Letter to Peter Kyle MP – Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology.

On the 19th July 2024, following correct protocol, I emailed my constituency MP, Rosie Duffield, asking her to forward a report I had produced onto Peter Kyle MP (above) in his capacity of Secretary of State for Science, Information and Technology responsible for the Met Office. Ms Duffield confirmed this was forwarded and I also received an acknowledgement from Peter Kyle’s constituency office.

Despite further polite follow ups direct to Mr Kyle and further enquiries via the BSIT department’s Science Advisors, I have received no response from anyone whatsoever. I feel a response was warranted hence in the absence of any I publish below the full text of my original email. This is an open letter and anyone is free to draw from it or forward all or any part of it wherever they wish.

“Dear Mr Kyle

Investigation into accuracy of Meteorological Office Data

I have extensively researched aspects regarding the accuracy and scientific validity of data produced by the UK Meteorological  Office (Met Office). I have discovered significant inaccuracies and potential misrepresentation of hard data produced by the Met Office which calls into question its validity and requires an independent investigation to correct.

I precis below the main points. 

Firstly I considered how “Climate Averages” data was presented by the Met Office. 

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-climate-averages

This details 302 sites. As an example, either click on the map or type in “Dungeness”.  You will be directed to a “nearest site” called “Dungeness” giving accurate map co-ordinates, elevation and a description as “Observing Site” 

Any reasonable person viewing this (a student for example) would assume there is a site there and the 30 year rolling averages from 1960 to 2020 were both “observed” and “data” – notably quoted to the second decimal place of a degree. 

However, there is NO weather station at Dungeness – it closed in 1986 – i.e. 38 years ago. 

For these  last 38 years there have been no observations, thus no data recorded at Dungeness.  All the figures are fabricated in scientific terms. 

Through Freedom of Information request (FOI)  I obtained the details of which stations actually still exist as attached excel spread sheet. 

Of the 302 sites quoted, over one third (103) do NOT exist. The Met Office declined to advise me  exactly how or from where the alleged “data” was derived for these 102 non-existent sites.

In my home county of  Kent, 4 of the 8 sites shown are fiction (Dungeness, Folkestone, Dover, Gillingham) and all produce different “averages”. Referring back to Dungeness, the nearest open Met Office Weather Station sites are over 25 miles away.   

There is no plausible  scientific purpose in the invention of numbers for non-existent sites which are falsely posing as authentic locations.

How would any reasonable observer (i.e. the example student) know that the data was not real and simply “made up” by a government agency?

Secondly, Long term “Historic Data“

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/historic-station-data

The above indicates 37 long term sites quoting monthly  “Data”.  Note that 3 sites on the map are coloured blue with the key indicating these stations have closed, the remainder are coloured orange indicating “open” stations.

 Any reasonable person would therefore assume the orange marked sites were “open” stations as stated.

However, for example, go to Lowestoft and “view data”.  Whilst figures run from 1914, all figures from 2010 are marked with an asterisk indicating they are “Estimated” – the station closed in 2010 –  i.e.14 years ago.

What scientific organisation would continue to  “estimate”  figures for over 14 years and counting? What possible scientific purpose could such “estimation” serve?

The Met Office has again declined to advise me either how these estimates are arrived at or why they do so.

The stations at  Nairn Druim, Paisley and Newton Rigg are similarly closed but still reporting “estimated” monthly data. It should also be noted that even those stations marked as closed continued to report  “Estimated” numbers beyond their closure date.

Why would any scientific organisation feel the need to publish what can only genuinely be described as fiction? No scientific purpose can possibly be served by fabrication.

These above two issues of “Climate Averages” and “Historic Station Data” clearly demonstrate the Met Office are publishing numbers which are neither real  nor observed and thus cannot be described as data. 

This moves me onto aspects of exactly how the Met Office observes and collects its raw data.

Weather Station siting.

The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) is part of the United Nations Organistaion (UN), to which almost all national meteorological agencies report their data for climate reporting purposes.

