53.25330 -0.00945 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 4 Temperature records from 1/2/1999

Tetford is a small village about 10.5 km (6.5 miles) northeast of Horncastle in the Lincolnshire Wolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is also just 20 km (12.5 miles) northeast from the site of the UK highest recorded temperature of 40.3°C set on 19/7/2022 at RAF Coningsby though in a significantly different topography at 53 metres (175 feet) higher elevation.

A point often raised with me is whether or not I am being overly “picky” – does location matter as much as I suggest? I compared Brooms Barn with Felsham to illustrate this very point. With raw data from two neighbouring sites realistically at opposite ends of the quality standard, discrepancies of +6°C/-4 °C in recorded maximums were demonstrated. This conforms almost exactly to the range variance between Class1/2 and Class 5 sites {N.B. this is a +/- error margin.}

“2.6 Class 5 (additional estimated uncertainty added by siting up to 5 °C)“

Further in that comparison, even greater discrepancies in the error margin were demonstrated in the minimum temperatures recorded when Time Of Observations Bias from traditional manual observation protocols were added. The reality is that the errors are frequently not just a few tenths of a degree but rather actually into double digit errors on surprisingly regular occasions.

This entire concept of gross inaccuracy of the recorded readings being genuinely representative of both location AND time is difficult for the general public to comprehend. There is a general assumption that their national meteorological agency would at least be accurate in recording historic data even if not forecasts. The reality is that they are demonstrably, at times, grossly inaccurate on a known and ongoing basis.

Tetford weather station may superficially appear as an “okay” site, however, in reality it represents a classic example of many of the failings that significantly distort the national historic temperature record.

The headline image highlights several factors. Clearly this site is on a significant slope with the brown foliage seen at the bottom being the top of the road side hedging that the camera roof mounted on the car can just see over. The station height of 59 metres (194 feet) runs down to 53 metres at the nearby River Lynn creating a slope down which cold air drains down on cold calm nights. The roadside hedging will block air down-flow and result in cold air pooling up to and around the screen. Tetford is a manually observed site so there is frequent liklihood of over recording these cold instances into following days.

The 30 metre circled area (top orients north) indicates the extensive wind shielding this area will encounter from every compass point. The modern large barns to the west are over 7 metres high to the ridge and in addition to blocking/reducing wind speed have an extensive area of hardstanding artificially over warming in sunny conditions.

The trees to the south are also very high as indicated by this midday image (shading running north) from early October 2019. A casual glance of a “rural” site in reality reveals the extensive artificial influences of the mechanised agricultural industry. The prevailing winds being from the south west are likely modified to a very gently but artificially warmer breeze.

This Telford site will inevitably suffer from general siting inaccuracy from being unrepresentative of the natural environment, unnatural cold air drainage pools and Aitken effects from higher incidence of low wind speeds. The instrumentation was changed from LIGT to PRT at the end of 2017 with the latter likely to react to the transient heat spikes from the extensive vehicle movements visible by their tracks as shown below.

Finally the time of observation bias is readily visible even from just scanning comparative dates with Coningsby. Though different in terrain from the dead flat low level airfield site, Tetford is so close that there should not be regular significant differences. However, simply referring to instances of cold temperatures one day with much warmer ones the next at Coningsby, regularly reveals two consecutive low minimum day’s readings at Tetford that did not occur.

In summary Tetford is yet another exclusion from a historic temperature record reconstruction due to unreliable data.

They now plan to join unified appeals from the Highlands and north east for Holyrood to pause all major planning applications.

More than 40 community councils and other organisations from across the Borders, Dumfries and Galloway, East Lothian and South Lanarkshire packed into Jedburgh town Hall for the convention.

The Scottish government denied that communities were being ignored during site specific assessments of renewable energy planning applications.
. . .
From a trickle of wind farm applications in areas like the Borders and the Highlands a decade ago, many rural communities are now facing a flood of development proposals for increasingly higher turbines, battery energy compounds, vast solar parks and new electricity sub stations.
. . .
Almost all rural towns and villages across the South of Scotland are currently either fighting planning applications or already have renewable energy developments on their doorstep.
. . .
Borders MP John Lamont, who was one of the guest speakers at the convention, is backing a unified statement for the South of Scotland being sent to Holyrood.

