Syerston CLBD4210 – Met Office imaginative CIMO assessments. Yet another “Human Error” or a sign of systemic failures?

53.017353,-0.922174 Met Office Assessed CIMO Class Installed 1/12/2014 NO TEMPERATURE RECORDS AVAILABLE

RAF Syserton is an operational airfield 10 km/6 miles to the south west of Newark in Nottinghamshire. The weather station here does NOT appear in the Met Office list of operational Climate and Synoptic reporting stations nor are there any publicly archived observations from the site. This recording absence would lead to the conclusion that its readings are only for on site aviation use and not historic climate reporting, however, it does occasionally appear in the Met Office daily “Extremes” data. This is in itself not unique as the absurd Gosport:Fleetlands site is similarly not archiving observations – a very dubious practise with no potential scrutiny. The strangest aspect of this site is its quite bizarre CIMO assessment as Class 1 and issues relating to the Met Office’s latest CIMO listings.

Whilst browsing the internet for information regarding another site, I stumbled across the “What do they know?” website which had a Freedom of Information request in hand with the Met Office requesting current CIMO Class 1 and 2 sites in the UK. The response from the Met office is dated as 26th January 2026 and is more recent that my previously published listing of all sites. I list it below. This is the list as it appears on the “What do they Know” site.

This new list is very interesting indeed (which I will discuss later in this post) but initially I was drawn to Syerston that I knew was not a “regular” climate reporting site. The Met Office has a default position of CIMO Class 1 and their own rating of “Excellent” unless manually changed after inspection as I identified with regard to Hastings. Syerston is shown as Class 1 so I investigated.

Above is a 100 metre radius circle from the screen. CIMO Class 1 requires a 100 metre radius area free from compromising issues as detailed below.

Quite obviously “(c) Measurement point situated: (i) At more than 100 m from heat sources or reflective surfaces (buildings, concrete surfaces, car parks, etc.); is simply not the case here and Class 1 is impossible. Furthermore the 30 metre radius circle for Class 2 is also far too compromised for that classification to be given. Realistically Syerston might make Class 4 but no better.

I categorically state this Met Office assessment is completely incorrect and definitely the result of their default to perfection inbuilt bias.

Whether this actually matters is a valid question. There is no direct evidence of its data/observations being used for climate reporting purposes, however, how does anyone actually know that is not the case. Why would a non climate reporting station be CIMO assesed? Despite repeated questioning the Met Office refuses to divulge which stations it actually uses to supply “Well Correlated” readings for long deceased sites – is Syerston used for these purposes….who knows? The obsevations here will definitely be unrepresentative of the surrounding area. This is not a site any serious meteorological organisation should use for historic temperature reporting.

The next wider point, though, is the current Class 1 and 2 listing from the FOI itself. Following on from my correcting the Met Office classification of Hastings from Class 1 to their acceptance of Class 4, I pursued what I felt was the incorrect assessment of Edenbridge as Class 1. Again the Met Office was obliged to agree with me and similarly down grade to Class 4. I then similarly questioned the Class 1 rating of Cassley in Sutherland which, unlike Hastings and Edenbridge, I had not personally visited the site and only judged from online sources.

At this point Met office “senior manager” Karl Shepherdson {author of the anti-science book the “Indisputable Truth”} refused to further discuss any issues with me (despite initially offering to do so quite unsolicited ) and advised me that the Cassley assessment was correct – pointedly neither confirming nor denying whether Class 1 was the appropriate classification. Viewing the latest full UK list of Class 1 and 2 stations released under the above FOI, it does NOT include Cassley thus at best it can only be Class 3 and in my estimation it really is Class 5 junk on an unacceptable slope, adjacent to an electricity transformer, within curtilage of a hydro electricity generating plant with both hardstanding and parking and unsuitable overgrown localised vegetation. Yet another “Human Error” unquestionably uncovered but it would appear the public is not allowed to question the Met office’s authority too many times despite their being completely wrong!

Further examination of the list shows that Lyneham, the subject of my last review and formerly rated as Class 2, no longer appears on the list though any change should have been evident in my 2025 listings – it does seem remarkably tardy to only now be de-rating the site for the small matter of 160,000 solar panels installed almost 12 years ago.

I will be further examining this modified list of Class 1/2 stations as it rather seems the Met Office is somewhat unlikely to have “changed its spots” – the Cliff Farm and Tomintoul No 6 stations are equally new, rated as Class 1 but are looking like yet more “Human Errors/Absurd Default”

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2026/04/23/syerston-clbd4210-met-office-imaginative-cimo-assessments-yet-another-human-error-or-a-sign-of-systemic-failures/