Archive for August, 2025

Ballypatrick Forest DCNN9168, DCNN 9169 WMO03916 – Totally unacceptable behaviour by the Met Office.

Posted: August 30, 2025 by Ray Sanders in Analysis, Dataset, Disinformation, Measurement, MET office, Surfacestation, Temperature
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55.18062 -6.15446 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 4 Original site installed 1/1/1961

Ballypatrick Forest weather station lies in the north of Northern Ireland just under 6 km from the coast at Ballycastle. In addition to being an official “climate averages” reporting station, it is also an “Historic Station” shown with almost continuous data back to 1961. Many of the historic sites which appear on the Met Office list have somewhat dubious provenance as I recently posted on Valley, and Braemar, and Southampton and Whitby and Stornoway …….rather than keep this linked listing going it is simpler to say most of them have either been relocated, had spliced datasets, duplicated or even simply do not exist but are falsely claimed to be open and still reporting data as at Nairn, Newton Rigg, Paisley and of course Lowestoft. It is perhaps unsurprising then that Ballypatrick’s history is somewhat “cloudy”.

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Study Finds ‘Extreme Weather’ Database Exaggerates Global Disaster Trends

Posted: August 29, 2025 by oldbrew in alarmism, Critique, data, research, Uncertainty, weather
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As this article says: ‘Disasters don’t count if you don’t count them.’ Rise in reports of disasters does not equate to a rise in the events, if frequency of reporting has improved. But weather attribution people can make claims that sound as if things are getting worse, without fear of being shown actual contradictory historical data, if it was never collected.
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According to its publishers, a dataset called EM-DAT, which stands for Emergency Events Database, so it’s not even an acronym, lists “data on the occurrence and impacts of over 26,000 mass disasters worldwide from 1900 to the present day” – says Climate Change Dispatch.

Which makes it perfect for studying long-term trends. And what’s even better, for the climate change crowd anyway, is that, as the authors of a 2024 study noted, “There are very strong upward trends in the number of reported disasters.”

But as the same authors noted in the very next sentence, “However, we show that these trends are strongly biased by progressively improving reporting.” Simply put, before 2000, reporting of small disasters that caused fewer than 100 deaths was hit-and-miss.

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Valley WMO03302 – Fake Provenance of Met Office data. Untrustworthy, incompetent…or both?

Posted: August 29, 2025 by Ray Sanders in Analysis, Dataset, Disinformation, Incompetence, Measurement, MET office, methodology, Surfacestation, Temperature
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I would firstly like to pay tribute to the late Tim Channon who instigated the UK Surface Stations Project back in 2012. I did not know him nor followed Tallbloke’s Talkshop back then which I find a great pity. I believe his review of Valley was the first he did and it is certainly the one in which he detailed the systems he employed. That review was the first of his that I ever read and I have been wary of updating such great work he put in on his (for me) iconic post. It is here in full to read first. I will add my observations which introduce a surprising aspect of Met Office misrepresentation……the clue to which is in the headline image.

WMO 03302 RAF Valley meteorological station
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Murlough DCNN9260 – Basking in the shade

Posted: August 28, 2025 by Ray Sanders in Analysis, Dataset, Measurement, MET office, methodology, modelling, Surfacestation, Temperature
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52.24515 -5.83173 Met office CIMO Assessed Class 5 Installed 1/1/1968

Murlough House is an historic building near the coastal resort of Newcastle in the south east of Northern Ireland. Over the years it has variously been a country seat for the 4th Marquis of Downshire, a USAF base, a Church of Ireland conference centre, a Field Studies Centre for Queens University Belfast (probably the originators of the weather station) and currently a “Boutique Hotel” and conference centre focusing as a Christian spiritual retreat. Originally built on open farmland with sea views, in the early 20th century it was planted with trees to create a sheltered micro-climate and now sits deep within its own wooded enclosure.

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Magilligan No 2 WMO 03907 – Why the Met Office has become unfit for purpose, record chasing is now their prime motivation.

Posted: August 26, 2025 by Ray Sanders in Analysis, Dataset, Disinformation, Measurement, media, MET office, methodology, Surfacestation, Temperature
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The above image is from a post on the Met Office’s X (formerly Twitter) account and is a classic example of both their absurd levels of gaslighting the public and their rather patronising ignorance. Before detailing the absurdity of their claims I shall quickly address the latter point they raised

” Although not a bank holiday in Scotland,”

Do no Scots work for the Met Office? Unlikely as they have a regional office at Dyce. Yesterday most certainly WAS a Bank holiday in Scotland and very few banks (if any) were open. 25th August though was not a PUBLIC Holiday, a significant difference.

