London Urban Heat Island – How the Met Office employs sample bias….recognise a pattern?

According to the Met Office website ” Weather stations are found throughout the UK, typically spaced about 40 km apart, allowing for effective tracking of weather systems such as low pressure and frontal movements.” The above is a location map of all the Met Office weather stations that fall within a 40 km radius circle centred on the centre of London which just happens to be within a few metres of the St James’s Park weather station location. within this 5,026 square kilometre area there are 14 weather stations – a remarkably high concentration compared to the rest of the UK and massively more concentrated than their claimed “typically spaced about 40 km apart”. This is a study of why this is so very important to feed a narrative for the Met office..

Firstly the details of all the sites on the map can be found from the links to my reviews of each individual site. Just the brief descriptive lines should tell you all you really need to know – with the exception of Rothamsted (only just within the area) the rest are largely unsatisfactory for the purpose of long term climate reporting. Most of these sites are frankly junk.

SJP London St James’s Park CIMO Class 5 – A park in the dead centre of London

BAT Battersea Heliport CIMO Class 5 – A helicopter landing/take off apron.

KEW Kew Gardens CIMO Class 4 – Regularly surrounded by exhibitions.

TED Teddington Bushy Park CIMO Class 4 – In a wallled garden area.

NHT RAF Noirtholt CIMO Class 5 – An aviation site between the A40 and the runway alongside metal roadside cladding.

LHR Heathrow Airport CIMO Class 3 – incorrect as this is Class 5. By one of the world’s busiest airports and in front of south facing metal cladding.

CHE Chertesey Abbey Mead CIMO Class 3 – Incoreect as this is Class 5 With a solar farm built around it.

WIS RHS Wisley CIMO Class 4 – A deliberately created horticultural micro-climate.

AME Amersham Field Centre CIMO Class 4 Drectly alongside a major National Grid sub station

IVE Iver Water Works CIMO Class 4 – By an industrial water treatment plant and a lorry park for Heathrow Airport.

CIP Cippenham Sewage Works CIMO Class 4 – Alongside warming sewage settlement tanks.

KEN Kenley Airfield CIMO Class 3 – By a disused airfield.

HIG High Beach CIMO Class 5 – In a woodland clearing.

ROT Rothamsted CIMO Class 1 – A very good site that just manages to fall within the 40 km radius.

How does this stack up against historic sites that are now closed down in the same area. Below is a map extract from the CEDA/MIDAS archives showing most of the past and present sites within the same delineated area. N.B. the data is only up to 2017 and does not include several modern sites installed after 2017.

Everyone of those flags represents an official site where temperature readings are/were taken. Pause a while and consider the geographic distribution. It all looks reasonably even in the past, but then return to the headline map image of what is operational now..

{Author note: IT Glitch had to resort to manual operations for speed!}

In just a 70° section running from southwest to northwest (RHS Wisley to Amersham Field Centre and including the new unmapped sites) there are eleven of the total of 14 in that 40 km radius circle. This equates to an area of just 977 square kilometres or the equivalent of a weather station for every 89 square kilometers……..that is less than one for every 35 square miles.

As I have emphasized before notably with southwest Wales, Dumfriess and Galloway and Kent, the relative distribution of sites is a very long way short of even. The entire county of Derbyshire (area 2,625 square kilometres) has just 3 weather stations. On the observed concentration of west London sites, Derbyshire would warrant 30 weather stations i.e. a tenfold (order of magnitude) increment.

Investigate a step further – “Climate Averages” are shown on the Met Office Location Specific Long Term Averages page in 30 year periods starting from 1960 to 2020. The last 30 year climate averages period starts in 1990 and runs to 2020.

How many stations in that 70° segment have closed over that period? Just ONE at Hampton Water Works which closed down in 2019. How many are new ones in that same area? Amazingly SIX. Amersham – 2015, Iver- 2016, Cippenham, Teddington and Chertsey – all 2017 and Battersea 2018.

So now consider the other 290° segment. How many closures? ELEVEN at Northwood – 2015 , Chenies – 1998, Aldenham – 2007, Waltham Cross – 1993, Eynsforsd – 2008, Greenwich – 2004, Greenwich Observatory – 2004, Gravesend – 2018, Hampstead- 2016, Enfield – 2006 and the London Weather Centre in 2010. And how many of the remaining 290° segment are subsequent to 1990……..PRECISELY NONE.

So why is there this exceptionally skewed redistribution pattern of site locations? It has been confirmed by the Met Office themselves that ALL of their “Climate reporting and Synoptic” sites contribute in one way or another to “climate” reporting data. Regardless of however the Met Office “adjusts”, “modifies” or “homogenises” data, observations ultimately have to come from somewhere tangible – surely even the Met Office cannot just make them all up! Therefore, this comes down to the simple aspect of biased sampling (“eight out of ten owners said their cat preferred it”) in that if weather stations, as data reporting points, can be selectively adjusted over time then whatever “average” is derived can be artificially created to prove whatever predetermined result you would like. Drift the sample points to predominantly cooler locations to show cooling. Alternatively, drift the mix to progressively more and more warmer sites to prove CATASTROPHIC GLOBAL BOILING with flame red colours highlighting.

London is a notorious Urban Heat Island carefully monitored by UK government sponsored organisations.

It is common knowledge that UK warmer temperatures are derived from air streams traveling over continental Europe and generally tracking from southerly to easterly direction (N.B. similarly easterly winds in winter can bring exceptional cold – the “Beast from the East”) Such air streams track over London gathering inland and urban warmth, so where better to detect such artificially warmed air than by those airports, solar farms, water works, sewage works, electricity sub stations, walled gardens, and horticultural centres than those to the west of London? Adding cooler sites to the north and east of London will lower the homogenised total of all sites in the area……so eliminate them! Eleven London sites in just 977 square kilometres to just three in the remaining 4,049 square kilometres – classic “How to Lie with Statisitcs“

Is all this just my conjecture and personal subjective opinion doubting the Met Office, or is there any more information to support my view of selection bias? The TORRO website offers all time maximum and minimum temperatures for every day of the year.

Running through the daily maximums for each day of the year shows that just a fraction short of 10% of all time daily highs come from that small 70° sliver of West London’s low grade urban heat effect capturing points and they are nearly all 21st century readings. A typical April snapshot:for example:-

And to really make a complete mockery of record observations, even Chertsey was credited the all time daily high 10/6/2023 AFTER those solar panels were installed surrounding it. No matter how poor and disputed these records actually are, the Met office will stand by them despite any rational argument or evidence.

10

32.2

90.1

Chertsey Abbey Mead Pumping Station (Surrey) 2023 31.7°C*/89.0°F* Maldon (Essex) 1970 31.1°C / 88.0°F Regents Park (London) 1970 30.6°C / 87.0°F Terrington St Clement (Norfolk) 1940

To sum up, it is, to me, blatantly obvious that changes in selected sampling points is just one of a large range of devices which are being used to distort the derived data that the Met office is using to prove their narrative of rapid warming. The absurdity of using Heathrow, Northolt and Kew as a “Climate Averages” is actually beyond parody – it is deliberate skewing of data. It is hardly surprising that basing these averages on mostly new and compromised sites gives readings that show increments almost double that of the 4 Class 1 sites in Cumbria.

This deceit must be subject to genuinely independent scrutiny. At present Met Office data fails any scientific examination and this has to be stopped..

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2026/07/16/london-urban-heat-island-how-the-met-office-employs-sample-bias-recognise-a-pattern/