The WMO recently standardised the weather station location requirements for Climate data recording purposes.

The UK Met Office was a significant partner to the formulation of this standard which was ultimately codified by the International Standards Organisation as ISO/WMO standard 19289:2014(E) as detailed below.

Click to access CIMO_Guide_2014-Met_Site_Classification.pdf

WMO rules indicate that only sites meeting  CIMO Classes 1 or 2 should be used for Climate Reporting purposes. Class 3  sites have  known errors caused by siting of 1°C,  Class 4 sites  error margins of 2°C and Class 5 sites have known error margins up to 5° C.

Consequently, Classes 3 to 5 stations should NOT be used for climate reporting purposes. Classes 4 and 5 are generally considered to have no better than “Junk” status in climate reporting terms though quite possibly  acceptable for their original installed purposes such as immediate aviation advice, local agriculture, local transport etc.

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-synoptic-and-climate-stations

It required a Freedom of Information request for me to obtain from the Met Office the list of their Climate and Synoptic reporting weather stations by CIMO Class as attached.

This list indicates that of 384 climate reporting stations just 52 (13.7%) fall into Classes 1 & 2.  

A further 30 (7.8% of total) sites are Class 3

187 sites (48.7% of total ) are Class 4

112 sites (29.2% of total) are Class 5

Almost 85% of all Met Office sites are NOT deemed acceptable for climate data reporting purposes by the  World Meteorological Organisation and International Standards Organisation stated requirements.  

It is worth noting that the Met Office claims to use its own separate  station monitoring standards but does not give plausible reasons why these should override WMO standards. They do not demonstrate any greater level of suitability for climate reporting than the CIMO standards. 

N.B. The Met Office have confirmed the default classification on their records for  all their stations is set at Class 1 unless manually adjusted.

On receipt of the attached list I personally challenged the CIMO classification of the Hastings site. The Met Office agreed with my personal site inspection and adjusted their records to Class 4. I have subsequently challenged some of  their  CIMO ratings of other sites – unfortunately a senior Met Office manager (Karl Shephedson) has since reneged on any offer of discussions on this subject and the Met Office no longer seems willing to openly engage with me.

I have produced a dossier of exceptionally poorly sited weather stations which include (amongst other problematical issues)

Co-located with major National Grid Sub-Stations.

In walled kitchen gardens and botanical gardens specifically designed to produce artificially increased temperatures and micro climates.

In agricultural sites with continuously changing surroundings such as poly tunnels.

Surrounded by newly constructed solar farms.

In Zoological Gardens adjacent animal enclosures

In Car Parks adjacent parking bays. 

In domestic back gardens alongside sheds, barbecues and general garden paraphernalia.

Sewage and water treatment plants.

Aviation sites.

It would be overly burdensome at this stage to detail all the problem sites but, for now, here are just a few examples using google aerial imagery/META.

Bingley No 2/Bradford West Electricity Sub-Station. The weather station compound is marked by the red kite. Taking the readings downwind of the waste heat from 400kV electricity  transformers seems highly unlikely to record natural conditions.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/53%C2%B048’41.1%22N+1%C2%B052’00.5%22W/@53.8109965,-1.8671107,160m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m4!3m3!8m2!3d53.8114091!4d-1.8667942?entry=ttu

Dyce, Aberdeen.  The red kite again marks the weather station compound just to the left of the Airbus A320 engine exhaust.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/57%C2%B012’18.1%22N+2%C2%B012’19.4%22W/@57.2050334,-2.205367,74m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m4!3m3!8m2!3d57.2050309!4d-2.2053737?entry=ttu

As another observation here is the “Facebook/Meta” page of Floors Castle  Walled garden weather station. The principal purpose of a walled kitchen garden is to artificially create a warmer micro climate than the natural surroundings. This site was temporarily awarded the Scottish all time record high temperature in 2022 only to be beaten by a former RAF airfield site at Charterhall shortly afterwards.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1893457610801591

These above are by no means extremes. The Met Office claim all the above sites actually meet Class 4 – error margin by siting of  2°C .

