Shocking evidence has emerged that points to the U.K. Met Office inventing temperature data from over 100 non-existent weather stations. The explosive allegations have been made by citizen journalist Ray Sanders and sent to the new Labour Science Minister Peter Kyle MP. Following a number of Freedom of Information requests to the Met Office and diligent field work visiting individuals stations, Sanders has discovered that 103 stations out of 302 sites supplying temperature averages do not exist. “How would any reasonable observer know that the data was not real and simply ‘made up’ by a Government agency,” asks Sanders. He calls for an “open declaration” of likely inaccuracy of existing published data, “to avoid other institutions and researchers using unreliable data and reaching erroneous conclusions”.
In his home county of Kent, Sanders charges that four of the eight sites identified by the Met Office, namely Dungeness, Folkestone, Dover and Gillingham – which all produce rolling temperature averages to the second decimal place of a degree – are “fiction”. Sanders notes that there has been no weather station at Dungeness since 1986. The Daily Sceptic is able to confirm that none of the four stations appear in the list of Met sites with a classification from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). The Met Office directs online inquiries about Dover to the ”nearest climate station” at Dover Harbour (Beach) and provides a full set of rolling 30-year averages. According to Met Office co-ordinates, the site is on Dover beach as the Google Earth photo below shows. It seems unlikely that any scientific organisation would site a temperature monitoring station that is likely to be submerged on a regular basis. Who is running this station on the beach, have accurate records been kept for 30 years and why is it not listed under the 380 sites that are given a WMO rating?
Of the 302 sites quoted, Sanders notes that the Met Office “declined to advise me” exactly how or where the alleged ‘data’ were derived for these 103 non-existent sites.
The practice of ‘inventing’ temperature data from non-existent stations is a controversial issue in the United States where the local weather service NOAA has been charged with fabricating data for more than 30% of its reporting sites. Data are retrieved from surrounding stations and the resulting averages are given an ‘E’ for estimate. “The addition of the ghost station data means NOAA’s monthly and yearly reports are not representative of reality,” says meteorologist Anthony Watts. “If this kind of process were used in a court of law, then the evidence would be thrown out as being polluted,” he added.
In its historical data section, the Met Office lists a number of sites with long records of temperature data. Lowestoft provides records going back to 1914 but it closed in 2010. Since that date the figures have been complied on an estimated basis. The stations at Nairn Druim, Paisley and Newton Rigg are similarly closed but still reporting estimated monthly data. “Why would any scientific organisation feel the need to publish what can only be described as fiction?” asks Sanders. “No scientific purpose can possibly be served by fabrication,” he suggests.
It is possible that the Met Office has a reasonable scientific explanations for the way it collects temperature data. Temperature calculation is an imprecise science but concerns have mounted because the data are being used for overtly political purposes to promote the Net Zero fantasy. Alarmists claim that very small temperature rises can make a large climatic difference. To whip up global fear, temperature figures supposedly compiled with an accuracy to one hundredth of a degree centigrade are quoted from sources such as the Met Office and NOAA. To date, the Met Office has been silent over the gathering storm surrounding its figures and the organisation refuses to return the calls of the Daily Sceptic.
Sanders refers to another large temperature measurement problem at the Met Office surrounding the WMO classification of its sites. Almost eight in 10 sites are rated in junk classes 4 and 5 with possible “uncertainties” of 2°C and 5°C respectively. This means, notes Sanders, that they are not suitable for climate data reporting purposes according to international standards which the Met Office was party to establishing. Only 52 Met Office stations, or a paltry 13.7%, are in Class 1 and 2 with no suggested margin of error. Actually, mark that down by at least one. In his travels, Sanders pointed out the possible heat corruptions at Class 1 Hastings and this site has now been dropped to Class 4. The Met Office is said to have confirmed that the default classification for stations is set at Class 1, “unless manually adjusted”.
The Daily Sceptic has investigated the poor siting of many Met Office stations with obvious heat corruptions making a mockery of attempts to measure the naturally occurring air temperature. Sanders lists the problems of many of these unsuitable sites including those placed in walled kitchen gardens and botanical gardens specifically designed to produce artificially increased temperatures and microclimates. Other unsuitable sites include in or near car parks, airports, domestic gardens, sewage and water treatment plants, electricity sub-stations and solar farms.
