Craibstone No 2 DCNN 1271- Compare and Contrast

57.17603 -2.25939 Met Office Assessed CIMO Class 4 Installed 9/9/2021

There has been a weather station at Craibstone continuously since 1921. It was formerly located at the agricultural Craibstone College which is now part of SRUC “Scotland’s Rural College” ( Colaiste Dhùthchail na h-Alba) at the Aberdeen Campus. Site development and the A90 road improvements required a re-location of the long running and well operated station. A lot of sensible thought went into this move. The current automatic site is now in “experimental” fields still operated by the College. Well away from the urban outskirts of Aberdeen the site now looks like this………

Street View imagery often foreshortens views. The line of trees to the north scales to 80 metres distant from the screen, the central swathe of grass is 20 metres wide and the screen is set back 100 metres from the minor road.

The 2008 image of the area (13 years prior to installation) is a good indicator of the agricultural trial fields (with deliberately separated crop segments) that the college manages.

There do not appear to be any shading problems, the area vegetation is variable but not atypical of the region and well separated from the screen. The only possible concern may be the apparent slight slope. The Met Office quote an elevation of 134 metres amsl. An examination of the area Ordnance survey sheet shows the 130 metre contour at the road 100 metres to the south with the 135 metre contours no nearer than 80 metres in any direction. The high point to the east at 168 Metres is over 400 metres away.

My personal view is that the Met Office assessment seems unduly harsh given there are unlikely to be any artificial influences on the site. This site could not make Class 1 but Class 2 is quite possible or at very worst Class 3. However comparing and contrasting Craibstone No 2 with another nearby Class 4 assessed site rather makes a mockery of whoever did the assessments. Is Craibstone really no better than this notorious Class 4 site just 2.7 miles away?

Should Craibstone really be assessed as a poorer site than this Class 3 station at Heathrow below?

I contend that Met Office assessments are not consistent and there are many poorly located and unreliable high profile and more urban sites that are being unrealistically marked as significantly better than they really are. Conversely many good quality and truly representative lesser known rural sites are marked down. Craibstone is not perfect but it is certainly much more accurate, well considered and more reliable than very many others.