Consider  just how bad the 112 Class 5 assessed sites actually must be.

NEW SITES

Whilst it may be understandable that the Met Office has some legacy old sites in locations which have become compromised over time, it should be seen as unacceptable for new stations to be poorly located from the outset.

Analysis of stations opened in the 21st century indicates a worsening of the situation with over 87% of new stations falling into Classes 3 to 5.  Worse still, of the 13 sites opened in the last 5 years, 8 fail  to make Classes 1 or 2. Thus the  proportion of “Junk” sites is actually increasing.

In 2022 the Neatishead Class 4 site was opened in the shadow of a large Radar ‘Dome. In 2023 the new Arthog site  was equally opened as a Class 4 inaccurate unit. 

This practise of opening new inadequately accurate reporting  sites must be stopped immediately or alternatively do not use their data for any form of climate reporting purposes. 

One instance of particular concern is the Hull, East Park station installed in 2011. It is a Class 5 site in a very poor position in the “Animal Education Centre”. It sits hard alongside what is now an overgrown hedge where  tour bus vehicles park. It regularly records the regional daily high temperature on the Met Office Daily listings as well as the National highest temperature on 2 occasions so far this year. An example of this listing can be viewed here.

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/observations/weather-extremes

As well as two reputable Private Weather Sites (PWS) in Hull in close proximity to the official Met Office site there is also  the Hull University Research Centre’s very well sited, equipped and maintained weather station.

https://www.hull.ac.uk/research/institutes/eei/sudslab-uk

Both the PWS sites and the very high quality University site record significantly lower temperatures than the official site. In contrast to the unhelpful and evasive responses typical of my inquiries to the Met Office, the University were exceptionally helpful and even gave me direct personal access to their live online data. Closer inspection revealed the official Met Office site to be regularly recording up to 3 degrees celcius higher.  Despite raising this issue with the Met Office they declined to answer my queries.  When asked to supply their recent data from the site, I was referred to an archive site that operates 18 months in arrears to view it presumably some time in the distant future.. 

It is not an unreasonable inference, therefore, that the Met Office are deliberately seeking to inflate the climate temperature record by installing new sites likely to record artificially raised temperatures. This leads on to the related issue below.

Closure of Rural Sites.

Listen to many weather forecasts and it is commonplace to hear along the lines of “those temperatures represent towns and cities. It will be a few degrees colder out in the countryside” and even “and there may be a frost in some rural areas” etc.

These types of weather presenter’s remarks  expressly do not mean there is some form of artificial cooling device reducing temperatures in rural areas. It means that urban temperatures are artificially elevated and are not representative of  the natural climate. 

This phenomenon is known as the “Urban Heat Island” effect.  The slew over to disproportionately  recording many more urban rather than rural sites is not just one of increased urban encroachment on the countryside. It has been primarily caused by closure of rural sites causing an unrepresentative imbalance.

Taking my home county of Kent as one example, 

150 years ago in 1874 there were 12  official Met Office stations simultaneously operating.

By 100 years ago in 1924 the number had grown to 18. 

By 50 years ago in 1974  there were 32 simultaneously operating official Met Office weather stations. 

Now in Kent in  2024 there are just 7 . This situation has been replicated throughout the country as a whole. 

The cause of this quite dramatic and relatively sudden reduction in measuring points was largely due to  the automation of recording.

Historically temperatures were recorded using  Liquid in Glass (LIG) thermometers – the type most of the general public are familiar with. These required human operators to visually read them and report data. A small army of volunteers and officials from various organisations fulfilled this function.  

In order to automate readings necessitated changing thermometers to electrically operated Platinum Resistance Thermometers (PRTs), These required a reliable electricity supply and  data communications (typically a landline) which were frequently not available at rural sites  in the early days of automation from the 1980s onwards. Hence many rural sites were closed down.

