Felsham DCNN 3134 – No Expense Spared

52.17236 0.83086 Met Office Assessed CIMO CLASS 3 Installed (for temperature reading) 31/3/2018

Firstly this is Met Office assessed as CIMO Class 3 – the same grade as the Heathrow Airport site. That small white box (image centre) is the Stevenson Screen in front of the oil storage tank, barns, farm storage, next to the freshly dug vegetable plot, just up from where tractors park and only visible in this March 2022 street view image ( it is completely obliterated by tree overgrowth in the July 2023 image) is allegedly accurate to within 1 degree. One has to wonder just how bad a site actually has to be for the Met Office to assess as Class 5.

For those who find the above assessment hard to believe, I copy below an extract from the list I obtained under Freedom of Information request from the Met Office..

Here is the site in aerial view:

This site does not appear in older street view images as it was only installed in 2018. Prior to that only rain gauge readings were taken with no apparent Stevenson Screen on site. Below are the first temperature recordings from the CEDA Archive.

Clearly this site is completely inappropriate for supplying readings towards the national temperature record. It is surely quite unacceptable to have sites totally unguarded by any form of perimeter fencing in such close proximity to extraneous heat sources. For all anyone can ascertain, farm vehicles with engines warming up could have been parked alongside the Screen – who would know? Historic google earth imagery indicates a blue tractor parked nearby. Hay bales quite visibly stored in those barns had to get there by some means, this is after all a working farm site. The surroundings regularly change causing all manner of effects likely to disrupt temperature readings. Surely any reasonable observer can see that.

The Met office has a very large and mostly tax payer funded budget and yet within the last 7 years has still seen fit to install this obviously low grade site but still claim to operate to meticulously high standards.

But now for the cherry on the cake. The Met Office has also designated this site as…..”EXCELLENT”.

From FOI for Met Office’s own classification standard listing

OF 382 MET OFFICE WEATHER STATIONS CURRENTLY ONLY 33 (<9%) ARE GRADED “EXCELLENT” – FELSHAM IS ONE OF THOSE DEEMED “EXCELLENT” SITES.

Really?

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2024/09/16/felsham-dcnn-3134-no-expense-spared/