Belfast New Forge DCNN9178 – Maintaining the appallingly bad standards in Belfast. Alternative reality rules K.O.?

54.56030 -5.94084 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 4 Temperature records from 1/3/1982

With the closure of the spectacularly bad Class 5 Ravenhill Road site on the 8th November 2024, this New Forge site and the equally poor Class 5 Stormont Castle are the only weather stations left in the Belfast area. New Forge does not break the mould of atrocious standards of sites in Belfast – that is provided actually where it sits is really known……and whether anyone can be bothered to take readings. This is a terrible advert for all those concerned.

New Forge is another site set in the grounds of the government agency The Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBINI) as is the Hillsborough weather station. It is also alongside the recently developed New Forge sports complex with several synthetic grass (“Astroturf”) playing surfaces surrounding the screen.

In researching weather stations I initially look at the site’s history through “Google Earth Pro” historic images which afford 21st century aerial and street view images to assess changes over time. In this case, even before referring to these, my first thoughts focused on those artificial hockey, football, and bowls playing surfaces. On a personal level, I used to be involved ( as a team manager) with a Premier League Hockey Club in Rochester, Kent. I can confidently state that “sand based” Astroturf pitches are nothing like natural and are also very well known to alter their immediate climate. Given that most of them are regularly blasted with copious amounts of water before play, these pitches certainly create artificial micro climates. The pitches at New Forge were obviously (to my experienced eye) very new warranting further investigation.

The first thing the above current image indicates is that the weather station (Red Kite) was on the very outskirts of Belfast. Prior to the development of the AFBINI and the sports complex this would have been defined as borderline rural and “may” well have been a good site. In fact this would be a classic example of urbanisation changing site conditions introducing artificial warming effects over time – anthropogenic warming but nothing to do with CO2. Closer examination is thus required.

Firstly more of a close up on the site as of 9/3/2025 to identify the screen relative to the pathway and the regulation tree (!) growing just 8 metres to the west of it.

This 2019 image shows the site prior to the southern astroturf pitches being constructed and altering the significantly altering the climate of the area with southerly breezed warmed by the much more heat absorbant blue and dark surfaces lain on sand.

However, it is going back further in time that produces the most surprising alteration.

Spotted the significant change yet? Perhaps a close up from this 8/5/2010 image would help.

No tree. No Path. And………No Screen! So where was it? Buried deep in the archives almost inside a locked filing cabinet marked “Beware the Leopard” was this “Remark”

Firstly this note indicates a move date of 2001 but it is evident from the above that the screen was not in its current location in 2010. Secondly the “IRL” (Irish Grid Reference) is not precise enough to pinpoint the former location. What I can establish, however, is that the general area of these coordinates is now under the AFBINI car parking area as below.

This circumstantially gives an indication of the construction period of the relatively new looking AFBINI site. Relocation of screens on area development is very common, however, I had suspicions that the quoted move date was wrong as it obviously did not tie in the imagery. Clear aerial imagery does not go further back than 31/12/2001 so all I can establish this way is that the blurry 1985 image indicates very few buildings on the site.

Moving onto the observations record of this manual site, this is a typical example of just how dreadful standards have become. As I pointed out at Hillsborough, reading frequency did not seem a priority, at New Forge observations have become very much an optional or part time occupation. Below is the record of the days when both the maximum and minimum readings needed to derive a daily mean were successfully taken. N.B. 365 or 366 is the appropriate target figure. In 2017 the maximum LIGT was replaced by a PRT and data logger. Over 1,430 missing readings in 13 years.

2024 – 241. 2023 – 249. 2022 – 260. 2021 – 259. 2020 – 165. 2019 – 364. 2018 – 333. 2017 – 131 2016 – 313. 2015 – 322. 2014- 297. 2013 – 340 2012 – 349.

Prior to 2011 the record was something quite different, in fact it was only in 2012 that readings started to be missed. In 2011 just one single maximum reading was missing on the 3rd of January. Before then the record was effectively perfection. Was the date of relocation not 25/01/2001 and more likely 25/01/2011? This would explain the lack of a screen in the 2010 image and also the remarkably sudden deterioration in observations reliability. The easy access to the immediate buildings surroundings became a less desirable lengthy walk in all weathers.

