Odiham WMO03761 – More double vision of that “Internationally agreed distance from the Runway”

51.26902 -0.94496 – (the one on the right) Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 3 Installed 1/8/1998 {but Met Office claimed installation date of 1/1/1963}.

51.23844 -0.94736 (the one on the left) not CIMO assessed Installed 1/1/1963 {but archived temperature records from 1/3/1984 to 1/8/1998}

Odiham weather station is at RAF Odiham and very much an active RAF base in Hampshire lying midway between Aldershot and Basingstoke. The Met Office makes many claims about the high quality of its weather stations – Odiham makes a complete mockery of most of them.

““You’ll find weather stations located across the UK, often in wide open space so observations can be accurately recorded. For example, official weather stations are often located at airports as they have plenty of open space making them a good place for observations to take place. However, the observation equipment is set an internationally-agreed distance from the runway to ensure no external factors can influence readings in any way.”

So claims the Met Office in the full knowledge that there is no such metric as ” an internationally-agreed distance from the runway ” and as I have already demonstrated this is a complete misrepresentation, even disinformation, relating to the CIMO guidelines. Nowhere in the WMO siting guide are distances from “Runways” specified.

The original site of the Odiham weather station looked like this with temperature records from 1/3/1984 to 1/8/1998 with its coordinates incorrectly shown in the archives as those of the modern later site.

In the headline image I notated 30 metre radius circled areas around the screen enclosures. Realistically that was a pointless exercise. There is no possible way whatsoever that this original site could give accurate readings that represent the natural climate of the surrounding area. Almost the entirety around is hard concrete apron, tarmac runway, buildings, roadways, car parking and, of course, Chinook helicopters taking off and landing. For the Met Office to suggest such an intense aviation site could be used for climate reporting is beyond parody.

As former USAF pilot poster “Hifast” put it in his contributions towards my review of RNAS Culdrose,

“If the Met Office is including aerodrome temperatures in its climate assessments, that’s worthy of ridicule.  The transient spikes in temperatures associated with aircraft operations or zephyr-advected pavement-heated air render those readings unfit for climate use.  For aviators…those inflated numbers are satisfactory.“

This original site is still clearly there as over the intervening 27 years since relocation it would have faded from view if genuinely unused. I suspect it is still used for aviation purposes. However, in 1998, the site was relocated only shown in the archives by the note

1998-08-01

Current

HISTORICAL NOTES

ENCLOSURE MOVED TO SU 74100 49200 200M NE OF OLD SITE

Below is a wide angle image of the overall site – to remind the Met Office of their own claim

“..official weather stations are often located at airports as they have plenty of open space making them a good place for observations to take place. ”

There certainly is plenty of open space available at Odiham to have relocated the screen to.

However, this is where the Met Office seemingly felt was a suitable place to move the screen to.

Those “X” marks are actually on the Runway that the Met office has chosen to relocate the screen an “Internationally agreed distance” away from. Can anyone really give any form of credibility to data from such a site taken by a modern rapid reacting Platinum Resistance Thermometer set this close to aircraft potentially taking off or landing or with massive heavy lift helicopters regularly overhead? Is all the tarmac, the roadways and buildings genuinely supposed to represent the natural environment ? It is blindingly obvious this is not a Class 3 site despite any tape measurement – it must be assessed it is the lowest possible Class 5.

Obviously the function of the Odiham site is to supply readings for aviation purposes. Surely nobody (let alone a meteorological authority) would realistically expect this site to be suitable for a 60 year reconstruction of the UK climate history from 1961 to 2020 when it did not even start recording temperature data until 1984 and was later, covertly, relocated. Oh yes they do!

Needless to say, despite all the site distortions and corrupting factors, Odiham dutifully shows a 1.19°C in mean maximum and a 0.65°C mean minimum temperature increase over the 60 year period. If the general public became familiar with the nature of this site and the changes in instrumentation characteristics over time, would anyone realistically trust the Met Office climate data trend shown? I seriously doubt it, but of course the Met office controls all the information so effectively nobody gets to see anything or question it.

Odiham, like so many other aviation sites, is simply unsuitable for inclusion in the historic climate record.

“If the Met Office is including aerodrome temperatures in its climate assessments, that’s worthy of ridicule.  The transient spikes in temperatures associated with aircraft operations or zephyr-advected pavement-heated air render those readings unfit for climate use.  For aviators…those inflated numbers are satisfactory.“

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/10/26/odiham-wmo03761-more-double-vision-of-that-internationally-agreed-distance-from-the-runway/