Castlereagh DCNN9269 – From Bad to Worse.

54.56485 -5.87184 My Assessment CIMO Assessed Class 5 Installed 1/11/1990

Castlereagh weather station lies at SONI/Eiregrid Offices just outside the suburb to the south east of Belfast from which it takes its name. The above site is very poor that conforms to no regulatory standard other than “Site not meeting the requirements of class 4.” and being “Class 5 (additional estimated uncertainty added by siting up to 5 °C)“. It is also severely affected by shade from both trees and the office buildings themselves. But this is not the problem with the above because that is where it was up to 1/4/2007 – it was then relocated to an even inferior site.

54.56485 -5.87184 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 5 Moved to this location 4/11/2005

From the above 2 images it is easy to see why this weather station was moved due to the extension of the building with a new section to the southwest. The original was clearly an unacceptable site meteorologically anyway so one would assume the imperative would be to improve on that. Unfortunately that is not how the Met Office mindset operates, these are, after all, Civil Servants (signed up to the official secrets act) making the decisions. Tick boxes, procedures, precedent and all manner of none-scientific priorities come first. This is the thinking, “It was bad before so it should be equally bad now to be comparative”.

If this seems overly cynical on my part then consider this remark freely offered by Gardenman44 on the Talkshop regarding the location of the atrocious Hull East Park site. {ed note: comment appeared under Cardiff Bute Park review.}

“Hi Roger.  I know East Park, Hull very well as I was the one who liaised with the met office about moving it there. I had concerns at the time regarding future growth from hedges, trees and the main building shading the area, but was told that it was far better there than its previous home at Pearson Park, across the city.

When it was set up, there was no more need for manual reading of the data once per day, as it was automated to take hourly readings. The rain guage was automatic as well.

In my nearly 20yrs of collecting data, I saw first hand what the met office did with it (the data)…..when questioned, they just said it was quality control!”

This comment bears out lots of others I have had by people “close to” the Met Office and notably John Maynard (who was responsible for the original siting of the Dunstaffnage site in 1972) has confirmed modern Met Office standards have dramatically slipped into the continuance of bad practices.

To detail the faults at Castlereagh, it can barely be seen in aerial imagery being in a small clearing of the trees, alongside a concrete walkway, to the south facing paved terrace (complete with parasols to the seating and table) and in a complete wind stilled suntrap at times of high sun. This is Astwood Bank all over again as far as siting is concerned only probably worse.

This is a manual reporting station simply requiring once daily observation readings at 9:00 a.m. GMT. and given its proximity to the offices surely cannot be a particularly onerous task. However, yet again looking at the records in the CEDA archive, taking observations seems to be a low priority. Over the last 10 years only one year (2019) could be rated as good for reading frequency. In all other years there were numerous omissions with 94 missing days in 2017 having followed 67 unfulfilled in 2016. Nearly all years had a minimum of 10% missing day’s readings.

I have no explanation for this increasing lack of readings being taken at these manual stations. If one considers Ipstones Edge, an open country relatively remote site, the observations record is impeccable but here, in a staffed Castlereagh Eiregrid office, the record is “patchy” to say the least. Surely the Met Office must bear responsibility for what is one of their sanctioned climate reporting sites. That does presume, however, the Met Office actually knows where it is. This is the site location map from their official Weather Observations Website. The blue dot is where they appear to think it is at approximately 1.5km from where it actually is.

Clicking on that blue dot reveals that the official Met Office site they are calling Castlereagh is an “Educational” establishment.

All in all this is yet another junk site that could have been readily improved on enforced relocation but almost certainly was not (even worsened) in order to keep a poor record going for perverse reasons totally unconnected with any observational accuracy. This is the “new normal” for the Met office for whom scientific integrity seems to be a thing of the past.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/07/15/castlereagh-dcnn9269-from-bad-to-worse/