Ultimately all my conjecture and research will no doubt be dismissed by the Met Office who seem to be more preoccupied with blustering away anyone questioning their practices by condemning them as “disinformers“. They never engage in discussion as they know they cannot substantiate their position.

For example it is quite obvious that New Forge was once an “out of town” site installed in an agricultural and rural institute’s grounds in 1982. Data for the climate period from 1961 to 1990 was fabricated from unspecified different site’s readings for 21 years prior to the site’s installation which they refuse to divulge hence ZERO transparency. The area has then been subject to growing urbanisation effects as the site was developed ultimately leading to a relocation of the screen. The surroundings subsequently deteriorated even further into an artificial micro-climate dominated by car parks, buildings and heavily modified ground surfaces ranging from concrete through tarmac to sand based Astroturf. Keswick – style they also could not be bothered to do anything about the tree growing alongside the new site – why bother? Activities in the area changed from agricultural husbandry to literally thousands of internal combustion engine vehicle movements with very high frequency over the majority of the days.

But now to really “throw the cat amongst the pigeons” despite all of the above the following “Climate Averages” really do falsify just about everything on either side of the debate.

A mean maximum of 13.66°C and mean minimum of 6.26°C for the period of progressive urbanisation and micro-climate from 1991 to 2020. Meanwhile for the 1961 to 1990, the 21 year fabricated and borderline rural period of 1961 to 1990.

The derived increments over the 60 year period amount to 0.84°C for mean maximum but just 0.29°C for mean minimum. This mean minimum increment is in line with the 0.33°C increments noted at both Katesbridge (19 miles) and Helens Bay (9 miles) but massively at odds with the likes of Killowen showing a staggering 1.76°C in mean minimum increment over the same period. How on earth do such enormous discrepancies come about in such a small area of a relatively small country? Is “climate change” selective down to each Met Office “Gridded Cell”? Could this be the explanation of why everywhere is warming X times faster than everywhere else?

No, this is simply an artefact of the absurdity and rank nonsense that passes for climate science at the Met Office. The “Gridded Cell” figures that the Met Office has both reified and almost deified are simply figments of a computer model that do not stand up to any real world scrutiny whatsoever. Numbers created for non existent sites or for areas before readings were even taken are works of fabricated fiction – nothing more. In any other walk of life nobody would pay any heed to such made up numbers. That this fabrication process is “Peer Reviewed” proves the assertion of Richard Charles Horton OBE FRCPH FMedSci editor in chief of The Lancet that:

“Peer review to the public is portrayed as a quasisacred process that helps to make science our most objective truth teller, but we know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong“

Whilst the modern urbanised environment of Killowen was being compared to a pre-existing model of what the rural area climate “should be”, the Belfast New Forge cell was no doubt based on the urban area of central Belfast and hence will show little if any long term change (as it duly obliges) despite significant area change. The measurement to the second decimal place is there solely to create an impression of scientific rigour (or the author’s stupidity) when in reality the effect is more like comedic.

That entire government policies are being derived from such ridiculous parodies of real world data is something you just could not make up……but they do. And it has to be stopped.

As a final foot note. In deriving a new climate history reconstruction, I do not consider it would be appropriate to include just a small part of the island of Ireland (i.e. Northern Ireland) in with the rest of the UK as this would not be a logical meteorological entity. The climate of Northern Ireland would be more appropriately considered together with the Republic of Ireland. I will review all the NI sites and do a country summary of the Met office presented data but will not be including any data with that of Scotland Wales and England.

No offence intended to those in Northern Ireland. If anyone has access to Met Eireann data I would happily assist in their attempts at an all Ireland reconstruction.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2026/01/02/belfast-new-forge-dcnn9178-maintaining-the-appallingly-bad-standards-in-belfast-alternative-reality-rules-k-o/