He said: “While Westminster determines the need under the Electricity Act, it is absolutely the planning process here in Scotland that approves all these applications.

“The power is very much with the Scottish government and I applaud the communities that are saying they have had enough.”

Full article here.
– – –
Image: Windy Standard wind farm, Scotland [credit: RWE.com]

54.07051 -1.177162 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 4 Temperature Records from 1/4/2000

There most certainly is an official Met Office weather station at Pateley Bridge and has been for over 25 years. Artificial Intelligence is thus clearly not a reliable source of information, a point I raised in my review of Southampton where the long closed weather station was shown by AI as a currently operational site along with “reputable” long term data. Even more topically AI has recently reported on events at a non-existent football match which was taken as “evidence” by West Midlands Police. {“Guildford admitted an AI tool was responsible for providing incorrect evidence that referred to a match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and West Ham that never took place –“}

A major point I made in my original letter to Peter Kyle M P concerned not only the accuracy of Met Office data but also how its potentially invalid data was being interpreted/misused by third parties notably World Weather Attribution. This latter issue is very relevant in current times where information on the internet comes with an acceptance of the source. Information from approved or acceptable sources is deemed “good” whilst information running contrary to the approved agenda (this blog falls into the latter category) is deemed “Disinformation” no matter how verifiable and accurate it actually is.

Pateley Bridge weather station certainly comes under the AI Disinformation bracket reinforced by the might of its Wikipedia page.

“Climate data for Pateley Bridge, 154m amsl (1981–2010) (extremes 1992–)” No the weather station is at 259m amsl.

” The warmest temperature recorded was 31.0 °C (87.8 °F) on 1 July 2015. ” NO IT WAS NOT the maximum recorded at Pately Bridge that day was 29.2 °C.  

The rest of the text goes on to appear to quote data for Pateley Bridge with only a passing reference to Dishforth Airfield. However, none of the data actually refers to Patelely Bridge at all and is thus complete FICTION. The source, though, is deemed an acceptable one and does refer via link to the “high authority” of the Met Office, thus for someone like me to query it must be either Disinformation or even a conspiracy theory.

All this above nonsense has actually been extracted from the “Nearest Climate Station” at just 33m amsl (where does “154m” come from?) and 15 miles away that also ceased operating 6/6/2016….Dishforth Airfield.

The Met Office, by its dissociation of actually having a climate reporting weather station at Pateley Brdige, has created the impression that using homogenised data from a low elevation airfield is relatable. The reality is that the Dishforth climate will be completely different to the high Dales with their noted localised micro-climates. Does this below seem even remotely similar to the headline image?

The other nearby climate stations of Leeming and Topcliffe are also incomparable airfields and Bingley is just a risible parody of a weather station site that no credible meteorological organisation could possibly justify.

Pateley Bridge is assessed as Class 4 for the readily evident reasons of unacceptable slope, being bounded by fences running both north to south east and north to south west, and subject to heavy shading principally from the south east. The site was automated in 2010 probably on the grounds that in its prior history nobody seemed overly concerned in actually making observations. Of the 1,500 days (4+ years) from 2006 just 377 manual observations were made – effectively a pointless exercise for any worthwhile climate recording.

That data from such a poor site not only gets used for homogenisation and data infill for the surrounding area and then gets reinterpreted in reverse as coming from somewhere in between typifies Met Office sloppy representation. Pateley Bridge is a weather station to forget.

Turning to the NASA planetary factsheet for Mars we find:
Sidereal orbit period (days) 686.980
Tropical orbit period (days) 686.973

The timings we’re talking about are all verifiable, or at least testable, using Arnholm’s solar simulator where we find (see graphic below) this:

Elapsed time between the two screenshots = 2470 tropical years [TY] = 2660 minus 194, same calendar date.
(Note: the simulator is limited to years 0-3000).
Conjunctions of Jupiter-Mars in 2470 TY = 1105 (17*65).
Mean conjunction period = 2470/1105 = 2.2352941 TY.
17 J-Mars = 2470/65 = 38 TY exactly.
38 TY = 2*19 TY = 2 Metonic cycles.
(Note: in the Talkshop link we say why we think the Metonic cycle is exactly 19 tropical years, whereas most sources say it’s ~2 hours ‘short’. It depends on what exactly is being measured).

