Folkestone DCNN5380 – An example why most Met Office weather stations, past and present, are unsuitable for climate reporting.

51.08945 1.16047 No Met Office CIMO Assessment, my estimate Class 5/Unsatisfactory. Temperature data from 1/2/1972 to 1/4/2003. (image 2002)

Folkestone is a medium sized coastal town on the south Kent coast most well known in modern times for having one end of the Channel Tunnel linking England to France. When starting this project I tried to find this weather station which is shown as a “Climate Averages” reference point and is about 9 miles from my home. In compiling my report on Dungeness and the 103 Missing Met Stations Mystery I even mentioned my failure to find this site. Recently meeting a former school friend I was shocked to discover that I used to walk past this site on a regular basis in my last two years attending the Harvey Grammar School . My excuse for not remembering is that it was a long time ago!

In common with most Victorian seaside resorts, Folkestone was an early adopter of a weather station and so high ranking in the annual summer sunshine league that the local post mark referenced “Sunny Folkestone”. The original site from 1894 was high on the almost clifftop “Leas” but relocated 1.6km inland in 1972 when the original site was being developed. The two sites would have reported markedly differently having moved from an exposed seafront headland to the edge of a sheltered playing field by newly built housing. The playing fields were in fact those used by my grammar school and I would pass both them and the weather station them on my way to and from school – presumably with my eyes shut. My old school friend though, vividly remembered the site well enough to locate it for me on google historic maps. It was then I realised that in later years I even used to park alongside the screen when playing recreational sport at the weekends ( yes Sunday Morning Pub League football)

This is what remained of the site shown on Google street view in 2009. The vestigial remains of the enclosure paving can still be discerned with the small fire hydrant marker being at almost exactly the same point as where the screen stood. As can be seen in multiple historic images including the headline one, cars regularly parked within just a few feet of the screen. I personally now recall how in winter’s mornings we would get into our kit sitting in the cars with the engine running and blowers on getting ready for the mornings match. That was only if we could find a parking space so close as the entire turning area was actually used for parking as often as not by the local residents. This was a grossly corrupted site prone to over recording.

The point worth making here is that weather stations such as Folkestone and so many others were simply not originally intended to be used to derive long term climatic changes. Mostly, they were there to serve distinctly different and wide ranging purposes. Horticultural sites were for the benefit of crop developments, transport sites for transport advice, aviation sites for local flying guidance, tourism sites (Folkestone’s original intent) to boost local leisure activities, the list is very extensive. They were not designed to be implicated in long term analysis (to the second decimal point of a degree celsius) of “climate change”.

Most older sites historically recorded to the nearest degree Fahrenheit which is 0.55°C and equates to 0.5°C or 0.6°C depending on who transcribes which site’s data – the former at Swanage and the latter at Faskally I find it almost comical quoting second decimal long term accuracy from data that just on scale used and conversions can vary by 20 times that second decimal place solely on transcription methodology alone. Add to that the natural inaccuracy of the instruments used themselves further doubles that already wide range. When then considering the known inaccuracy in area representation of up to +/- 5°C (+/-9 °F) due to poor siting alone, then the scientific credibility of such comparative date becomes risible.

So what exactly does the mostly fabricated data for the 60 year period for this Folkestone site actually claim. For the first 12 years it was somewhere else climatically different and the latter 17 years simply did not exist at all. Despite these period absences and poor location, Folkestone was “chosen” by the NCIC “climate modellers” in 2004 in preference to the much longer term and excellently sited inland Wye station. A conscious decision must have been made by Matthew Perry and Daniel Hollis for which stations to include in their “CARLOS” system of data fabrication used to “infill” missing days readings for weather stations which then continued seemingly indefinitely even after site closure.

As I highlighted with the Wye inland station, every alleged comparative (Folkestone, Dover, Faversham and Manston) were all coastal. Nobody who has ever ventured to either site would consider the Dungeness headland with its unique climate to have any close correlation with a playing field in Folkestone which again would be quite different being set on the Channel coast as opposed to the Thames estuary site of Faversham.

Studying the concocted “data” for these sites reveals all manner of 2nd decimal place variations based on a distinct absence of genuine observations. Folkestone’s (closed 2003) annual average maximum temperature has risen over the 60 year period by 1.11°C – but Dungeness (last actual temperature reading 1/12/1979) has only risen 0.97°C. Whilst the annual average minimum at Dover (last actual temperature reading 1/5/1976) has only increased by 0.70°C, Folkestone has managed a 1.02°C increment. Who actually believes the Met Office alchemy that claims to be able to divine such exact differentials – when NONE THESE SITES EXIST?

The entire Met Office system of “climate averaging” is seen to be compiled from a list of arbitrarily chosen sites originally designed for a multitude of different and unassociated purposes. The quality of these sites was highly variable but mostly very poor and far too many of them ceased to even exist a long time ago. And yet from this absence of virtually any reliable data the Met Office presents what can only be described as faux accuracy fiction. Why should anyone believe any of it?