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Tomintoul No 6 DCNN1108 – Even Wikipedia is starting to get the message.

Posted: August 26, 2025 by Ray Sanders in Analysis, Dataset, Disinformation, Measurement, MET office, methodology, Surfacestation, Temperature
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57.25689 -3.37894 No Met Office CIMO Assessment known. Installed 7/3/2025

Tomintoul is the highest village in the Scottish Highlands but curiously not the highest in Scotland – Wanlockhead in Dumfries and Galloway is considerably higher. The area is noted for its distilleries which dominate the village. Being denoted “Number 6” suggests a long history of weather stations but that is quite wrong and the site is indeed very new.

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Rogues Gallery – You couldn’t make it up.

Posted: August 25, 2025 by Ray Sanders in Analysis, Dataset, MET office, Surfacestation
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Above Wiggonholt by the campsite classroom.

Below Bainbridge and the solar reflecting stainless steel whatever it is.

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A near neighbour was originally very sceptical of my reviews but now often proof-reads them for me and is a “convert” to the cause! He suggested the visual image is much more powerful than words and that I should run a “Rogues Gallery” to create interest. I countered there were far too many but he said run with some “headliners” of different types to introduce new readers. Relenting I agreed to a few though, wary of overloading the blog’s wordpress hosts, here is just an initial “amuse bouche”.

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Monks Wood DCNN3357 – A very confusing site, what actually goes on here?

Posted: August 25, 2025 by Ray Sanders in Analysis, Dataset, Measurement, MET office, methodology, Surfacestation, Temperature
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52.40154 -0.23698 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 3 Installed 1/1/1963

Tim Channon reviewed this site outside his original WMO reporting sites remit largely, I believe, due to the somewhat odd nature of the site (in a woodland clearing) and quite what the neighbouring large but rural buildings were all about. https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/04/10/surfacestation-monks-wood/. My subsequent review similarly asks more questions regarding exactly what goes on here.

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Get ready for fracking, Reform UK tells energy firms

Posted: August 25, 2025 by oldbrew in Energy, net zero, News, Politics, Shale gas
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The party is serious about going after shale gas. Critics complain about anything they can think of but the evidence of its success in the US is out there. Voters may find appeal in UK-sourced gas rather than expensive LNG and other imports. It would be likely to benefit many more UK workers than so-called green jobs, and be able to supply new and existing gas-fired power stations, needed to support the creaking electricity grid. Reform says ‘net zero’ targets and policies are a waste of time and money in a cash-strapped UK economy with sky-high energy prices.
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Trapped in underground rocks, a potential energy resource has eluded generations of British politicians, says BBC News.

It’s called shale gas and the method of getting it out of the ground, known as fracking, has proved politically difficult.

Fracking, short for hydraulic fracturing, has been banned many times by different prime ministers since 2011 over concerns about earthquakes and environmental impacts.

And yet despite this, Reform UK – which is leading in national opinion polls – believe it’s worth going after the gas again.

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Lowestoft Addendum – The non existent “Well Correlated” stations and why the Met Office will not answer.

Posted: August 23, 2025 by Ray Sanders in Accountability, alarmism, Analysis, Dataset, Disinformation, History, Measurement, MET office, methodology, modelling, Surfacestation, Temperature, Uncertainty, weather
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{Today’s post marks the first anniversary of my restarting the surface stations project. 328 posts later I never expected to find the incredibly sorry state of the UK Met Office, its data and its presentation. There is a long way to go yet.}

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This post is intended to be read following on from the Wye and Addendum reviews to act as a contrast between direct real world analysis of data and the “land of make believe” that the Met Office now seems to be inhabiting. It is also essential to read the original Dungeness and Lowestoft reports and be familiar with the extraordinary lengths the Met Office is employing to withhold exactly what it is doing. Apologies for all the pre reading to aid understanding, but for those possibly not familiar with the background it is important to be “up to speed”. I shall now demonstrate the reasons why the Met office will not supply me with the requested details regarding Lowestoft.