We can calculate a Mars orbit period (J orbits + no. of J-Mars = Mars orbits) from the simulator graphic:
2470/J = 208.31326 J orbits.
J-Mars occurs 1105 times, therefore:
Mars orbits = 208.31326 + 1105 = 1313.3132
2470/1313.3132 = 1.8807395 TY (mean value).
1.8807395 TY in days = 686.9254 (NASA says 686.973).

For the conjunctions with Earth we just use the Metonic cycle and Jupiter.
19/1.8807395 = 10.102409 Mars orbits
In this post we showed Jupiter has 14 orbits per 166 TY in the tropical reference frame (as used by the solar simulator).
10.102409 Mars * 166 = 1677 orbits in 1577 TY (= 83 Metonic).
Since 17 J-Mars is 2 Metonic cycles not 1, we make the full period 2*1577 = 3154 TY = 166*19 or 83*38 TY.
Check: 3154/1677 = 1.8807395 TY = Mars orbit period (as calculated earlier).
The Jupiter-Earth conjunction occurs 3154 – 266(J) = 2888 times in the full period.

The full number chart for the planetary data is on the right. The Metonic cycle (not shown) occurs 166 times in the period.

The tropical timings posts so far have shown these planets align with the 83 TY (166/2) cycle, and therefore with Jupiter and Earth, thus:
Jupiter: 1 cycle (7 J)
Venus: 12 cycles (1619 V)
Mercury: 13 cycles (4480 Me.)
Mars: 19 cycles (1677 Ma.)
Neptune: 144 cycles (73 N)
Uranus: 335 cycles (332 U)

For current ‘tropical timings’ posts see here:
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/?s=tropical+timings
– – –
Image: Mars [credit: NASA]

52,26053 0.56563 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 3 Installed 1/6/1964

Brooms Barn is owned and operated by Rothamsted Research who are responsible for the weather stations here, as well as at Woburn, North Wyke in Devon and Rothamsted itself. I feel it is reasonable to say that if all Met Office weather stations were as well sited and maintained as those of Rothamsted Research there would be no grounds to have any concerns regarding data accuracy. Rothamsted appears to be able to do things consistently extremely well but peculiarly the Met Office does not always see it that way.

This is a review of Brooms Barn together with a revisit of the nearby Felsham station and a comparison of recent data from the two.

Brooms Barn weather station is 6 miles west of Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk in what has been an agricultural research centre for almost 70 years. For reasons I simply do not understand, the Met Office has downgraded this site to Class 3 with a potential area representation error margin of +/- 1 °C. This ranks the site the same as Heathrow airport – does any right minded person genuinely believe Brooms Barn is no better located than that at the UK’s busiest airport in an urban jungle?

Below is the 30 metre radius circle for Class 2. The site is flat, open and there are no trees near enough to cause shading or sheltering. The access “road” is a bare earth track only. This should be a perfectly reliable Class 2 site beyond reasonable doubt.

The Street View image is not particularly good but allowing for foreshortening effects, the screen (centre image) is visibly well clear of any detrimental effects.

Luckily over on the Met Office Weather Observations webpage, the site’s staff have uploaded images. This is very definitely a good site that is being very well cared for. It is very clean (as it should be) unlike so many other Met Office sites I could mention.

So how did the Met Office rate this site by their own unique rating system of Excellent, Good, Satisfactory and Unsatisfactory when I inquired under Freedom of Information request? Well obviously …….UNSATISFACTORY ! Why….was it too clean for them, too far away from heat sources, not playing ball in providing dodgy readings? I have no idea and I doubt they will tell me. But is it really plausible that an organisation of the reputation of Rothamsted Research is getting things so seriously wrong? I do not believe that for one second. An incorrect “tick box” perhaps?

So now consider Felsham some 21km (12.8 miles) to the south east of Brooms Barn with them both being at similar elevations.

