims that we are now 1.2°C above pre-industrial times are hilarious. We have no idea.
Especially as it should be above the end of the Little Ice age, not above pre-industrial times.
Who if anyone measured the global temperature at the ‘end of the Little Ice Age’ (date?), where and how? Some uncertainty there.
For today’s example of just how hopelessly inaccurate the Met Office data is, the highest temeprature recorded in the UK yesterday according to the Met Office was 21.5 °C at Chertsey Abbey Mead Pumping Station. That station is (according to them) a Class 3 station so only accurate to with 1°C ****BUT**** it is NOT Class 3. This is the google aerial image of what it USED to look like 2 years ago when the image was taken
https://www.google.com/maps/place/51%C2%B023'54.6%22N+0%C2%B029'42.7%22W/@51.3985033,-0.4961278,170m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m4!3m3!8m2!3d51.3985!4d-0.4951944?entry=ttu
However Affinity Water decided to build a solar farm around the site and Bing now shows it like this.
https://www.bing.com/maps/?cp=51.398216%7E-0.494798&lvl=19.4&style=h
I enquired of the Met Office last year what they proposed to do about this.
They assured me it made no difference! So CIMO regulations stating
“Ground covered with natural and low vegetation (< 10 cm) representative of the region;”
Presumably this now includes solar panels as well!
Hilarious! Surrounding a weather station with dark solar panels. You couldn’t make it up.
It would be interesting to see the distribution of daily highs by site quality. If the majority are at poor sites, then look at the maximum at the nearest acceptable site and graph the difference.
Interestingly Phoenix that is pretty much exactly what I have been doing! Just to prove what an anorak I must be becoming I check this website on a daily basis.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/observations/weather-extremes
I have the list of (almost) all sites by CIMO classification. The daily records are nearly always at class 4 or 5 sites (the Chertsey site is really Class 5 as I have shown above) and I do reference against the nearest “good” sites. There is almost always a large differential with better sites recording much lower figures.
At the risk of going on, consider this Met Office report on the July 2022 record figures.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/binaries/content/assets/metofficegovuk/pdf/weather/learn-about/uk-past-events/interesting/2022/2022_03_july_heatwave_v1.pdf
Notice above the table of “records” it states
“The table below lists the highest temperatures recorded at selected individual stations on 19 July.”
“Selected”? Like some fine wine? Why not the top 10 or 20 or whatever by why “selected”? Well Rothamsted (long term Grade 1 site included in the CET) and well inside the top heat zone, was not “selected” because its figures did not support the narrative. Interesting eh?
Looking at the Bing view it seems clear that the vegetation is now a lot sparser – and the earth seems much yellower than Laleham Park the other side of the river, or the main area of Chertsey Meads further downstream (Where Billy Smart’s Circus used to park up when not performing).
The headline says 2.5°C uncertainties, but the text suggests
that it should be 2-5°C.
No, I did a weighted average, and it came out at 2.5C, coincidentally
Maybe I just missed it… but when data is massaged it’s customary to leave the raw data alone and document any adjustments made in the processing flow for display and analysis.
How can temperatures be adjusted wholesale like UKMO are apparently doing and there’s not outrage in the professional bodies?
What an utter farce and delusional shitshow we’re watching….
“How can temperatures be adjusted wholesale like UKMO are apparently doing and there’s not outrage in the professional bodies?”
The expression “bought and paid for” comes to mind. Professional body mouthpieces simply say whatever brings in the money.
We are not seeing “an utter farce and delusional shitshow” we are seeing pure political corruption. Disagree? Six millions Jews allegedly did and met their fate.
It is strange how the massaging of temperatures is always one way….up?
I worked long & hard to become a Professional Associate (ARICS) of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, which I left years ago because it became so poor as an ‘Institution’.
If the most inaccurate temperature readings are plus/minus 5 degrees C then surely the forecast should be plus/minus 5 degrees C ?
Paul, Do you have a list of the MetOffice weather station WMO gradings?