Westonzoyland DCNN 8640 – the Wind not in the Willows

51.11511 -2.92203 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 5 Temperature readings from 1/7/2007

The Westonzoyland weather station is located in the grounds of Somerset Willow Growers , who as well as growing the willow, produce crafted willow products and offer training courses. This site is consequently described by the Met Office as an “Educational” status site though it is still an official “climate reporting” site.

The site was only installed/adopted in 2007 thus the Met Office really has no excuse for adding into the historic climate record such inferior quality sites. The vast majority of sites being opened even now are only very low grade and even suspiciously intended to produce unnatural results such as Whitesands. From the outset this Westonzoyland site was never going to be representative of anywhere other than its own hedged in location, with car parking and a track immediately alongside for motorised vehicles.

The 10 metre radius encircled area above includes a reverse parked vehicle with hardstanding to the south west of the screen in front of al those buildings. Widening out the view to the 100 metre radius encircled area for a Class 1 site demonstrates how hugely compromised this “rural” site actually is.

Briefly assessing the observations record also indicates major deficiencies. 2015 offered no readings whatsoever, 2016 only half the year, 2017 with 62 days missing readings. The archives suggest personal issues for these absent readings, whilst that may be personally regrettable it really is of no concern to the important issues at stake. If the Met Office chose to adopt such sites they should ensure adequate quality – the implications are far too important to run much of the Met Office like a “cottage industry”

Finally, the real problem goes much deeper still. I referred above to a track for motorised vehicles though that may not be fully evident in the headline image. This is actually how the cosy, sheltered site is frequently used as evidenced from Google historic images.

Regularly driving and parking motorhomes and caravans so absurdly close to the screen renders the site totally unusable. There really is no scientific credibility in using data from this site. The Met Office must be held accountable – they know these sites are junk so why keep adding them to the system. The accusation of having a “warming agenda” to prove is becoming ever more hard to refute.