Here the screen was installed 31/3/2018 also in an agricultural setting. Just in front of the heating oil storage tank, surrounded by barns, subject to deep shade from trees due south, in no enclosure whatsoever and where tractors can be seen to regularly transit past and even park in front of!

Clearly the 30 metre radius is heavily compromised as shown below.

And then the condemning street view image – this really is the fare we are being served up by the tax payer funded meteorological agency for a site specifically intended for climate reporting and not immediate weather forecasting.

The street view image from just 3 years after installation demonstrates the tree growth is now completely obscuring the screen.

In their professional opinion the Met Office claims this site is CIMO Class 3. Well it is on a par with Heathrow in being a strong candidate for Class 5 but is not remotely as good as Brooms Barn…..or is it?

That same FOI request showed the Met Office ranking Felsham in a very tiny group of elite sites marked “Excellent”! Is this a case of yet another of those “Human Errors” the Met Office is so prone to making as their systems are automatically set to default to perfection? Or is it a case that Felsham supplies the desired end result?

Under 4 months from installation, Felsham supplied the recorded hottest ever 26th July.

The reading for Brooms Barn that same day was 33.9°C being 1.7°C lower than the 35.6°C recorded at Felsham.

Just 6.3 miles to the south west of Felsham is RAF Wattisham. There the recorded maximum temperature was 34.1°C being 1.5°C lower.

11 miles to the south west of Felsham with the absurd back garden weather station reputedly recording to the 5th decimal place of a degree at Cavendish only 34.4°C was achieved – still 1.2°C cooler.

Even more surprising was the local community weather station in Felsham itself did not go past 33.7°C on its hourly bulletins.

Indeed why did the Met Office add Felsham in 2018 in the first instance? The area was already extraordinarily well served by longer term existing automatic sites. It seems difficult to refute that this was possibly previously an amateur site known to record warm and adopted by the Met Office for record chasing/hot spots similar to the likes of Frittenden and Astwood Bank.

Thus returning to the top quality reliable site (despite what the Met Office may claim) of Brooms Barn could the readings since the opening of Felsham be compared and if so what would that show?

Talkshop analyst Dave Woolcock ran a comparison of both tMax and tMin differences of Felsham versus Brooms Barn. Two inland sites so close together, at almost the same elevation and soil type should not naturally vary by much. Indeed one would expect extremes to be very similar if siting standards were the same as the Met Office claims.

The reality, however, is of significant variation with daily maximum extremes at Felsham recording, at times, in excess of 6°C hotter and 4°C colder. It is exceedingly improbable for these two proximate sites to record such variations naturally. The differences will almost certainly be artefacts of the very poor, indeed unacceptable siting standard at Felsham. Dave has offered a moving average to try to identify any seasonal trend but none is immediately apparant.

To further illustrate these differences, Dave then went to sort them by event frequency/range. The Y axis is showing daily event frequency and the X axis the astonishing range of differences.

BUT, there was much more damning analysis to come.

The daily average minimum (tMin) would also inevitably demonstrate “Time of Observation Bias” as Felsham only reports observations on a once daily basis whilst Broom Barns has been automatically reporting since 2010. This bias is known to over record minimums on a solely weather related basis with no practically adjustable mechanism. These were the findings:

The most striking issue is the temperature range scale that Dave had to use to get all the differences to fit. The distribution of differences is even more alarming below.

It is worth pausing at this moment to consider that all the above figures are from the real world numbers that have entered the UK’s historic temperature record from two neighbouring sites. There is no data manipulation, no adjustments, no cherry picking and everything is freely available to view online from the Met Office themselves. That the Met Office can routinely record such incorrect differences over a range of almost 16°C is proof positive of their gross incompetence……….from an organisation quoting annual climate variations to the second decimal place of one degree.

To study one example from a very memorable period – the 2022 heatwave period recording the UK national highest ever temperature.

Below are the minimums recorded and archived for the 18th and 19th July 2022.

