Floors Castle DCNN 1988 – Within these walls.

55.60298 -2.46853 Met Office assessed CIMO Class 4 (but clearly Class 5) Installed 1/1/1941.

A prime example of Met Office weather stations installed in locations specifically designed to NOT reflect their natural wider environment. Quite how the Met Office can claim this is a Class 4 site (up to 2°C inaccuracy due to siting) and not a total junk Class 5 site (up to 5°C inaccuracy) defies common sense. As I stated in reviewing Edinburgh RBG, even Wikpedia reports that walled gardens enhance their natural climate by “several degrees”. Surely trained “Meteorologists” would know better than to claim national records for such locations wouldn’t they?…..Well they certainly did try. Record chasing seems to trump rational thought every time.

The Floors Castle Stevenson Screen is located in the famed walled kitchen garden of the former large stately home that is now a major tourist attraction. Close to an easterly facing wall and due south of the extensive heated greenhouses, this manual station has readings taken by the Castle’s dedicated staff. Details of the reading protocol together with views of the site are proudly proclaimed in a video clip on the Garden’s Facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1893457610801591

Clearly the weather station is both a well cherished feature of this tourist attraction but also quite blatantly not at all typical of the surrounding area. 4 metre high/500mm thick brick walls surrounding glass houses are not natural features thus the location is not, in any way, adequately representative for its data to be included in the temperature record. Here is a close up view.

To put into perspective how unrepresentative such locations actually are, consider the 1987 BBC documentary series “The Victorian Kitchen Garden” . Head gardener Harry Dodson regularly commented on how the site modifications were intended to transfer the site’s climate to those of the “South of France”. Probably every gardener and farmer understands this but seemingly professional meteorologists do not as demonstrated by Sean Batty of Scottish broadcaster STV.

“STV’s meteorologist Sean Batty said it was “absolutely incredible”.

I said in Tuesday’s news when I was at Floors Castle that the Scottish record had been set at Charter Hall 34.8 degrees Celsius,” he said.

“However, I did see that Floors Castle didn’t record their reading until 9am this morning and I thought that would be the new record holder and it now officially is.”

“It’s Scotland’s hottest place provisionally with a new high of 35.1C. That is absolutely incredible when you think that the previous record was 32.9C recorded at Greycrook, which is just a few miles away from Floors Castle, back in 2003.

“To break that by two degrees is absolutely phenomenal. Breaking and blowing that previous record right out of the water.”

https://news.stv.tv/scotland/hottest-day-in-scotland-officially-recorded-as-temperatures-reach-35-1c-at-floors-castle

So this “meteorologist” (who openly admits to have visited the site so no excuses) felt it was quite normal to proclaim national “records” taken in walled kitchen gardens specifically designed to enhance temperatures by several degrees……and so did the UK Meteorological Office – for a while.

However, following multiple immediate queries of the site’s acceptability from members of the general public, the Met Office ruled out its “record” and opted to accept the (former RAF) Charterhall site (also assessed CIMO Class 4) figures in lieu.

n.b. Interesting to consider – How did the RAF new site record compare with former record holder Greycrook’s readings on that July 2022 day? Well Greycrook was closed down 1/10/2004 – just a few months after setting its record – the CEDA archives show every subsequent month’s data as –

These almost immediate closures after setting records will be the subject of a future post.

To conclude, I will simply reiterate my previous assertions – it is not acceptable for a public, tax payer funded agency to operate in such a contrived manner. The use of data from such poorly sited and unrepresentative locations only distorts the climate record. It should be stopped forthwith.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2024/09/06/floors-castle-dcnn-1988-within-these-walls/