Sanders has an interesting take on the recent closure of many rural temperature measuring sites. In 1974 there were 32 operational sites in Kent, but this has now fallen to seven. The switch to new electrically-operated platinum resistance thermometers required a reliable electricity supply and data communication. Many rural sites were closed down because such facilities were not available in the early days of automation. But by eliminating cooler recording sites from the overall data record, this left predominantly urbanised sites to cause an unrepresentative temperature uplift from the slewed averages. “Statistical sleight of hand (however inadvertent it may have been) produced inaccurate historic misrepresentation,” observes Sanders.
In his open letter to Peter Kyle MP, Sanders states that he has demonstrated with hard evidence that the Met Office is “clearly fabricating” data. In addition, it is failing to meet high standards of scientific integrity and is not producing reliable or accurate data for climate reporting purposes from a network of poorly sited and inadequately maintained locations. Peter Kyle is the Minister responsible for the Met Office and has yet to respond to Sanders’s allegations. Ray Sanders has done an excellent research job in providing new and highly relevant details in what is becoming a significant scientific scandal. To date, despite repeated requests, the Met Office has refused to make any comment and defend its own temperature measurements and calculations. While the silence in Government, Parliament and the Met Office, aided by a total lack of interest in the mainstream media, is maintained, it can only be assumed that the interests of the Net Zero promotion override any concerns about the underlying scientific data.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Gotya!
Except we are going to run into the same fundamental problem that persists in our society, namely the “tree that falls that nobody hears” problem.
Establishment media – BBC, ITV, Sky, C4, Guardian, Times, etc. – will not carry this. And we still live in a world where a massive proportion of the population receive their information the establishment media.
So the establishment propped up by its media and in turn their army of normies will carry on as usual. And the growing but still minority part of the population that can see all the lies and deceptions get more bitter and despondent.
As Ben Pile said here recently: There are two parts to being a sceptic. The first is interrogation of claims that seemingly compel action: things such as climate change, disease, terrorism. The second is challenging the power that captures the imperative: the global bureaucracies that have been created to save the planet, defeat viruses or vanquish enemies.
The groups that have captured the “climate imperative” are adept at presenting themselves as the morally superior while demanding money and power with menaces, which makes it very clear why they have given themselves permission to lie, misrepresent, and mislead.
The fiction of the moral lie.
“No scientific purpose can possibly be served by fabrication,”
Government agenda, maybe?
Almost everything is messed up with the way The Glorious MET Office works, for a long time already. Here’s an article I wrote in 2013 pointing out similar problems. Did I ever get a response from Professor Julia Slingo? Did I heck!
https://public-highway.blogspot.com/2013/01/rainmasterall-since-records-began.html?m=1
Julia Slingo is now retired. A climate scientist and man made climate change evangelist. They’re all the same there. Putting people like her in charge of the MET Office is like putting firemen in charge of the wildfire response – everyone knows you shouldn’t do that, because firemen will never tell you the fire is out.
In a similar vein, I never met a doctor who told me I was well (see what I did there).
Montesquieu o where art thou. Separate those powers!
It’s an excellent essay – should be required reading in schools, in multiple subjects as it is instructive from a political point of view as well as a scientific one.
Well done. The concepts of accuracy and tolerance are probably alien with many of the politicians involved, depending on their educational background. The only thing that is 100% accurate is your bank balance, or maybe the Treasuries assets (as long as they are physical).
Temperature is not ‘calculated’ it is measured by an instrument. The measuring instrument should be calibrated on a regular basis and will have a figure for its accuracy.
You couldn’t make it up. Oh hold on that’s exactly what the Met Office does. There will be some fobbing off, meaningless explanation, and nothing will change.
We just have to wait for the look on Miliband’s face when a couple of nuclear power stations go offline in France and the French dit Non! to supplying les rosbifs with any more expensive electricity.
He will be pleased.
It seems to me he and mank of the net zero brigade are pursuing the destruction of the UK as a functioning nation much in the way CPGB tried to do through the unions in the post war period.