…………………………………..Brooms Barn………………..Wattisham……………………….Felsham

18/7/2022…………………..16.2…………………………….16.2………………………………….12.6

19/7/2022…………………..22.7…………………………….20.8………………………………….14.1

20/7/2022…………………..18.4……………………………18.5…………………………………..18.3

The Felsham to Brooms Barn difference in physically recorded tMin for the 19th July 2022 was 8.6°C when in reality there would have been no real difference whatsoever (confirmed by Wattisham readings) – simply the antiquated artefact of over recording the previous day’s low due to time of obs bias and crude recording protocols.

WHILST THE MET OFFICE WAS SENSATIONALLY PROCLAIMING DUBIOUS NATIONAL MAXIMUM TEMPERATURE RECORDS THEY WERE ALSO KNOWINGLY MIS-RECORDING MINIMUMS, NOT ONLY AT FELSHAM, BUT LIKELY AT MOST OF THE UK’s 160 MANUALLY REPORTING CLIMATE STATIONS.

This subject line will be ongoing throughout many future reviews as it demonstrates absurd levels of gross incompetence by the Met Office. More details will emerge as the Talkshop moves closer to its reconstruction phase of the national historic temperature records. Meanwhile a further image of the Met Office claimed “Excellent” standard rated Class 3 that should now be known as “Felsham-in-the -Shade.” – A symbol of their more recent standards.

Scientists at The University of Texas at Austin set out to better understand these water extremes by studying how they develop and spread across the planet. Their work points to a powerful climate force that links distant regions in surprising ways.

A new study published in AGU Advances shows that during the past 20 years, ENSO, a recurring climate pattern in the equatorial Pacific Ocean that includes El Niño and La Niña, has played the leading role in driving extreme changes in total water storage worldwide.

The researchers also found that ENSO tends to line up these extremes so that different continents experience unusually wet or dry conditions at the same time.

Why Synchronized Extremes Matter
According to study co-author Bridget Scanlon, a research professor at the Bureau of Economic Geology at the UT Jackson School of Geosciences, understanding these global patterns has real-world consequences.

“Looking at the global scale, we can identify what areas are simultaneously wet or simultaneously dry,” Scanlon said. “And that of course affects water availability, food production, food trade — all of these global things.”

When multiple regions face water shortages or excesses at once, the impacts can ripple through agriculture, trade, and humanitarian planning.
. . .
Real-World Examples Across Continents
The researchers pointed to several striking cases. During the mid-2000s, El Niño coincided with severe dryness in South Africa. Another El Niño event was linked to drought in the Amazon during 2015-2016.

By contrast, La Niña in 2010-2011 brought exceptionally wet conditions to Australia, southeast Brazil, and South Africa.

Beyond individual events, the study also identified a broader shift in global water behavior around 2011-2012. Before 2011, unusually wet conditions were more common worldwide. After 2012, dry extremes began to dominate.

The researchers attribute this change to a long-lasting climate pattern in the Pacific Ocean that influences how ENSO affects global water.

Full article here.

52.50206 -4.6696 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 2 Temperature records from 1/1/1991

The Cardinham weather station lies 3 miles northeast of Bodmin at the local gliding club airfield alongside the main A30. Tim Channon reviewed the site in 2012 concluding Class 4 was the appropriate rating and, from my further research, I fully agree with that assessment. This calls the Met Office rating of Class 2 into serious question and why they so often arrive at somewhat strange views.

To refresh Tim’s own previous radius diagrams, below is the 10 metre radius circle for Class 2 from an online “map development” tool. A point to note is the length of shadow cast by known fixed heights, Stevenson screens have a base height of 1.25 metres (4 feet 1 inch) and being 0.65 metres high cast shade from 1.9 metres (6 feet 3 inches) total height. The relative shade lengths from the screen (by the central dot) can readily be compared with the tree shades which are much longer.

I assess the surrounding trees to be casting shade a minimum of 3 times greater (more likely 4) than the screen indicating a conservative height estimate of 6 metres (19 feet) though probably even higher. Below are the schematic conditions for Class 2.

It is impossible to consider this site meets the requirement of “natural and low vegetation (< 10 cm) representative of the region;” when up to 20% of the area is trees up to 6 metre high.

