Slapton DCNN8851 – A demonstration of why even allegedly “expert” Meteorologists get it so wrong.

50.29279 -3.65198 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 4 (WRONG) Installed 1/6/1960

I frequently come across the claim that even poorly sited weather stations can be used to “detect the signal” of “Climate Change” as it is change over time that is being examined. These sorts of claims are regularly used to defend the inclusion of the likes or atrociously sited stations such as class 5 Armagh, Oxford Radcliffe and Durham amongst others. I have demonstrated multiple times that it is not possible to assume anything and the notion of poor sites ever being acceptable is rank nonsense. Slapton is yet another classic example.

Slapton weather station is located at the Slapton Ley Field Studies Council (FSC) site on the south coast of Devon. The FSC is responsible for 12 Met Office sites that mostly rank as the worst the Met Office actually has. Despite being an educational charity where meteorology plays a key element to their education, the sites that remain manually observed have incredibly poor observational standards. Perhaps if there were threats of removing the FSC’s VAT exempted charitable “Educational” status as all those Independent schools hosting weather stations recently suffered, then readings might be more diligently taken.

Mickleham is notably atrocious and Preston Montford is straight dishonest in claiming a high integrity of readings but celebrating World Meteorological Day 2024 by not even bothering to take any readings. If that seems harsh, the fact is that observations are a critical function and without them there is absolutely no point in having a weather station. This problem is actually acknowledged by the Met Office themselves who gave Talkshop data analyst, Dave Woolcock, the following reply to his querying lack of data.

“Good Morning Dave,

Looking at Mickleham it is a Field Studies Council site.

This means that it has a high turnover of staff usually with a new observer each year. They tend to need to have one committed member of staff to keep engagement going, even if they are the supervisor not necessarily taking the readings. When they move on engagement drops off sharply. I would guess that is what happened at this site.
Over the last 10 years or so, there has been a general drop off in observations from all of our FSC sites. We get peaks when a new person starts and is enthused, then it drops off again as they get busy with other duties.

I hope that helps answering your query.

Kind regards,

Marc

Weather Desk“

Slapton weather station follows exactly the above described pattern. For periods readings are reliably taken but then recidivism sets in and gaps occur. Important points to bear in mind are that some of these FSC sites (notably Preston Montford) are Climate Averages stations and even those that are not will be supplying “gap infilling” readings. I always have concerns about the accuracy and validity of infrequent readings taken by non committed and occasional observers.

The general public would be both very surprised and underwhelmed to discover that their taxpayer funded meteorological service was making crisis style proclamations of impending climate Armageddon based on whether or not anyone can actually be bothered to supply the prime data in the first instance.

Examining the site in detail is even more illuminating. Installed in 1960 this site should theoretically be a contender for the 1961 to 2020 sixty year climate averaging period so highly publicised by the Met Office. It does have continuous, if patchy, records which is more than most of the sites the Met Office quotes.

The above are 30 metre and 10 metre radius circles from the screen. The Met Office claims this meets Class 4 – it does not. The screen is actually under 3 metres from the hedge to the west at the rear of the extensive buildings. It is blatantly obvious that the site is very heavily wind and sun shaded around from south west to north east, meets no set standards and should thus be assessed as “2.6 Class 5 (additional estimated uncertainty added by siting up to 5 °C) Site not meeting the requirements of class 4.“

The next issue is how the site changed over time, if at all. Firstly static issues.

Between 2010 and 2018 all historic images show the site had a very near neighbouring building (<5 metres) directly to the south west, casting even more shadow and shielding from wind thus inducing Aitken Effect over warming. Going further back though produces even more surprises – no screen at all.

So in the absence of anything there it is back to an archive search. Within 64 missing data entries over just 2 years was a note stating:

2007-04-29

2007-04-29

SITE INFORMATION

SITE MOVED APPROX 20M 210 DEG. NO CHANGE IN ALTITUDE.

I interpret this meaning that 210 DEG is 210 compass point degrees indicating the screen was moved 20 metres to the south-southwest hence the old screen would have been 20 metres north northeast – had the Met Office actually moved it to be closer to that temporary building?

Earlier history indicates the original screen was even closer to the buildings and hedging making it even more compromised but at least there were no temporary buildings around….or where there? Further back to 2002 indicates even more or rather less – an even bigger temporary building BUT again now no screen at all.

Where the instrumentation was located at this time is anyone’s guess, but it definitely was not there and incidentally look at the remarkable depth of shade the site suffers…..Class 4 is simply not possible..

Ground cover issues are also particularly interesting here – the explanation for the temporary buildings was that this used to be a cricket pitch once upon a time.

Note the eastern corner of the field where it adjoins the road and the line of hedging running up to the screen site and also to the north west perimeter and large storage of silage bales. Now compare to modern day.

There is now a new vehicular field entry point, regular cropping of the field and access to the farm buildings to the north. This manual site was fitted with an electronic rapid responding Platinum Resistance Thermometer (PRT) to replace its former Liquid in Glass Thermometers (LIGT) on the 7th July 2017. The screen was also changed to the modern design intended to “accommodate” the different technology as demonstrated in my report on Gartocharn.

Now we have evidence of motorised vehicles passing extremely close to the screen not only in harvesting but also regularly delivering and collecting those silage bales similar to that demonstrated at Magilligan.

In conclusion anyone can take a set of figures from a computer file, run them through all manner of averaging, adjustments and modifications to appear all very “sciencey” but if the original data is inaccurate the end result will never be any better. The Talkshop could prove conclusively that the Met Office is correct in every way by using all their own suspect data – we might even be awarded a PhD to boast about it – but it would be complete fabricated nonsense.

Slapton weather station is a classic example of the low grade/unacceptable historic recording through multiple changes of surrounding and even dubious location knowledge. I will not be using this site’s data and nobody else should.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2026/01/09/slapton-dcnn8851-a-demonstration-of-why-even-allegedly-expert-meteorologists-get-it-so-wrong/