Dumfries Weather Stations – A study of changes over time.

There have been numerous weather stations in and around the Dumfries area over the years with two of them having long term history going back to the mid 19th century. Interestingly, none of them were in the main urban area and the most recent of them (operated by the Centre for Hydrology – CEH – not the Met Office) is in an exceptionally good location. Optimistically speaking, this overall area overall could well prove to be a good area for data inclusion into a new historic climate record.

Dependent on exact definitions of where the sea actually starts, central Dumfries lies approximately 4 miles inland on the River Nith. The River Nith has a notably large and very wet catchment area making it prone to rapid rise and flooding in the town, parts of which have flooded over 200 times since 1827.

Despite a modest population of under 34,000 Dumfries still makes the top 25 of most populated towns or cities in Scotland and is certainly the most populous in southern Scotland. Famously termed the “Queen of the South”, the town’s football team adopted the name. The surrounding area is generally flat but rises to over 2000 feet amsl just 15 miles north.

There are two long term sites in the town which do not seem to be accurately reflected in the Met office modern records. Temperature readings from the site known just as “Dumfries” run from 1858 to 1998 though have only been entered into the digital archives from 1930. This site was located at the Crichton Golf Club and, whilst probably a well shaded site due to the avenues of tall trees sheltering the greens, was unlikely to have altered greatly over the years being still on the outskirts.

The Met Office appears to have adopted the readings from Crichton Royal Institute site from 1997 to continue the area representation and again this site was until recently in a largely open and out of town site. This location did, however, have prior long term records and this site has equally old records from 1858. The readings from this site only sit in the digital archives from 1997, however, the Location specific long Term Averages specify the Crichton Royal name solely despite showing data covering period from 1961 onwards and prior to readily verifiable readings.

The nearby Drungans site ran from 1970 to 2004 with the Troqueers Sewage Works notionally running from 1969 to 1975 but also believed to have longer term records. With periods of up to 3 simultaneously operating sites, it should have been reasonably possible to derive area “means”. The Met Office’s practise of infilling gaps in station readings by substituting in figures derived from neighbouring ones may have been possible with reasonable accuracy in this instance.

The most recent Met Office operational site is by no means particularly good and the last dated manually observed readings end 1/5/2004. Whether or not the site is still reporting is questionable though there have been noticeable large gaps in the recent past with for example 6 months completely missing data in 2022. It may be that the site is in the process of automation and may come back online soon.

55.05631 -3.5952 DCNN 6642 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 4. Archived temperature records from 1/10/1997

This site will have been affected by the site development over the years but perhaps not as badly as most “urban” sites having remained largely outside the main town. The map below delineates 100 metre and 30 metre radius circles to help gauge surroundings. Class 4 is appropriate.

At this point it is perhaps worth remembering the Met Office’s excuses (i.e. reasons for failure) for not meeting the better CIMO Classifications of Classes 1 and 2 .

“WMO Siting Classifications were designed with reference to a wide range of global environments and the higher classes can be difficult to achieve in the more-densely populated and higher latitude UK. For example, the criteria for a Class 1 rating for temperature suits wide open flat areas with little or no human influenced land use and high amounts of continuous sunshine reaching the screen all year around, however, these conditions are relatively rare in the UK. Mid and higher latitude sites will, additionally, receive more shading from low sun angles than some other stations globally, so shading will most commonly result in a higher CIMO classification – most Stevenson Screens in the UK are class 3 or 4 for temperature as a result but continue to produce valid high-quality data. WMO guidance does, in fact, not preclude use of Class 5 temperature sites – the WMO classification simply informs the data user of the geographical scale of a site’s representativity of the surrounding environment – the smaller the siting class, the higher the representativeness of the measurement for a wide area.  Indeed, it should be noted that WMO Class 5 is not the same as a Met Office ‘Unsatisfactory’ inspection assessment, which ultimately determines the ongoing use of a site. We use the Met Office grading system to determine record verification because; it has historical relevance, covering a wide range of long-standing criteria at UK observation sites, the equipment, and the exposure in a holistic manner and has clear meaning to what is acceptable or not. It tells us how much confidence we have in the data and permits comparisons. ” 

Perhaps the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology did not feel as constrained as the Met office when in 2014 they installed their Dumfries site that looked like this with its modern instrumentation.

For additional context I have delineated circles to demonstrate the clear area around the CEH unit. The inner circle is a 100 metre radius – the outer circle is 400 metre radius! This also lies within the same institute’s grounds as the Met Office unit. Clearly this makes a mockery of the Met Office excuses/reasons for failure. The CEH seems to be able to regularly provide sites of excellence that the Met Office deceitfully claims is rarely possible. Further examples such as Hillsborough, Morpeth, and Hadlow falsify the Met Office claims.

55.04269 – 3.58366 Not Met Office Assessed but obviously Class 1.

All CEH data is readily and freely available to download online over searchable time frames and looks like this. {Note: Temperatures are 30 minute averages avoiding unrealistic spikes detected by electronic sensors to give a more genuine representation.}

Sadly the CEH project closed down here at the end of 2024.

The Met office does produce “Climate Averages” for Dumfries Crichton Royal but I really do not feel they are worth reporting in this instance. The Met Office should have sufficient readings readily available for the area to produce an accurate figure but I find it impossible to give credence to their homogenised, adjusted and manipulated fabrications.

Geographically Dumfries should be a good representative site for this part of Scotland. With such a wealth of data available I am optimistic that historic data can be used from this area and will be considering using this for inclusion shortly.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2026/01/01/dumfries-weather-stations-a-study-of-changes-over-time/