This is by no means the only problem. This is the location of Bodmin Airfield but, as a grass strip handling mainly gliders, it is certainly not an area subject to jet blast or tarmac issues. Rather the area was extensively leveled in the past and the weather station sits at the base of a shallow bank formed from excavated material. Whilst the site elevation is quoted at 200 metres, the north of the tree line is indicated at 203 metres from Elevation Finder. The enclosure is actually located at the base of a south facing 3 metre embankment.

Rather than all the above confirmation processes, I could, of course, just publish a street view image. The site is remote from the nearest roadways but is just visible from distance.

I have specifically used other investigative means first in order to demonstrate that the Surface Stations Project uses all possible angles to corroborate details. The above image now clearly verifies the tree height calculation, proximities and the embankment.

As Tim originally assessed, and I can positively confirm, Cardinham is at best Class 4 and cannot possibly be rated as Class 2. So why has the Met Office reached this clearly impossible conclusion? My own conjecture is that they consider this WMO assessment process to be an unnecessary chore. They have their own unique system which rates Cardinham as “Good” and that is really all that they are concerned with. The sole system arbiter of their ill defined system is the Met Office themselves.

In my forthcoming review of Brooms Barn weather station (in comparison with another nearby station), I shall demonstrate how the unique Met Office grading system is totally unfit for purpose and demonstrably unsuitable for assessing climate recording. That the Met Office is simultaneously not applying WMO rating standards correctly indicates it is unfit for purpose.

The discovery comes from a knowledge exchange project between remote sensing company Metatek and the University of Manchester. The team combined legacy subsurface data from the 1980s with new land gravity measurements collected in 2025.

Using a simplified version of Metatek’s airborne gravity technology, researchers mapped geological structures around 2,000 metres below the University campus. The results reveal high-temperature zones created by burial depth and pressure.

Dr David Johnstone, Senior Geoscientist at Metatek, said: “Our project, and subsequent work, provides the building blocks to create a detailed 3D geological model of the strata beneath the University campus, allowing us to select a drill location that could target high temperature zones due to the burial depth and pressure.”

He added that the geothermal resource could “unlock a tremendous amount of cheap and clean energy”. If developed, it could offset a significant share of the University’s energy demand of more than 100GWh per year.

That output is equivalent to the electricity consumption of around 25,000 homes, or the town of Altrincham. The energy potential is comparable to installing roughly 100,000 solar panels, with a similar payback period to other renewable technologies.

Researchers have identified a potential drilling site within Cecil Street Car Park. The required surface area would be no larger than a tennis court.

Full report here.
– – –
Image: Manchester University [credit: Univ. of Manchester]

Geology footnote: My workplace was the 10th floor of a Manchester city centre office block during the 3-month earthquake swarm of 2002.

54.29701 -1.53299 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 2 Installed 1/1/1944

When starting this report up some weeks ago, I was asked by a friend of my daughters (28 years old) where I was writing about. I told her “Leeming” in North Yorkshire to which she replied “Oh what’s there then?” I suddenly realised that names that I was familiar with (and almost certainly most of my older readers) meant nothing to most people, especially younger ones. What’s in a name came to mind. But if most people were aware of the nature of locations of so many weather stations they might be less than impressed with their likely reliability.

Just like Coningsby, Cranwell, Waddington, St Athan, Leuchars , Culdrose (the list is very long indeed at over 110) if the prefixes RAF or RNAS were put there then many people would realise just how many weather stations actually are at airfields. Obviously all airfields need detailed and immediate meteorological data, indeed the stipulated quality of siting and instrumentation at major airfields is far higher than any CIMO or standard Met Office regulation thus most do not actually rely of the Met Office unit and use their own separate sensors.

The important issue, though, is that these sites were never intended for “Climate Reporting” purposes and realistically most (if not all) are unsuitable for that purpose. RAF Leeming is a fully operational front line airfield of major importance.

Firstly a modern day wider angle image with the red kite marking the screen location. Google maps and aerial images automatically orient north to the top. Even disregarding the taxiways and runways this site has very significant urbanisation effects running from north east around to south-southwest, the rest being the regular RAF “A Frame” of runways.

