Nettlecombe DCNN 8632 & DCNN 8633 – A tale of two stations.

Nettlecombe Field Studies Council (above) 51.13076 -3.35005 Met Office assessed CIMO Class 5 & Satisfactory Installed 1/1/1968 {Image courtesy Peter Stevens from Google Street view.}

Nettlecombe Birds Hill 51.11779 -3.34946 Met Office assessments not known. Installed 1/1/1968 closed 10/7/2012 but still apparently in situ.

There are multiple issues with the current “Nettlecombe Field Studies Council” site which become further confused by the Met Office simultaneously opening a second weather station known as “Netllecombe Birds Hill” approximately 1,400 metres away and their dual operation for 44 years.

Analysis of the current Field Studies Council (FSC) site is an object lesson in how not to run a reliable recording station.

Here is the aerial image of the FSC site.

Accurate monitoring of weather recording sites is imperative to ensure extraneous heat sources liable to distort readings are kept well away from the Stevenson Screen. This manual reporting site has readings taken by the staff at the FSC – So why on earth do staff of the responsible body choose to park multiple vehicles by the screen?

This vehicle parking is not a one off situation, of the 8 historic aerial images since 2001 shown on Google Earth Pro, 6 show vehicles parked in the vicinity of the Screen. Such regular parking naturally leaves marks, ruts and indicators on the grass verge which would be clearly visible during any site inspection. Why are the Met office inspectors not noticing this and taking action. The vehicles may well be static warming up engines and passenger compartments for considerable periods in colder weather and similarly in hot weather to activate the air conditioning to cool the cabins. Two of the above vehicles shown are 12 seater “minibuses”. The close exhaust emissions will unquestionably have a significant effect on temperature readings as per the Motherwell Strathclyde Park fiasco.

This leads on to the observing standards and site’s record keeping in general. The “Remarks” section of the CEDA archive indicates 50 entries of “Missing DATA” variously where “STAFF TOO BUSY”, “: No trained staff available to take readings”, “no one available” , ” Staff away” , etc. This is definitely not an indication of dedicated staff and devotion to duty. I personally find it hard to accept given this “track record” that when readings are actually taken these can be guaranteed as “reliable” and taken by adequately trained and committed staff. This site is Class 5 by siting and unsatisfactory by operation.

Moving on to Nettlecombe Birds Hill, the most recent aerial image from google indicates the site is still there despite “closure” twelve years ago.

The site is surrounded by woodland but at least considerably distant from extraneous artificial heat sources, however, a clue to a problem lies in the site name of “Birds HILL”. Weather stations should, wherever possible, be located on flat land. This site most certainly is not flat at all as can be seen from the Ordnance Survey map of the area. The station is on an unacceptably steep slope.

This was also a manually recording site and though I have not been able to ascertain exactly by whom there is a remarkable similarity to the FSC site i.e. “STAFF TOO BUSY”

Remarks such as “DUE TO THE SCREEN DOOR BEING LEFT OPEN ALL AIR TEMP VALUES HAVE BEEN DELETED” really do not fill me with confidence in the quality of the observing staff’s competence.

N.B. this issue of leaving Screens open is remarkably common, this street view image below is of Threave weather station in Kirkcudbrightshire and there are other examples. Given street view images are not taken that frequently it seems quite surprising for them to catch images of open screens…but they do.

Thus the Met Office chose to simultaneously site two new manually reporting stations within 1,400 metres of each other, both of highly questionable siting, subject to poor reporting standards and yet continued to run them simultaneously for 44 years. One still operates and the other (Birds Hill) probably still could. This just seems an expensive way to produce unreliable and often unusable data for no obvious benefit – certainly not value for taxpayer money. Again I feel I have to ask….why?

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2024/09/21/nettlecombe-dcnn-8632-dcnn-8633-a-tale-of-two-stations/