Lough Fea WMO 03911 – £1.2 Billion Super Computer project versus a lick of paint.

54.72109 -6.81470 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 5 Temperature records from 1/1/1989

Lough Fea weather station was originally solely a rain gauge site on original installation in 1965. A stevenson screen was added in 1988 for temperature readings as a World Meteorological Organisation reporting site. The above image is from September 2009 some 21 years after its establishment and I do wonder if any maintenance had ever been carried out for the Screen to have fallen into such a dismal state. This site shows typical poor location and maintenance of the Met Office that is completely unacceptable.

Pierre Gosselin runs the excellent blog No Tricks Zone. From his German aspect he recently highlighted the issue of stevenson Screen maintenance and a report detailing how failure to ensure their good upkeep has a significant effect on their readings accuracy. This is well worth a read as it demonstrates how a lack of basic site husbandry has surprising outcomes due to disrupting homogenisation algorithms applied by “Climate Scientists”. These algorithms are similar to those used in the Met Office’s construction of Long term climate averages stations for the years 1961 to 2020 and ongoing. Lough Fea is one of those stations despite only having temperature records for 43 of those 60 years from January 1989.

Essentially the report highlights the fact that if screens discolour through lack of maintenance their readings quality deteriorates setting a degraded standard. On subsequent improvement the prior degradation gets “built into” the system creating a step change and artificially raised comparative figures. None of such a problem could possibly occur with the Met Office because they say so.

“All weather stations are regularly monitored and inspected, with additional rigorous inspections conducted by a specialist team when a national weather record is potentially broken. These inspections assess site conditions, equipment calibration, and compliance with World Meteorological Organization (WMO) standards to ensure data reliability. Routine quality control also involves comparisons with neighboring sites to identify any deviations, and stations falling below required standards may have their data excluded from official records.“

The Met Office claims all its sites have an annual inspection so that leaves three options to infer from the terrible state of the screen. Firstly the evidence of the headline image is either a hoax by me (and Google StreetView), secondly such screen degradation happens in under 12 months or thirdly (and most likely ) the Met Office is being somewhat economical with the truth. Clearly the screen was not being maintained adequately and had fallen into a very poor state of repair distorting readings up to that point and then “baking in” those errors into an ongoing algorithm. This neglect has been common as often demonstrated by historical imagery such as at Banff and Faversham amongst others.

Considering the site location, this is Class 5 at its worst.

Rather than attempt to list the demerits of this site, I feel the opposite approach is easier – are there any possible grounds for claiming this site is remotely suitable? It sits at the end of the Lough but that is reasonably acceptable as these are typical of the area. However, I am struggling to see how all these roads and hardstanding, vehicles passing (and parking despite area restriction) and even motorised appliances operating within the enclosed area can be regarded as acceptable. There are multiple extraneous heat sources rendering the whole WMO reporting site totally unrepresentative and almost certainly prone to wild inaccuracies. The screen may now be white but the diesel powered orange portable pump in the background will really not be helping.

In my review of Carlisle I noted the Met Office had removed a “green cabinet” to reduce “heat sources”. This seems quite remarkable considering all the new “heavy metal” the Met Office has seen fit to construct directly alongside the screen at Lough Fea.

Obviously no data from lough Fea will be included in any Surface Stations Project historical temperature reconstruction – that the Met Office has uses such corrupt data is a damning indictment of their behaviour.