Closing in, however, reveals far more immediate problems.

Do the Met Office and its meteorologists not consider almost half a million square feet of concrete parking apron alone (delineated above) might just possibly be somewhat unnatural and could regularly modify temperature readings in a way not representative of the surrounding areas?

Bearing in mind the Met Office rate this site as a fully accurate Class 2 so does it stack up to the 30 metre “exclusion zone”? Below are 100 and 30 metre radius circled areas.

Yes of course it does, the Met Office tape measure certainly could measure out the traditional 100 feet clearance. The Diversion/settlement tank (that was conveniently overlooked at Cranwell) would/should have ruled out class 1 along with the extensive apron concrete but the Met Office no doubt feels Class 2 is justified. Until of course you consider what goes on that apron. Multiple historic images show aircraft quite reasonably parked there – it is after all why it is there – but perhaps the most damning are the helicopters.

Whilst fixed wing aircraft may move away under low power to the runways, Helicopters take off and land vertically. I am often accused of being overly sarcastic but really can the Met Office not see this may be quite an issue? As at Shawbury, Culdrose, Gosport and so very many others, Rotor Wash is a major issue unquestionably liable to hugely distort readings. For those who may think I am exaggerating there are many online videos demonstrating the severity of the effect. Firstly try this short clip:

The rotor wash effect hits the aircraft a timed 30 seconds later though they can actually last up to 3 minutes in extreme. Platinum resistance thermometers used on Met Office settings sample temperatures once every 15 seconds with 4 readings averaged to produce 1,440 minute by minute readings per day. Met Office daily averages (“Means”) are the product of the maximum plus minimum recorded divided by 2 – as brutally simple as that. Just one helicopter movement over the screen per day can hugely affect the maximum reading for that day and hence elevate the mean. In the past the traditional LIGT with its much slower response times may possibly not have been affected or by very little in that time frame.

This Facebook video below shows the real world ground effects of rotor wash from a quite modest sized helicopter – imagine the effect of blasting the screen with air warmed in the sun from almost half a million square feet of apron alone.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=393345102527299

In addition there are also the effects of all those aircraft movements. Leeming has a relatively “short” main runway, which at 2,291 metres (7,516 feet) does not even make the top 25 of the longest runways in the UK. It does not handle the large transport aircraft that the likes of Boscombe Down (3,205 metres/10,515 feet) and Brize Norton (3,050 metres/10,007 feet) do, rather it primarily handles medium and smaller attack aircraft with a larger number of individual aircraft movements.

Again despite whatever the likes of “Professors” may claim in a BBC article such as this: {my bold}

“Planes make a negligible difference,” says Professor Williams. “Every time you use energy – whether it’s from a plane’s engine, or even just switching on a light bulb or taking a shower – it’s eventually turned into heat. “But all of that is a minor influence compared to the effect of the urban heat island.”

I will call that out as rank nonsense. Perhaps, Professor Williams may wish to stand in the vicinity of the screen when the aircraft (from the headline still image) takes off as in this clip below. He can then try to assure me there is no effect on a PRT……..provided he can see it through the heat haze.

As ever if anyone wishes to add to or criticise my opinion here please feel welcome to engage. On balance though I find it almost improbable to regard the vast majority of post WW2 aviation sites as providing reliable readings for climate historical purposes.

An Arctic blast of snow, sleet and hail has pushed temperatures down to -12.5°C, the coldest this winter, driving a sharp surge in electricity demand and straining the GB power system.

With Storm Goretti forecast to bring heavy snowfall on Thursday, analysts expect elevated demand and volatile prices to persist into mid-January.

Jake Thompson, GB Market Expert at Montel Analytics, said national electricity demand jumped as temperatures plunged, with morning peak demand hitting 44GW and forecasts pointing to around 46GW at the evening peak.

He said Monday saw the highest GB demand since March 2018 at 47.3GW, underlining how tightly balanced the system has become during extreme cold spells. [Talkshop comment – ‘has become’ under net zero and renewables dogma, with no easy-to-store coal].

Renewables met just 23% of demand on 5 January, leaving the system heavily reliant on gas-fired generation during peak hours.

Full article here.