Isle Of Portland WMO03855/03857 – A long but confused history that even the Met Office seems unsure of…..but total Junk just the same.

50.52206 -2.45565 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 4 (?!) Installed 1/5/1965 or 1895 or 1906 or……….

There has been a weather station on the Isle of Portland (also known as Portland Bill) going back to Robert Fitzroy’s earliest objectives to set up a national weather forecasting service following the Royal Charter Storm of 1859. This “island” has not been one as such for a long time and its location on the Dorset coast acts as an early warning indicator of weather patterns emerging from the south west. This is a classic coastal site purely intended for weather forecasting yet, realistically, is quite hopeless as a climate station, and it shows.

The basis of weather station siting has inevitably included ease of access for the observers, however, I do feel the line should be drawn at pulling up and parking cars alongside though that never seems to concern the Met Office such as at Nettlecombe and Crosby amongst many others.

Avoiding any further rather sarcastic undertones I shall simply categorically state this site is Class 5 Junk. If the Met Office feels the need to justify this site as representative of anywhere for climate recording that is expressly NOT their prerogative. The Met Office is a government agency staffed by civil servants charged with providing data of the highest scientific standards and credibility. This Isle of Portland site simply cannot fulfill any climate recording function as it is far too regularly compromised – after all how many more cars should be parked alongside? Remember all those Met Office site quality claims? THEY ARE TOTALLY UNTRUE. In reality there are probably good grounds to sue the Met Office for deliberate disinformation and malfeasance.

For more site information, although the screen itself is not visible, the wind mast can just be discerned to the left of the chimney of the White House just below the “new” Lighthouse.

This really is not some venerable long term site, it is low standard and unacceptable for climate reporting. Its history, however, is almost perversely hidden by the Met office. The archived records show a start date at this “New” Lighthouse site of 1/5/1963 with temperature records from 1967.

This really is unusual given that the site was actually moved here in May 1906 from its original “Old Lighthouse” location.

Quite why the Met Office is so unusually reticent in claiming long term history for this site (when they should be fully aware of its history as all this is their own information) is very strange. And then there are these notes indicating that they really are fully aware of its history.

2000-01-25

Current

HISTORICAL NOTES

SITE USED TO BE KNOWN AS PORTLAND BILL COASTGUARD

Furthermore the “Remarks” section has multiple instances indicating unsatisfactory data issues. This is just one of nine problems with “Grass” temperature readings alone

009-08-04

2009-08-11

QUALITY CONTROL

DCNN 8731 : GRASS MIN VALUES SUSPECT & DELETED FROM MIDAS.INC 340620 REFERS.

There are over 60 recorded instances of unreliable, missing or unsuitable data in the file culminating in the latest rather alarming site amendments.

2025-03-11	Current	SITE INFORMATION	REMAINING CONCRETE SLABS HAVE BEEN REMOVED AND TURFED OVER.
2024-10-08	Current	SITE INFORMATION	PAVING SLABS NEAR SCREEN REMOVED AND TURFED OVER.

Cars parked alongside, in front of buildings and hard standing, in the lee of a lighthouse and then concrete slabs requiring removal to ensure the screen was actually located over grass really does not inspire confidence in quality of historic observations. Nevertheless, despite the data being completely unsuitable for climate reporting, yet again, the Met Office have managed to “prove” significant warming from this site.

This sort of representation is clearly not worth the internet time in looking it up. It is junk non-data from a junk climate reporting site and in presenting it, the Met office demonstrates it has become a JUNK organisation unworthy of its massive government funding. This must, and eventually will, change.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/10/31/isle-of-portland-wmo03855-03857-a-long-but-confused-history-that-even-the-met-office-seems-unsure-of-but-total-junk-just-the-same/