‘

In Kent alone longstanding rural sites at Anvil Green, Charing, Dover/RMS Guston, Dungeness, Elmstone, Eynsford, Hadlow, Northdown, Peckham (Kent), St Margarets, Throwley, Tunstall,  Ulcombe  West Malling and Wye were all closed.  Even some well sited parkland sites on the outskirts of towns were similarly  shut down at Tunbridge Wells, Whitstable, Margate, Herne Bay and Swanley.

By eliminating cooler recording sites from the  overall data  record  left predominantly urbanised sites to cause an unrepresentative temperature uplift from slewed averaging without any genuinely significant temperature increase actually taking place. Statistical sleight of hand (however inadvertent it may have been) produced inaccurate historic misrepresentation. 

Use of Data

To demonstrate how Met Office data  is used/misused  with some quite bizarre conclusions,  consider this report following the 2022 July hot weather event. An organisation known as World Weather Attribution “analysed” data produced from 3 UK weather station sites.

https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/without-human-caused-climate-change-temperatures-of-40c-in-the-uk-would-have-been-extremely-unlikely/

They concluded  

“At three individual stations the 1-day maximum temperatures are as rare as 1 in 500 years in St James Park in London, about 1 in 1000 years in Durham and only expected on average once in 1500 years in today’s climate in Cranwell, Lincolnshire. “

 St James Park London is a Class 5 (junk for climate reporting purposes) weather site i.e hugely worse than any of the  Class 4 sites I have highlighted above. 500 years ago the population of London was just 50,000 and in the midst of the Medieval Warm Period.

Durham Observatory is also a Class 5 (junk for climate reporting purposes) weather site and similarly much worse than all those class 4 sites I highlighted above. It simply did not exist 1,000 years ago.

“Cranwell, Lincolnshire”  is not some sleepy village rural location, it is actually sited at RAF Cranwell – an RAF training site housing numerous jet aircraft. The Met Office, somewhat implausibly, declares it a Class 1 site (though I suspect this is a default error)  which is positioned close to the taxiway to the main runway and alongside what is believed to be a sewage settlement tank.

How many jet fighters were there in 522A.D.? 

It would be staggeringly difficult for any reasonable person to accept that the vicinity of  over  12,000 feet of tarmac runway plus associated taxiways, hangars, roadways and parking aprons is somehow representative of the natural environment.   The same reasonable person would likely conclude such a site would give an artificially high and unnatural reading. 

The red kite marks the point between the weather station and the sewage settlement tank just by the taxiway.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/53%C2%B001’52.4%22N+0%C2%B030’13.1%22W/@53.0312203,-0.504928,327m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m4!3m3!8m2!3d53.0312187!4d-0.5036405?entry=ttu

Conclusions

I have clearly demonstrated with hard evidence that:

The Met Office is regularly fabricating data.

It is not producing reliable nor accurate data for climate reporting purposes from a network of poorly sited and inadequately maintained locations..

It is not meeting internationally recognised standards which it was itself party to establishing.

It has, over time, contributed to historic selection of unrepresentative data produced.

It is operating in a secretive, covert way and to its own regulation without independent oversight.   

It is failing to meet high standards of scientific integrity.  

It marks its own homework.

I feel it warrants independent review to:

Establish a high quality series of sites solely designed for climate reporting purposes. These should be independently overseen to ensure continued integrity of data.

An independent working group should re-analyse historic data to re-compile a historic record from only high quality sites that have been identified as not being compromised by extraneous heat sources.

An open declaration of likely inaccuracy of existing published data to avoid other institutions and researchers using unreliable data and reaching erroneous conclusions.

I await your views on this matter in your capacity of the Minister responsible for the Met Office.

Yours  Sincerely

Ray Sanders “

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2024/10/31/letter-to-peter-kyle-mp-secretary-of-state-for-science-innovation-and-technology/