Gogerddan DCNN8068 – The real site of the Welsh all time highest temperature versus a demonstration of Met Office record chasing.

52.43219 -4.02056 Met Office CIMO assessed Class 4 Installed 1/1/1953

Gogerddan lies 3 miles inland from the Welsh coast east-north-east of Aberystwyth within the grounds of the agricultural research centre of Aberystwyth University. For a few hours in 2022 it held the all time Welsh highest recorded temperature before losing its title to Hawarden Airport later the same day which I will discuss later in this report. The Gogerddan site itself has a rather interesting history which the Met Office seems to keep so secret that when I asked them about it I shortly after (coincidentally?) found myself unable to access my own email account – a very odd situation.

The CEDA archives for Gogerddan weather station indicate a start date of 1953 but (as is quite common for longer established stations) only show digital temperature records from 1959. All these digital records indicate the current site address details, however, from extensive past experience, I know these are not usually accurate. In these cases I look for indications of relocation but none were immediately obvious in the site records. Going deeper into the manual archives I found the manuscript copies from 1953 (under “Cardiganshire”) as below.

The conventional latitude and longitude coordinates quoted did not match those from the CEDA archives clearly indicating a different original site. Although not as specific as the WGS84 quoted site the given coordinates were more accurate than normally supplied but not exact. This is the area they showed.

There seemed nothing unusual about this site which is 1.25km from the current location and appeared likely to be within the University’s extensive grounds. I emailed the Met office for confirmation of whether or not I was correct in my deduction and subsequently received a typical reply which I recalled asking me what I “intended to do with this information”. Later in the day I was unable to access my email account at all. I contacted my provider, AOL, who helpfully assisted me during over an hour’s telephone call and restored my access and most, but not all, of my emails. I have no proof of how this “lock out” was caused but a few of solely that day’s emails were now absent. I stopped reviewing Gogerddan and moved onto other sites but in recently researching Llandrindod Wells returned to the nearby site.

Re-investigating the original Gogerddan site I moved to Google StreetView to see if there were any vestigial remains of that original screen as there so often are indications, usually an old enclosure. I was somewhat surprised to find this.

This is/was the Capel Dewi Atmospheric Field Station which up until closure last year was jointly run by the Universities of Manchester and Aberystwyth and the National Environment Research Council.

There was nothing at all sinister regarding a Met Office site being here as it is an associated research location, indeed other sites are “joint ventures” notably Great Dun Fell. The only likely problem was the nature of the facility’s structure affecting temperature readings. The array was built in 1990 which coincided with a change in readings regime for the weather station noted in the archives. It appears that the Met Office facility was relocated from the NERC site to the current main college location at the same time to avoid any problems. The substantial site move renders the historic record not consistent from one climatology and only of use from relocation date.

If my inquiries with the Met office may have caused them concern, I can now understand why. I have since discovered that simultaneous to my inquiry there were online theories circulating that this NERC site was allegedly a “Climate Modifying” HAARP installation. Flooding in Wales had been blamed by some as being deliberately caused by the site’s “experiments”. Freedom of Information requests had even been sent to the MOD questioning this site’s function.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/haarpgeoengineering

At the time of my request there were also threats being made by protestors and even deliberate damage to the site purportedly planned. In hindsight I can now understand (and even have sympathy for) the reticence on the part of the Met Office regarding my inquiries. At the time I did not know of the NERC array and certainly would never have been in the slightest bit concerned regarding its purposes even if I had known. Such oddball “theories” around the Capel Dewi site really were deep into conspiracy theory territory and had not even the remotest grip on scientific reality.

The relocation was certainly for meteorological accuracy reasons and good decisions still prevalent in the latter 20th Century which contrast sharply with recent 21st Century lack of diligence and eagerness in record chasing.

The current site from the 1990s has undergone significant site improvements and modernised instrumentation but unfortunately is not in the best of locations being on a triangular “island” bordered by the busy A4159 and adjacent “T” junction with two primary vehicle access roads to the university complex. It is easy to see below why this site is only rated CIMO Class 4 and remarkably unlikely to fully reflect the natural environment – particularly in a warm easterly airstream. However, there are very many much worse in Wales as will be discussed below.

