Lowestoft DCNN 3197 & DCNN 3198 – “Confusion will be my Epitaph”

52.48365 1.72493 CIMO Classification Unknown. Installation 1/1/1887, Data shown from 1/1/1914 Relocated 1/8/2003 to current named location then CLOSED 1/11/2010 – BUT claimed by the Met Office to be “Open” and still “reporting data”.

The Met Office provides a web-page dedicated to “Historic Station Data” with a guide map and notes “To see a time series of monthly data, select a location from the list below, or use the map:”

It helpfully marks “Open” sites with orange markers and “Closed” sites with blue markers. Call me old fashioned if you will, but I expected orange sites to be “Open” and blue sites to be “Closed” – apparently this is not the case.

One station caught my eye – Lowestoft. I could not find the station’s CIMO rating from my listing obtained under Freedom of Information Act which puzzled me. So I clicked on the “View DATA” key alongside its name – there began an interesting insight into the Met Office mindset…….

Firstly the Met Office name the site as Lowestoft: Monckton Avenue and the “Historic Data” claims its data runs from 1914, however the station was only moved to its Monckton Avenue location in 2003 and given the District County Network Number (DCNN) 3198.

From 1914 to 2003, Met Office WGS84 co-ordinates (52.48998 1.7445) indicate the original Lowestoft weather station (DCNN 3197) was located over 1,500 radial metres away in the grounds of what is now known as the Ashley School on the other side of town. Such a considerable relocation distance and variation of locality makes it unrealistic to consider it as a continuous unbroken record hence the two unique station numbers.

Secondly the site was closed down 1/11/2010 when the site became a small housing development – the headline image from google streetview is dated from May 2012 (after closure). When operational, the same position image from September 2009, showed this highly compromised location in front of large greenhouses.

Incongrously, the Met Office site indicates it is an “Open” station when it has not existed for almost 14 years.

At this point I decided I should confirm the location and status of stations with the Met Office – I felt I must surely have something wrong. I asked them for confirmation of where the Lowestoft site was. The first response was fairly typical in solely answering a question I had not asked.

“Good afternoon, 

Thank you for reaching out. 

You can access station data for Lowestoft here: https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/stationdata/lowestoftdata.txt“

On asking again the response was more specific.

“Dear Ray

Thanks for your email. Apologies for the miscommunication. The Lowestoft Station was closed in 2010 and all of the data from that link (excluding rainfall) is estimated after the closure date. There is still a rain gauge at Lowestoft Sewage Works, NR33 0TN. The nearest full station is at Weybourne as the crow flies. “

At this point therefore, I concluded:

The Met Office has fused two separate and unique datasets from distinctly different locations from 1914 to 2010 into one “Historic” record.

From site closure in 2010 to date, readings are being “estimated” calculated from a “formula” based on nearby stations but……

…….this comes back to my earlier post regarding Dungeness and the Missing Met Stations Mystery – Looking at the weather stations around Lowestoft detailed on that Climate Averages map, Coltishall closed 4/4/2006 and Hemsby closed 2/4/2001. It would appear the said “Climate Averages” are being derived from estimates based on other sites estimates ……and then averaged out!

The stations at Newton Rigg and Nairn Druim, also indicated on the Historic Station Data as “Open”, are in fact closed sites and all those shown as “Closed” continued to provide estimated data for periods after their closure.

This begs the questions from me ….

When does “data” cease to actually be “data” and become better described as “fabrication”?

What benefit is derived from such estimation and averaging for sites that have simply ceased to exist?

Most stations stop reporting when closed down (literally several hundreds of them) – why are some chosen to continue to appear to be open?

Answers welcomed.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2024/09/05/lowestoft-dcnn-3197-dcnn-3198-confusion-will-be-my-epitaph/