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Ned Nikolov’s 4 questions for the White House climate report authors

Posted: August 22, 2025 by oldbrew in Analysis, climate, Clouds, Critique, research, Temperature
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The paper by Ned Nikolov and Karl Zeller was highlighted here at the Talkshop:

Nikolov and Zeller: Analysis showing Earth’s climate is driven by Sun and cloud albedo now published

A graph from the paper:
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White House climate report link: https://t.co/5CdaNAJxNH
Title: A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse
Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate

Charsfield DCNN 3164 – Ribena country or is it Akenfield?

Posted: August 22, 2025 by Ray Sanders in Analysis, Dataset, Measurement, MET office, methodology, Surfacestation, Temperature
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52.16272 1.27962 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 3 Temperature records from 1992

Charsfield weather station is quite a rarity in being CIMO rated Class 3, less than 8% of Met Office sites meet that standard and many that supposedly do, really do not, such as Heathrow and Charlwood. This is a long term rain gauge site operating from 1906 and presumably relevant for the nearby Potsford Brook. This is quintessential East Anglian countryside ( near Woodbridge) and numerous “English” pastoral setting films and books have been based on this area notably “Akenfield“.

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Dramatic slowdown in melting of Arctic sea ice ‘surprises’ scientists

Posted: August 21, 2025 by oldbrew in alarmism, climate, modelling, Natural Variation, predictions, Temperature
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Years of alarmist claims of the imminent end of Arctic summer sea ice have blown up big-time, so excuses have to be found. They claimed CO2 from human causes was the dominant driver of modern warming, while any other CO2 source was natural and OK. Their models predicted a relentless rise in temperatures, with Arctic sea ice the obvious evidence of the supposed climate problem. They still claim the Arctic is warming 4 times (or some other multiple) faster than the rest of the planet. Now they say: Natural climate variation is the most likely reason for the ‘slowdown’ as CO2 hasn’t declined, but it’s only a ‘temporary reprieve’. Twenty years and counting is a lot of ‘temporary’ non-effectiveness of their greenhouse gas ideas. Cognitive dissonance springs to mind.
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The melting of sea ice in the Arctic has slowed dramatically in the past 20 years, scientists have reported, with no statistically significant decline in its extent since 2005, says The Guardian.

The finding is surprising, the researchers say, given that carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning have continued to rise and trap ever more heat over that time. [Talkshop comment – only surprising to those who thought CO2 was a dominant factor in climate].

They said natural variations in ocean currents that limit ice melting had probably balanced out the continuing rise in global temperatures.

However, they said this was only a temporary reprieve and melting was highly likely to start again at about double the long-term rate at some point in the next five to 10 years.

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Lough Navar Forest DCNN9515 – Ridiculous comparisons but they are “Peer Reviewed”

Posted: August 20, 2025 by Ray Sanders in Analysis, Dataset, Disinformation, Measurement, MET office, methodology, Surfacestation, Temperature
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54.439129 -7.90089 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 5 Installed 1/1/1961

Lough Navar weather station is the most westerly of all UK weather stations being 12 miles to the north west of Enniskillen and just 14 miles from the open sea of the North Atlantic off the Republic of Ireland. This is a long term manual site that seems unable to supply the regular observer with “holiday cover” as every year there appears to be regular one and two week gaps with no readings at all. This is the least of the issues though.

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Net zero delusion has broken Britain’s energy system, says Reform UK

Posted: August 19, 2025 by oldbrew in climate, Energy, government, ideology, net zero, opinion, Politics, Subsidies, Taxpayer
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A clear warning to UK energy bosses that the current costly net zero pathway with all its subsidies could become a dead end in a few years’ time. A long overdue return to economically credible energy policies, leaving largely speculative climate ideology behind, is on the horizon if enough voters want it.
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Britain is today less energy secure than ever before, says Richard Tice @ The Daily Telegraph (via Absolutely Not the Daily Troll-o-graph).

UK energy production has declined by 67pc over the past two decades. That means we have gone from a position of being a net exporter of energy, creating jobs and tax in this country to importing around half of our energy.

British bill-payers are creating jobs and tax revenue in other countries instead.

Last year marked a record low for UK energy production – despite there being decades worth of oil and gas left in the country and the Government dishing out billions in subsidies to wind and solar developers.

How has this been allowed to happen?

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Hadlow – How good is this site rated?

