St. James’s Park London WMO 03770 – Officially Unsatisfactory and Unrealistic conclusions.

51.50494 -0.13096 Met Office Assessed CIMO Class 5 and UNSATISFACTORY Installed 1/1/1903

London ranks as one of the world’s largest and most intense Urban Heat Islands (UHI).

“London’s urban centre has the joint-fourth most extreme urban heat island (UHI) “hot spot” of six major cities around the world, with temperatures 4.5°C hotter than rural surroundings, according to new research by global sustainable development consultancy, Arup.”

“https://www.arup.com/news/londons-most-extreme-urban-heat-island-hot-spot-compared-to-five-other-global-cities-in-new-survey/

Urban heat is not some rarely understood scientific principle, it is common knowledge – a phenomenon that is experienced by almost everyone at some time. This additional urban heat is even a regular feature of popular music lyrics such as “hot now, summer in the city….” by the “Lovin’ Spoonful” .

500 years ago the population of the Greater London metropolitan area was estimated to be under 50,000 whilst now it stands at almost 15 million – a growth worth noting for later context.

The “centre” of London from where distances to/from London are calculated is generally regarded as the King Charles 1 statue at the head of The Mall just a short walk from Charing Cross Station. The St James’s Park weather station is an even shorter walk away from this “centre” of London

The Met Office asses the site as the lowest possible standard of CIMO Class 5 with a noted inaccuracy by siting of up to 5°C……but then again, given Arup’s above assessment of London UHI effects and most people’s common knowledge, it could not reasonably be assessed otherwise. The Met Office have also published data (following Freedom of Information request) showing the assessment of the site by their own unique standards as being their lowest possible category of UNSATISFACTORY as of September 2024.

Just in case the headline image does not tell you everything you really need to know about this site, here is an aerial image.

A wider angle view locates the site at the extreme edge of the park alongside the dense urban area.

There is no real site security and I personally have seen a traffic cone with a half drunk pint of lager balanced above on top of the Screen. In hot sunny weather, sun bathers, office workers and the general public flock to the park and cover most of the grass. As can be seen above, service/supply vehicles are frequently parked around the area. To suggest this is a reliable site for supplying accurate readings of the natural countrywide environment for the historic climate record is somewhat difficult to accept. However this site is regularly highlighted as the regional or national high on the Met Office’s daily extremes listings nonetheless.

In the July 2022 hot weather event the Met Office claimed this site recorded the National 2nd highest temperature ever of 40.2°C only pipped by 0.1°C by RAF Coningsby with the latter’s own extraneous influences – the subject of a future review. Unquestionably the instrumentation at St James’s Park will have accurately recorded the unique site conditions at that time but clearly the Met Office overlooked Arup’s above report (and their own physical senses) about the likelihood of the UHI effect artificially enhancing temperatures by up to 4.5°C. They subsequently conjectured these high temperatures were a flavour of things to come –

“Met Office Chief Scientist Professor Stephen Belcher said: “In a climate unaffected by human influence, climate modelling shows that it is virtually impossible for temperatures in the UK to reach 40°C.”

Obviously the UHI climate in St James’s Park central London is definitely a result of “human influence” (about 15 million human influences ) so Professor Stephen Belcher is not making any inappropriate comment regarding specific weather station locations. I suspect, though, that he was suggesting causes other than the blatantly obvious real ones for the elevated temperatures in specific sites.

World Weather Attribution a so called “think tank” organisation based at Imperial College London (another short walk away from St James Park) analysed 3 specific Met Office sites in relation to this same 2022 weather event. They concluded

““At three individual stations the 1-day maximum temperatures are as rare as 1 in 500 years in St James Park in London, about 1 in 1000 years in Durham and only expected on average once in 1500 years in today’s climate in Cranwell, Lincolnshire. “ *

Again WWA seemed conveniently to not recognise Arup’s detailed assessment of the London UHI which as I referred to above has been caused by the increase in population of just 50,000 to 15,000,000 over WWA’s highlighted 500 year period. The issue of the site recording device’s location also being rated Unsatisfactory and failing to meet any defined WMO acceptable standards also seemed to escape their consideration despite the site being so close by.

All the above further indicates that the Met Office is supplying unrepresentative data from many demonstrably poorly sited and thus inadequately accurate locations. This spurious data is then analysed beyond any reasonably realistic representation of its data quality leading to questionable conclusions. Professor Belcher’s and WWA’s computer “models” could be said to be experiencing “GIGO – Garbage in, Garbage out” This is not good scientific practise.

However, there is actually a much worse site used by the Met Office only a short distance away from St James Park to be shown in my next review of…….Battersea Heliport.

*Cranwell and Durham will be reviewed in the near future.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2024/09/24/st-jamess-park-london-wmo-03770-officially-unsatisfactory-and-unrealistic-conclusions/