Scarborough DCNN 2291 – A tad north of 44,000 square feet of roofed reservoir – where else would you put a weather station?

54.27274 -0.42252 Met Office CIMO Assessed CIMO Class 4 Installed 1/4/1987

This is my 200th post. As I said on my 100th post I had not initially started by cherry picking poor sites, in fact Scarborough is risibly defined as Class 4 and I have yet to cover a further 45 Class 5 sites. There are also 115 more Class 4 sites to review which demonstrates how incredibly few good quality sites the Met Office actually operates. Scarborough is yet another example of atrocious siting – how the Met Office makes this Class 4 is beyond belief.

There have been weather stations in Scarborough since 1879, the first at the Town Hall, a latter one at a plant nursery since developed and finally the above one which sits within 5 metres of the edge of the roofed Springhill reservoir. As can be seen from the headline image there are 44,000 square feet of heat absorbing dark roof immediately to the south. Any gentle breeze from the warmer south east around to the prevailing south west will be artificially warmed by this natural heat sink. Not only will this affect summer day time temperatures upwards but also especially the winter minima will be subject to a warmer micro climate. Looking at Class 4 here are the regulations

I doubt whether the authors ever considered a body of water being covered by a roof combining the effects though I am confident if they had they would not have considered it in any way natural. The 10 metre “exclusion zone” is as below.

Clearly the Met Office will say their tape measure confirms Class 4 is just about correct for flat measure, however, the roof is not a flat to the ground structure being elevated a metre above. So how does the topography look.

The tight contours (10 metre spacing) immediately show steep slopes surrounding the site and the hatch marks show the artificial groundworks both around the reservoir itself and immediate embankment. The adjacent road bears the same name as the reservoir i.e. Spring Hill and indicates the nature of the area. It is simply not credible to judge this site as meeting Class 4 – the artificial and natural slopes immediately exclude it and I am frankly astonished the Met Office feels it is acceptable to claim Class 4. The street view image shows the multiple problems.

In summary Scarborough is quite blatantly unacceptable for inclusion in the national historic temperature record. That this standard is the norm (49% of all UK weather stations are claimed to be class 4 by the Met Office and 29% Class 5) is a damning indictment of the poor standards of the Met Office.