They won’t choose to supply the UK if Germany needs their power instead. Germany has no nuke stations any more.
Yes they are a good test-bed for what’s to come.
Or we have more dunkelsflaute…No wind, no sun, no power…ooops, who put the lights out. Loadshedding coming to a substation near you. (Just look at South Africa for where we could be going).
The current weather here in the west of Englang is gloomy to say the least. Thick cloud and no wind. It has been like this for days. Not much good for power production is it? Even my little solar lights have given up the ghost.
I am seriously thinking about buying a generator.
Interestingly my husband and I were having the same conversation this morning. It was in view of the Australian Town article.
BBC where are you? Sky News and your Climate Show where are you? Jim Dale, you moron, where are you? McCarthy of the Independent where ae you? Just Stop Oil where are you? Extinction rebellion where are you? —Where are all the Brainwashed dreamers and the Eco Socialist phony planet savers?. —You are so easily manipulated. —Wake up
‘Just 2 degrees’ where are you (Turkish Channel).
Brilliant detective work Mr Sanders
I am not speaking for my former employer, but the Met Office models have a grid scale of a few km, and are able to generate virtual observations through comparison with historical observations and actual nearby observations – these observations can be validated with reasonable accuracy. It is true that urban development has reduced the quality of many surface observations, eg. Cambridge Botanic Garden, but that is not really the Met Office’s fault – the Cambridge site has been moved several times due to university development. see here History of weather observing sites in the Cambridge area from the mid‐nineteenth century to the present‐day – Sibley – 2023 – Weather – Wiley Online Library.
There is greater uncertainty in climate reconstructions from the 19th C / early 20th C with data assumptions built into HADCRUT5, and this is used to justify climate policy. “We use statistical methods to estimate temperatures in data sparse areas, using measurements from neighbouring regions.” Tim Osborn Twitter 15 Dec 2020.
Roy Spencer has also done a good job in showing how the UHI effect has not fully been accounted for in climate models. Urban Heat Island Effects Have Not Yet Been Removed from Official GHCN Warming Trends « Roy Spencer, PhD
As mathematican-songwriter Tom Lehrer nearly said, “homogenise, homegenise, homogenise; but please to call it research.” The socially acceptable term (within the society of climate researchers) for “making up temperature data where we haven’t got raw data” is “kriging”. The term has been appropriated by climate scientists, as it is perfectly acceptable in other fields and situations but not here; the scientists and politicians blue the distinction between models and data.
I have to disagree with you.
Yes, the Met Office is “Inventing” Temperature Data, but it isn’t a shock.
But Yes, it’s probably worse than we thought, perhaps. They, the UEA CRU and the US Hockey Team have been very economical with the Truth for years. Remember Mike’s Trick and the Climategate emails that weren’t taken seriously, even though Graham Stringer MP wasn’t too pleased, describing the individuals as Enthusiasts, not Scientists.
You would have thought that the Urban Heat Island Effect would interest Scientists, but I suppose it interferes with an agenda:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/20/the-science-of-the-urban-heat-island-effect-is-pathetic-and-misleading
And now, the weather for Dover Beach: The sea is calm tonight…
It will last for another five years this wetness of the biosphere due to the hunga tonga eruption. Many will be gone by then because it is a nasty climate to survive in terms of health. Unless you are fired up by the real spirit you will be dead within five years
There was some leftwing journalist on GB News the other night stating that you couldn’t be a “journalist” unless you’d got a degree in Journalism and trained in analysis of news…I was gobsmacked (hate that term but it’s early) at his arrogance.
Well, Mr Sanders, you have just proved that there is life without a degree in journalism. Great work. And thanks, yet again, to Chris Morrison for highlighting this.
Oh the irony of the Met office producing fake news. They’ve already been exposed for placing their monitoring stations close to “hot tarmac” and now this.
By not responding or even acknowledging the letter with evidence, isn’t Peter Kyle MP effectively ‘misleading Parliament’ by letting the data fabrication continue? He should, at the very minimum, announce that he’s instructed the MO to immediately stop using this so-called data, and launch an investigation.