Cavendish DCNN 3122-Anatomy of an ongoing challenge – Crop Circling?

52.09070 0.62795 Met Officed AssesseD CIMO Class 4 & Satisfactory Installed 1/1/1974

This weather station sits in the rear garden of a private house – not at all uncommon for Met Office Stations, I will report on several particularly questionable ones in due course. Originally operating as a manual station with (presumably) the home’s occupant taking the readings, it was subsequently deemed worthy of converting to automatic reporting in 2010. Tim Channon originally reviewed the site back in 2012 correctly assessing the site as Class 4/5.

Cavendish, Suffolk

This site regularly records regional as well as occasional national highest daily temperatures. Whilst Tim requested polite consideration for the site’s owner he also made the point that it should be noted that the Met Office is the responsible authority. Personally, I feel this site is totally inappropriate for recording data for the historic temperature record for many reasons. I started a challenge to the Met Office for continuing to use its readings, thus the anatomy of a “challenge” began…….

{I started writing this post 15th September – updates are ongoing.}

So what is so wrong about this site? Well firstly, I find it hard to accept that (no matter how diligent and dedicated the home owner may be) a domestic garden can ever be described as a wholly natural environment nor can it be considered secure and “tamper proof”. Life will always get in the way in such locations and there are no guarantees whatsoever that extraneous heat sources will not come into play in myriad different ways. The £mutli-million Met Office can surely find better locations.

The site is part of a small housing development of the 1970s (again unnatural) but also backs onto regularly cropped fields. In Tim’s original review commenter “Caz” managed to identify the Stevenson Screen from google street view (Author’s note “thanks for that eagle eye catweazle666, I was stumped trying to locate it”).

The little white square box to the right of the (presumably) wind pole to left of centre of picture is the Stevenson Screen. The purpose of showing this image in addition to the aerial imagery above is to highlight not only the regular crop changing but also the proximity of the recording devices to the fields. Note from the headline image the highly pronounced and almost permanent tracks from the tractors, combine harvesters etc. that must regularly be turning almost alongside the screen. Clearly modern, highly responsive Platinum Resistance Thermometers (PRTs) could be affected by the warmed air gusts from diesel engine exhausts regularly turning and pausing so remarkably close by. Furthermore as was pointed out in comments on Tim’s original article, “a newly plowed(sic) field has similar properties to equivalent expanses of tarmac or concrete.”

On the 14th August this year I noted this Met Office “Daily “extreme” for Cavendish showing the UK’s highest daily temperature.

I found this questionable as none of the surrounding stations at Wattisham, Andrewsfield and Broom Barns came within 2 degrees of this reading. The nearby local Private Weather Stations (PWS) similarly did not achieve such high levels and most relevantly a resident of Cavendish informed me that those fields to the rear of Peacock Close had been “Combined” that day.

I asked the Met Office (14th August) to provide me details of precisely when the high reading occurred and for the duration that reading was sustained. Acknowledgement and case number were duly received but no answers were forthcoming. On 2nd September I further chased for details but as yet still no response more than acknowledgement.

What increased my suspicion was that the Met Office had been selectively removing readings from its own sites from its Weather Observations site . Cavendish’s data is no longer freely available to view from them (though it was until recently). This makes it very difficult to question their data if it is simply not there for the public record to freely view. However an international website WeatherObs does show live online data for UK synoptic and automated sites which indicated none near Cavendish recorded such high readings.

The situation now appears to be repeating with yesterday’s (14/9/2024) “Daily Extremes”.

Note: Class 4 (known 2 degree error margin by siting) Cavendish registered 2.4 °C higher than regional neighbour Class 1 (accurate) Rothamsted.

Suspicion again deepens when studying Weather Obs hourly resolution data.

The highest hourly reading of 20.02°C is also again higher by typically 2°C over Class 2 Andrewsfield only a few miles the south west, Class 2 Wattisham a few miles to the east and Broom Barns (a part of Rothamsted Research) a few miles to the North. It seems somewhat unlikely that the natural environment at the centre of the triangle described by these three higher quality stations should be so markedly hotter on a regular basis. As a result I am questioning the integrity of this Class 4 (more realistically class 5) with the Met Office.

Importantly it is worth noting that there is no formal process available to query Met Office data or practices. I asked this very question some time ago to be informed –

“Dear Mr Sanders, thank you for your enquiry. 

The Met Office does not have a formal process, other than the direct email approach you have been using, by which you can challenge WMO CIMO ratings for weather observations site in the UK. Met Office observations sites are underpinned by a rigorous quality management system including a longstanding and well-honed site inspection methodology, ensuring that data produced at a site is as accurate and reliable as it can be. (Author’s note: So why are 27 stations currently noted as “unsatisfactory”?)

The Met Office inspection scheme assesses a station for each meteorological element in terms of its suitability for use in meteorological and climatological products. All Met Office weather stations are routinely inspected by trained expert Met Office Regional Network Officers. Each weather station is assessed against the Met Office inspection standards as well, as more recently, the World Meteorological Organization inspection standards.   

Consistency of measurements is vital, both for informing our forecasts and for the long-term weather and climate records of the UK.  

You can find a lot more information on our website regarding our observation network. The following pages may be of interest to you………..  Weather Desk”

One day further forward and this time Cavendish again recorded the national highest daily temperature.

And yet again the reading of 21.0 °C is 2 degrees higher than the neighbouring Met Office Stations. Andrewsfield registered a maximum of 19.3°C, Wattisham 19°C and Broom Barns just 18.89°C. Rothamsted peaked at just 18.05°C and similarly close Class 1 Cambridge NIAB at 19°C. Neither of the (non CIMO assessed) purely aviation-specific sites at RAF Mildenhall and RAF Lakenheath registered anywhere near that high either.

All these figures can be checked on Weatherobs – details appear (as this for Brooms Barn shown below) with a seven day historic graph available as well as tabulated hourly readings.

So how is it that this Cavendish, Class 4 (at best) back garden site adjacent to ever changing field cropping and likely intermittent engine exhausts with no effective quality control oversight can so regularly be heralded? Are the Met Office claims of ” rigorous quality management ” actually being maintained? It would appear not in the absence of any responses from them to justify their claims.

Is this just another of those convenient “threshold breaching” sites like Wiggonholt and many others? I am putting all of this to the Met Office and will report any response.

In the meantime I would welcome any further information and/or assistance any readers can offer……alternatively feel free to dubunk any of my claims if you consider them incorrect.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2024/09/16/cavendish-dcnn-3122-anatomy-of-an-ongoing-challenge-crop-circling/