As with all other Met office sites Gogerddan was originally manually reporting, in this case just reporting once daily at 09:00 am. From 2009 to 2011 there was a major Met Office programme of site automation and Goggerdan was one of those included. {A potential effect of this programme and the resultant change in time reporting protocol is discussed here. } The site in its manual days.

The hut-like structure to the left is for rain recording, the Stevenson Screen to the right housed the main air temperature instrumentation whilst the larger middle screen held other humidity and pressure instruments.

On automation the larger screen became defunct and was modified for radiation measurement (screen no longer required), the old manual screen was retained (for the University training purposes) and a new automatic reporting screen established to the north end of the large enclosure all as seen below complete with Met office personnel working on the site.

Gogerddan is one of the Met Office’s many “if only” sites in that were it relocated a bit further from the roads rather than on a junction, it could make a reasonably good Class 2 site despite the University developments. The Met Office does record problems with ground cover control (a frequent problem) in its archived remarks noting weed killer (“CDL”) use.

Start date	End date	Remark type	Remark
2005-04-01	Current	MISSING DATA	GRASS MINS VERY LOW AT TIMES – SUSPECT CDL BEING USED!! GRASS MINS REMOVED BY QC EDINBURGH

In summary of the site itself, there are many noted but relatively minor issues that all mount up to it not being as good as it could potentially be but neither is it a desperately poor site. Does the UK Met office really expect Gogerddan with a 30 metre radius circled area delineated below………..

………..to be designated worse than Class 3 Heathrow?

I raise this point because the Met Office really does make such ridiculous comparisons and lose most of any of its remaining credibility in doing so, particularly when it comes to its apparent 21st Century prime objective – providing distorted evidence to prove an ideology.

Going back to that record breaking day of 18th July 2022, Gogerddan’s Platinum Resistance Thermometer (PRT) recorded a Welsh record high temperature of 35.3°C around 14:00 BST. This broke the previous Welsh record of 35.2°C set by the Liquid in Glass Thermometer set at Hawarden Bridge weather station on 2nd august 1990 at this exceptionally poor site that closed in 2005. Behind an industrial and unit alongside a car park would unquestionably have been assessed CIMO Class 5.

At the time Gogerddan recorded that all time high, the Hawarden Airport site ( as detailed, set in a recently relocated and far worse position than previously) was reading just 33.5°C (1.8°C colder)

However, whilst Gogerddan (and other more natural sites) then cooled down from that immediate post-noon high, Hawarden kept getting hotter and eventually reached a PRT recorded 37.1°C over 2 hours later. How does this Hawarden location compare with Gogerddan? The image below shows a very heavily compromised international airfield location with the screen on the junction of a tarmaced roadway and aircraft taxiway.

Would any reasonable person really consider that this completely unnatural major airfield location would be likely to record temperatures representative of the natural and unmodified surrounding area? Almost certainly not but that really is somewhat irrelevant because Ali Price (no, me neither!) really does think so and that is all that matters. Anthropogenic Global Warming must be proved.

{Ed note: The omission of “RAF” from all the above active/former military airbases is instructive}

Ali Price, whose team is responsible operating the Met Office network of weather observing stations in the UK, said: “Verification of these records has confirmed the extreme heat that we experienced last week.  

“The process of verifying these records, using a rigorous process to ensure the readings collected were accurate, is vital to ensure that our temperature records reflect our weather and climate and have not been adversely influenced by other factors.”  {my bold}

So in conclusion this image below from Google StreetView is obviously a figment of YOUR imagination, the Met Office is always CORRECT and YOU must NOT believe the evidence of YOUR own eyes.

That little white box – seen to the right of the fuel tanker under the wind mast – is perfectly natural and the Met Office records prove it.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/09/22/gogerddan-dcnn8068-the-real-site-of-the-welsh-all-time-highest-temperature-versus-a-demonstration-of-met-office-record-chasing/