Posted: August 19, 2025 by Ray Sanders in Accountability, Analysis, Dataset, Measurement, MET office, Surfacestation, Temperature
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51.228581 0.320241 No Current Met Office CIMO Assessment Installed 27/10/2016

Hadlow is a small town in west Kent that is host to an historic castle and a prestigious agricultural college. The college has in modern times grown into a major community facility including a primary school and garden centre on campus and even Charlton Athletic Football Club’s youth academy. The college runs courses up to and including graduate level in a range of agricultural areas including engineering. For full disclosure I have personally worked there in the past. The weather station there is very interesting indeed for a surprising reason.

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Topcliffe WMO03265 – A naturally cold site showing surprising warmth.

Posted: August 18, 2025 by Ray Sanders in Analysis, Dataset, Measurement, MET office, methodology, Surfacestation, Temperature
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The above is a rare sight indeed as this region’s daily hotspot records are regularly dominated by the atrocious sites at Hull: East Park , Bridlington and the doubled readings by the solar farm at Leconfield. RAF Topcliffe (odd how the Met Office always misses off the RAF description to so many of its locations) sits in the Vale of York and is more known for winter chills than summer thrills. It is also a classic example of how ground cover changes can have dramatic effects.

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Chillingham Barns DCNN2056 – Can official weather stations get worse than this?

Posted: August 17, 2025 by Ray Sanders in Analysis, Dataset, Measurement, MET office, Surfacestation, Temperature
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55.52991 -1.9183 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 5S Temperature records from 1998

Chillingham Barns was originally installed in 1998 as a manual reporting site 11 miles north-west of Alnwick in Northumberland. It should be obvious to any impartial viewer of the above image that this is a very poor site even by the lowest yardstick. The Met Office themselves rate the site the lowest possible and effectively unregulated Class 5 and then add insult to injury by the suffix of “S” representing extreme shade.

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Hungary’s bet on EV battery boom hits bumps in the road – sagging demand and environmental issues

Posted: August 15, 2025 by oldbrew in Batteries, Critique, Energy, government, net zero, Subsidies, Travel, Uncertainty
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Viktor Orbán wants to turn his country into a European battery hub by offering massive subsidies, but residents at the sharp end of the process aren’t happy about the risks and conditions they’re facing. To add to the problems, the supposedly inevitable success of the scheme is questionable as EV’s fail to sell in the expected large numbers, throwing the whole concept into doubt right across Europe.
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In recent years, billions of dollars in investment have poured into Hungary with the promise to create thousands of jobs and support Europe’s green transition, but stagnating EV demand and strong environmental opposition to new “gigafactories” have dogged Orbán’s showcase economic strategy, says Climate Home News.

Many battery producers in Europe are delaying or shelving plans to expand due to uncertainties about profit levels going forward as battery prices fall, according to the International Energy Agency – and the downturn hasn’t spared manufacturers in Hungary.

Meanwhile, weakening of the country’s environmental regulatory powers has left protestors like Szemán worried that authorities are unable to prevent pollution or hold those that cause it accountable.

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Heatwaves are ruining British roads, claims the Telegraph. But winter is pothole season, say experts

Posted: August 14, 2025 by oldbrew in opinion, Temperature, Travel, weather
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Changing weather patterns are exposing the fragility of UK transport networks, says the report. What patterns? Some think it’s just poor maintenance, or lack of it, that’s the main issue. A 2024 article by civil engineers is headed: Why Do UK Roads Get Hit with Potholes in Winter? It says: ‘Every winter, roads across the United Kingdom face a seasonal menace: potholes. While potholes can appear year-round, their numbers and severity spike as temperatures drop, particularly in high-traffic areas. But what exactly causes this? and why are UK roads so vulnerable during winter?’ — One of the four main reasons listed is road salt, used to make icy surfaces less hazardous for drivers. Another article says bluntly: ‘Freezing temperatures and heavy vehicles are a catalyst for potholes’. Definitely not a heatwave issue there, but people explore the countryside more in summer, so that’s one reason unexpected potholes are encountered then. The Telegraph and also the AA motoring organisation seem intent on blaming heatwaves, and by extension the hoary old chestnut of ‘climate change’ for the state of the roads.
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Heatwaves have ruined British roads and driven a rise in pothole-related breakdowns, says The Telegraph.

The AA said it received more than 50,000 call-outs in July caused by poor road surfaces, up by 2.1 per cent compared with the same month last year.

It reverses a trend of declining pothole-related breakdowns earlier in 2025.

High temperatures this summer are partly to blame for the increase, according to the motoring organisation.

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