Hillsborough DCNN9238 – Do these buildings look old? No, me neither. Plus a Dip into the Surreal.

54.45263 -6.07523 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 4 Installed 1/1/1930 Archived records from 1959

This is a continuation review from that I started for Katesbridge and then developed the theme of at Killowen. Hillsborough is another weather station in County Down, Northern Ireland shown in the same Met Office location specific, long term climate averages “cell” producing hugely differing 30 year period climate averages. There is becoming an almost boringly predictable explanation for these absurd differences but with almost surreal twits.

Looking at the headline image, hands up anyone who cannot figure out where this review is likely to be going!

Hillsborough weather station (despite the Met office site regularly insisting on directing inquiries to Sheffield) lies 5 miles south of Lisburn in Northern Ireland. The CEDA archive shows an installation date of 1930 but temperature records have only been archived since 1959. It Is highly likely that temperature records are long term from somewhere called “Hillsborough” but early Northern Ireland data is not accessible online even in copied manual form unlike England and Wales.

The site is located at what is now known as the Agri Food and Bio Sciences Institute, (AFBSI) a government agency established in 2006. Prior to then, this site was part of the Agricultural Research Institute of Northern Ireland (ARINI) which in various earlier forms had operated here since at least the 1960s.

But of course nothing is that straight forward with the Met Office. There was a separate Met Office site, also confusingly called Hillsborough Met Office, that was a Radiosonde launch site from 1979 to 2003. This was located at the former RAF Long Kesh more infamously remembered in history as the “MAZE” prison. It is also now home to the Royal Ulster Agricultural Society hence the AFBSI association.

The old Radiosonde location and probable original vicinity of the weather station.

I suggest, but cannot ultimately prove as yet, that Hillsborough was originally an RAF site that was relocated to the agicultural facility probably around the latter 1950s thus does not have the longer term record it may seem even if earlier records were available. However, this is not really relevant as the key problem here is almost exactly the same as at Killowen just without the fully fabricated pre-history.

What was originally a small agricultural research facility with modest buildings around a relatively rural site has transformed into a small urban area. Probably for historic security reasons there are no “Street View” images within half a mile of the current site which is an ongoing issue with Northern Ireland imagery. However, what can definitely be confirmed is that the site was rapidly expanded and developed in the very early 2000s following the “Good Friday” agreement and was one of many ensuing job creation ventures to improve the Northern Ireland economy.

The effect on the weather station was dramatic. The site now incurs classic Urban Heat Island effects from so many buildings (many greenhouses) and hard-standing. Wind shielded Aitken Effects will be much more common also elevating night time minima. I asked AI for its view

“This does look like suboptimal/poor siting for a high-quality regional weather/climate station — particularly if it’s right in among the farm infrastructure as the pin suggests. It would likely introduce non-negligible local biases (e.g., warmer nights from heat storage in buildings/concrete, altered wind flow, potential contamination for humidity/precipitation), making the data less representative of the wider Co. Down countryside than an open-field or rural grassland site would be.That said:

• If the instruments are carefully positioned (e.g., in a dedicated grassy enclosure slightly offset from the main yards/tanks, with good fetch), it could mitigate some issues.
• For AFBI’s applied research (e.g., nutrient management, emissions from slurry, pasture productivity), having on-farm weather data is actually very useful and arguably more relevant than pristine but distant readings.

If this is indeed the main Met Office public/climate station for the area, I’d agree it’s not ideal and borders on atrocious for broad representativeness.“

{n.b. my bold to highlight the point}

Almost adding insult to injury, this is still a manually observed site, so what are its observations quality like? Extremely poor is a “kind” description. For any form of daily mean to be derived there must be both maximum and minimum readings taken. Missing either renders a daily average impossible, however it is actually more troublesome than that when daily readings are omitted as the the old LIGT thermometers would not have been reset with no attendance. The following day when readings are taken will not accurately reflect the previous 24 hours and could be 48 or more hours old depending on the omission period. Although the site’s maximum thermometer was changed from LIGT to PRT in 2017 (in common with all UK manual sites) minimum readings are still taken by LIGT.

This is a typical example of the 2024 archive. Column I are maxiums and Column J minimums. “NA” indicates no readings.

In 2024 there were 45 days of omitted readings with a further 14 days rendered unreliable for the day following omitted minimums. 59 out of 365 missing readings is very poor, however, if it were not for the PRT data logger retaining maximum reading availability, this omissions/unreliable figure would have risen to 61. This poor standard is common throughout the 21st century files.

Remember that AI remark? “having on-farm weather data is actually very useful and arguably more relevant than pristine but distant readings.” Rather a pity that an agricultural research institute does not manage to fulfil a basic function that is as much for its own benefit as elsewhere….or……In all probability though, the owners have their own automatic weather station (artificially aspirated in accordance with WMO guidelines as demonstrated at Hull University) and use that in lieu of the inferior Met Office set up or there may even (almost surreally) be another UK government funded weather station on the site – more later on that!

The final nail in the coffin though goes to those “Climate Averages” and here Hillsborough differs significantly (as anyone would expect) from the 0.33°C mean minimum increment noted at Katesbridge and Helens Bay Instead it offers 0.61°C for minimum increment over the 60 year period. That may not seem a huge difference but it is nearly double the increment of the other unaffected sites. More importantly the urbanisation effect is only over the last 2 decades of the period.When the next 2000 to 2030 period data emerges I predict (based on sampling period) that the “warming” differential will likely move up to the order of 1°C.

Yet again this is an example of known compromised locations skewing readings upwards regardless of any actual real world warming level.

So now for that “Dip into the Surreal.” – Another Hillsborough Weather Station

“The Hillsborough site is located within the grounds of the Agri Food and Bio Sciences Institute (AFBI), County Down, Northern Ireland. AFBI carry out agri-food research and development for the Department of Agriculture and Environment and private companies. The COSMOS-UK site is located on flat, well-grazed grassland on a sandy loam.”

The Department for Science , Innovation and Technology is also funding the UK Centre for Hydrology to run 51 weather stations many of which are at almost the same sites as the Met Office (though nearly always much better). Here is Hillsborough CEH style, modern artificially aspirated equipment in open countryside at CIMO Class 1.

And the respective locations…..which one is better is rather obvious.

So just as I have reported at Morpeth and Hadlow finding premium quality sites in the UK is demonstrably easy despite the endless rather pathetic excuses the Met Office makes. The CEH clearly seems to do it quite easily all the time, so why can’t the Met Office? And why is the taxpayer funding two separate bodies to do what one could do anyway? Who actually needs the junk Met Office Hillsborough site when the CEH one is much better? Truly surreal

IMPORTANT CODICIL : The above review should have ended there until my proof reading neighbour returned from Christmas away and scanned through it. He was ex military and had served in Northern Ireland in that very area in the 1990s. He was aware of the “Hillsborough Met Office” site and suggested I look up the data for there if any was available. What I found will be subject to a separate review in future but in essence although the two sites are just 2.5 miles apart there were some quite astonishing differences in readings that are completely inexplicable as yet. A brief example period of the end of 2000.

Hillsborough Met Office. Last 10 days. Column I maximum, Column J minimum.

Note 28th December at – 13.5°C

Hillsborough AFBSI

Note same day, same time at just -9°C. There are lots of similarly large discrepancies that really need investigating and some form of explanation…….or is it just the sheltered heat island effect of the AFBSI keeping the latter cosy and warm?

And to keep my proof reader happy I finally located the original “Met Office” site!

More to come on this one!

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/12/30/hillsborough-dcnn9238-do-these-buildings-look-old-no-me-neither-plus-a-dip-into-the-surreal/