Auchincruive DCNN6544 – A long term site with a reliable history that is not used.

55.47700 -4.56500 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 4 Temperature records from 1/1/1932

Auchincruive weather station lies in the grounds of the Auchincruive Estate close to the associated agricultural college. It is just 2.5 miles east of the centre of Ayr – {“Auld Ayr, wham ne’er a town surpasses,
For honest men and bonny lasses.” – from one of my favorite poems} in a rural setting. It is also within just 1.9 miles of the main aviation weather station of Prestwick Airport (no 2) and 2.8 miles of the Met Office Prestwick Gannet site. Of these three close sites, Auchincruive is by far the best located for reasonably accurate climate recording being installed for that specific purpose and predates the other two. Somewhat typically though this is not the way the Met Office sees things.

This image from weatherobs.com (green dots indicating current temperature) helps locate the three sites. Auchincruive to the south, the Prestwick No 2 site at the junction end of two runways with their odd almost 90° configuration, and Gannet to the north. The sites are at similar altitudes of 16 metres fro Prestwick no 2, 27 metres for Gannet and 48 metres for the more inland Auchincruive. They all have similar instalation dates with Auchincruive dating from 1932 and both the airport sites from the mid 1930s. Oddly the early days of both aviation sites are not archived with data for Prestwick No 2 only running from 1962 to 1997 (though still fully operational) and Gannet from 1993 to date. Only Auchincruive has full term archived data from its 1932 inception and though its observations standards are very good indeed there is an oddity of 7 consecutive months missing from May to December 1988 – their ommission from the archives does not mean they were not taken just possibly not retained or lost in some way.

The Auchincruive site itself is a typical met Office Class 4 site. The image below indicates 30 metre and 10 metre circled areas. It may be possible to achieve Class 3 with some major arboreal surgery to the surrounding trees but it is unlikely to ever become a pristine site without major tree clearance.

The site is not visible from the road in Google streetview but the site entrance is which indicates the scale of the tree growth shading and sheltering problems.

This is such a pity because again, typically, it was not always like this, in fact, at one time not so long ago it was actually a good quality reliable site. This below is a 1999 image showing an open site unlikely to be subject to wind sheltering and static air over heating effects – very reminiscent of Pershore/Throckmorton and its overgrowth problems.

This is a recurring theme with so very many Met Office sites where unchecked vegetation growth in the immediate vicinity has needlessly degraded sites. The problem here is that Auchincruive will originally have been far better and more reliably accurate than either of the airfield sites could ever have been. Compare these sites which have not significantly changed over the years. Firstly Prestwick No 2 just inside the two main runway’s junction alongside the Air Traffic Control building.

And then consider Gannet below with its multiple helicopter landing pads – not really very area representative is it?

Auchincruive was automated in 2005 which allows for its data to be viewed on weatherobs in addition to its near neighbours. This makes site comparisons of both high and low temperatures very interesting. Outside of siting standards and immediate surroundings there should be very little if any discrepancy between such near neighbours……but there most certainly is.

Auchincruive recorded yesterday’s national minimum temperature – unsurprising for late autumn at a Scottish site even if only 2.5 miles from the sea of the Forth of Clyde. Weatherobs only indicates hourly point readings and the Met office has discontinued its free “Datapoint” service to access when this reading was achieved. However, Auchincruive’s general graph/readouts look like this with the lowest of -3.94 °C shown against the 08:00 reading just slightly shy of the daily lowest point. Note the almost exact match of the low point to sunrise which was 08:02 at Ayr for the day.

So how does this rural site compare with its near neighbours. Prestwick No 2 as a primary aviation site broadcasts readings picked up by weatherobs half hourly at 10 minutes before and 20 minutes after the hour creating a more striking image. The readings are rounded to the nearest degree with 0.5 and above being rounded up, below and excluding 0.5 being rounded down.

This site never shows below -3°C indicating it could never have dropped below -3.4 °C at the coldest point. Gannet is shown more conventionally with hourly readings as below.

Here the coldest point of just – 3.2°C being achieved at 06:00 with the reading at 08:00 (coincident with Auchincruive’s minimum) of -2.1°C. Clearly this indicates a significant difference in both depth of cold and timing reached. This is entirely indicative of the “concrete jungle” Urban Heat Island effect of the unnatural airfield site as opposed to the natural readings at the rural one.

The reason I am highlighting these issues is to further demonstrate the well known to every meteorologist fact that urbanised areas are not recording the natural climate. The drift of the Met Office to depending on such artificially corrupted sites is demonstrated by its totally unrealistic choice of sites to represent these alleged climate averages. Auchincruive is the “senior” of this Ayrshire cluster with a long almost unbroken history of data……exactly what is needed for a Location Specific Long Term Climate Average. Again, the Met office do not seem to see it that way.

The Met Office has, in its “infinite wisdom” opted to ignore the data from 1932 to date from Auchincruive (a formerly well maintained rural site) and instead offer as your first choice of “Nearest Climate Station” Prestwick Gannet. This only has archived readings to check from 1993 concocted to cover the period 1961 to 2020. This latter site unquestionably, and demonstrably, suffers from extreme artificial effects that only the blind would be unable to see but even they would hear and feel those helicopters. It cannot have any credible level of correlation to Auchincruive when its readings can be affected by the stochastic comings and goings of rotor wash and myriad other uncontrolled and articficial corruptions. And no doubt the Met office will claim any “missing data” for Gannet was infilled from…..Auchincruive!

If this above is not enough to lay bare the deceptions being employed in this “data set” presentation of area climate averages , pause to consider that the other 4 offered stations DO NOT EXIST – they are Dead. For those at the Met Office who somehow struggle to understand most people’s unwillingness to accept this make believe, I refer them to this video for an explanation.

Saughall Opened 1987 and closed in 2013

Girvan Opened in 1962 and closed in 2012

Largs Opened in 1959 Closed in 1975

Paisley Opened in 1884, Closed in 2011 – had monthly data imagined for the following 14 years and finally had the stake rammed though its unbeating heart in 2025 when the Met Office covertly deleted all its fictitious numbers when contested.

Thus if you want to know the likely long term climate averages for a 93 year old weather station at Auchincruive you are not allowed to know. Well just maybe someone will actually do that in lieu of the Met Office.

Meanwhile, perhaps better not let this sort of thing get overly publicised by “Disinformers” like me or the public might start realising things are not quite as they are being led to believe.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/11/18/auchincruive-dcnn6544-a-long-term-site-with-a-reliable-history-that-is-not-used/