Ringway WMO03334 – Strictly sharing with Squires Gate – plus further discussion on the CET.

53.356516 -2.280379 CIMO Assessment not known. Used for CET from 1958 to 2004

This post is a continuation of the review of Malvern/Great Malvern in relation to the Central England Temperature record and this former report needs to be read prior for relevance and to avoid too many additional links and graphics. In addition my report on Blackpool Squires Gate relates to the other CET site used in conjuction. Ringway weather station’s observations were used in the compilation of the CET in a 50/50 combination with Squires Gate from 1959 to 2004. Yes, two airport sites were used to jointly continue a temperature series started in 1659 – hundreds of years before aircraft were even invented!

Ringway is the main airport for Manchester and ranks as the UK’s third busiest and twentieth busiest in Europe. Constructed in 1938 with two inline (but staggered/offset) 10,000+ feet runways, it can handle the largest aircraft with over 200,000 annual aircraft movements. Whatever any meteorological services worldwide may claim about airport weather stations, one thing that is surely beyond doubt is that they are anything but “natural locations. Here is a wider angle view of modern day Ringway for overall perspective with the red kite marker for the screen location as was up to 2005 when the site was paved over to become car parking.

At the risk of being boring I will repeat this piece of classic Met Office misinformation –

“For instance, stations are often found in open spaces like airports, but equipment is placed at internationally agreed distances from runways to avoid interference.“

Referring back to the headline image rather puts the above claim into stark relief – if they can use Ringway surrounded by taxiways, aircraft, aviation parking aprons, hangars, roadways and car parking for an internationally recognised and world’s longest running temperature series, how bad does that make the rest of their aviation sites?

And then it gets worse……….from the CEDA archive notes

1996-11-02 Current HISTORICAL NOTES ORIGINAL SITE WAS AT GRID REFERENCE 3821 3849 FROM 1941 UNTIL 1988.

The Ringway site used from 1959 to 2004 was not in the same place with one site in use for the first 19 years and then the current one later to 2004. Was the climatology of the two sites significantly different, after all surely most of an airport site is not great so it could not get much worse surely…….could it? Well firstly this is what the Met Office Surface Stations users guide actually says in the section on station siting.

“It is unavoidable that some sites do not meet all these requirements, particularly where a station set up for one purpose gradually takes on a different role, for example an airport site originally established for aviation observing may become a key synoptic or climate station while suffering the effects of urbanisation. A few sites are in city centres and may be unsuitably located close to large obstacles or even on the roof of a building.” {my bold}.

Surely an official CET weather station would not be on the roof of a building would it?

Former research physicist John Marlow, who was responsible for the opening and operations of Dunstaffnage weather station, recently recounted to me his experiences of the very warm summer of 1947 and I noted this specific remark –

“One I remember well; ”90+ degrees again”, {a news parer headline} which was measured on the Air Ministry’s roof in central London.  [No understanding of UHI in those days.]“

it was, in fact, very common that temperature readings were taken on building roofs and even the “London Weather Centre” and other regional ones were rooftop locations. The now Met Office controlled CET (taken over from Professor Gordon Manley) was quite willing to transfer roof top buildings into the CET before then using the latter unquestionably Class 5 and wildly unrepresentative headline image location. Should it really surprise anyone that the late Philip Eden opted to establish a competing series more in keeping with Manley’s original ethos?

To put this site into even sharper focus is that its observations combination with Blackpool Squires Gate. A point that intensely irritates me is the way the Met Office names sites almost to mislead. For example Pershore in the Vale of Evesham conjures up one image to the general public whilst RAF Throckmorton gives a completely different impression of the self same site. A whole range of aviation sites are disguised by potential misnaming, after all Hawarden is not really known for anything (apart from a Vertical Plane) but naming it as Chester Airport would probably start questioning of its potential unrepresentative nature.

Ringway is a name few would immediately relate to as an airport site and even fewer would be aware of Squires Gate’s provenance. Thus the Met Office has “got away” with adding totally inappropriate locations to the CET whilst simultaneously puffing up its modern day relevance supporting their narrative. Unfortunately for the Met Office, Rothamsted – the third long running site contributing to the CET – is largely out of their control and produces data that continues to contradict their excessive claims.

Taking the CET location points a stage further, following the closure of Malvern and Ringway due to site developments they were removed (along with Squires Gate) from the CET to be replaced by two CIMO Class 4 sites running (with 100% data from each) at Pershore College and Stoneyhurst from 2005.

With almost 400 reporting sites to choose from the Met Office opted to use 2 of the worse sites they had available for a long term internationally “recognised” data series.

Stoneyhurst – was this below the best on offer? Wasn’t Class 1 Rostherne a better option just a few miles away?

Pershore College below – why not Class 1 Wellesbourne? (n.b. image detail enhanced by ChatGPT)

In summary the CET, subsequent to its takeover by the Met Office, is not shown to be a reliable record of Central England that (with the notable exception of Rothamsted) has used and is continuing to use low quality sites that are not representative of their wider surrounding environment.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2026/05/29/ringway-wmo03334-strictly-sharing-with-squires-gate-plus-further-discussion-on-the-cet/