Spadeadam WMO03224 – The Met Office had 9,600 acres to choose from and this is where they came up with.

55.05023 -2.55450 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 4 Archived Temperature records from 1/12/1992 Elevation 274 metres.

Spadeadam weather station is located at RAF Spadeadam in Cumbria close to both Northumberland and Hadrian’s Wall. At 36 km² it is the largest RAF facility in the UK principally used as an “Electronic Warfare Tactics” facility.

There has been a weather station in the area since 1959 though not at the same site nor in continuous operation and it is that history that is interesting.

Firstly, the current site since 1992 is a fully equipped WMO reporting station ranked by the Met Office quite generously as Class 4. The 30 metre and 10 metre circled areas below probably do just about allow for Class 4 but realistically having such a large built up area so close to the west really should mark it down to Class 5.

To put the level of likely compromise into context, this aerial image below details the built up complex with the weather station to the extreme left. Both wind sheltering and artificial surfaces warming notably from easterlies will result in potentially unreliable temperature readings. As I headlined, this is a huge site. It is clearly a case of siting the screen for the convenience of the observers rather than any concern over accurate climate recording. This really should not be an issue as this station was never intended for anything other than immediate site conditions advice – it is, after all, an active missile firing and even bombing range. It is the subsequent use of its readings for climate reporting that is problematic not the site itself.

Prior to this No 2 site the original Spadeadam screen was in a completely different location and unlike its later replacement was only a once daily manually observed site recording a small range of basic readings. Although nothing remains, the location is accurately known and was a much better site for climate reporting purposes.

The scale of the relocation was nearly 5 km hence the renumbering. There was also nearly a 20 year gap between the closure of No 1 on 30/6/1973 and opening no 2 in early 1992.

Now, however, there is the inexplicable situation of not only deriving climate averages for a 60 year period for Spadeadam from two different sites with a significant gap of 20 years with no readings at either. This should not be a problem though as Cumbria has four Class 1 sites plausibly able to assist infilling gaps….or maybe not.

Again for reasons not immediately evident, the nearest climate station given to Spadeadam is Class 4 Carlisle – an urban, near coastal site that is a mere 243 metres lower elevation and where the Met Office obsesses over green cabinets. Rather than use any of the available quality Class 1 sites on offer for data infill the Met Office has also chosen 3 other Class 5 sites.

Albemarle only opened from February 2003 and is total modern junk that looks like this.

Great Dun Fell no 2 is equally Class 5 and looks like this.

And Redesdale Camp again a Class 5 (though slightly oddly so) site.

The point of all this above is that when the sum total of all this homogenised and fabricated data from often non existent sites is put together the end result is remarkably different for Cumbria than when only good quality sites are used. From my Shap report:-

Surely Spadeadam will fall into conformity with other Cumbrian sites? Firstly the 1991 to 2020 period when the current site was open from 1992.

And then the 1961 to 1990 period before Spadeadam came into existance and even the old No 1 site was operational for only 12 years.

Spadeadam shows 1°C increment for average maximum and 0.79°C for average minimum.

So how does all this “CO2 induced anthropogenic global warming” differentiate even within the county of Cumbria itself or is it just the case that poor quality sites are the problem? The Met Office really does need to get its act together – their “Climate Science” is anything but science.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/11/23/spadeadam-wmo03224-the-met-office-had-9600-acres-to-choose-from-and-this-is-where-they-came-up-with/