From Tallbloke’s Talkshop

By Ray Sanders

Viewing the above Met Office graph, the majority of the general public will almost certainly assume a dramatic, rapid and alarmingly upward trend in “temperatures” starting around the latter 1980s. Such evidence supports the current mantra of Anthropogenic Global Warming/ Manmade climate Change. It is “blatantly obvious” to those using “the science” to promote and impose on the rest of us their own personal political ideologies – “just look at the data!” The Surface Stations Project‘s intended aim is to do exactly that and look at the data in a genuinely accurate, scientific and open manner. Aultbea is a classic example of just one of the many ways in which the Met Office data collection and representation system is vastly more important in producing the above misleading graphs than any actual significant temperature changes are.

“Aultbea is a small coastal fishing village in the North-West Highlands of Scotland. It is situated on the southeast shore of Loch Ewe, about 30 kilometres west of Ullapool.” Although noted as a “Number 2” site, the original site was solely a rain gauge site not recording temperatures.

Paul Homewood, author of the excellent “Not a Lot of People know That” blog recently acquired under Freedom of Information Act a list of all currently operational and CIMO assessed Met Office weather stations by “installation date”. This list was very informative as it showed all sites by their original start date for whatever their original purpose and not necessarily temperature recording. A not atypical example of this was Achfary which was shown as starting in 1914 as confirmed by its CEDA Archived entry.

It would seem difficult to argue with the Met Office that this site has a 111 year history. Furthermore it is a double national all-time highest temperature record holder for December 2019 and January 2024.

Again the very recent nature of these “Climate Extremes” {Ed note: since when were weather events defined as “climate”} must be proof positive of this dramatic warming……BUT …….what the Met office did not make clear in its FOI response was that Achfary did not actually commence temperature readings until 1st October 2006. As I also highlighted in my report, it is an atrociously located site (“CIMO Class 5 (additional estimated uncertainty added by siting up to 5 °C “) in a domestic front garden, has been relocated more than once in its short life, and is “site selected” to catch transient weather (not climate) effects known as Foehn Effect.

The Met Office clearly states the Foehn Effect is a weather phenomenon. How does all this relate to Aultbea? The fact is that Aultbea is also an area likely to frequently record Foehn Effects and despite the Met Office showing a station start date of 1980 it actually only started its temperature record in 1990.

As “Grok” AI described this weather station site – “Aultbea is on the northwest (leeward) coast of Wester Ross, immediately downwind of significant orographic barriers like the Torridon Hills (up to 1,100m) and Beinn Eighe massif, just 10–15 km inland to the southeast. These features force Atlantic air to rise, deposit rain/snow on their western slopes, and descend as warm, dry Foehn winds toward the coast. The station’s low elevation and coastal position (in a “drainage stream” area) allow it to detect the full warming and drying as air funnels toward the sea, often channeling winds along Loch Ewe”

All the above only indicates two things so far. Firstly, Foehn Effects occur in this region and secondly that there are relatively modern sites there to record them. The implications though are the key issue. These relatively rare Foehns are “extreme” events and, as I explained in the Reification of Averages the Met Office retention of their crude averaging system is “extremely” responsive to extremes. Indeed It is quite apparent that these extremes are often sought out.

Again, under Freedom of Information Request a list of the highest recorded temperatures for each day of the year of 2025 so far was recently obtained. Foehn effects are most noted in winter and early spring. Below is the data for January. {note some rather odd Scottish county names.}

The first extreme that stands out is the dominance of the unrepresentative Scilly Isles Airport site – a geographic “extreme” that appears on 10 occasions. Possibly the less immediately noticeable issue is the appearances of so many Scottish sites recording daily highs in January. Achnagart, Cassley, Banff, and Tain provide a 7 consecutive day run of almost certainly Foehn phenomena – brief extreme events all contributing to cause distortion on daily means. However short lived these events may have been, a single sixty second reading is all that is required, their eager inclusion into “Climate” records is grossly misleading. 17 days (over half) of all January daily high temperatures come from either geographic or weather event extremes.

February data continues this distortion.

Scilly makes 7 appearances but perhaps the most interesting feature is Achfary making 3 appearances – perhaps this site can achieve the record highs for all three winter months of December, January and February. Adding in Poolewe (close to Aultbea), Aultbea itself again and both Kinloss and Lossiemouth make a total of seven. 14 out of the 28 days of February are again from geographic or likely weather event extremes.

Of the 59 winter days of 2025 so far, 31 of them are unlikely to be representative of the overall UK climate producing one-off “extremes”. Scilly has already been demonstrated to have artificially uplifted figures from poor relocation in 1991. Aultbea No 2 has temperature records from 1990, Banff from 1990, Tain from 1994 Achnagart from 2003, Achfary from 2006. Even Poolewe has been subject to a recent relocation. Whilst the aviation sites of Kinloss and Lossiemouth are long term it is quite apparent there are increased numbers of new reporting points in locations prone to Foehn Effects and producing “extremes”.

It is blindingly obvious to the vast majority that deriving a daily mean from just the maximum and minimum readings (that may only last 60 seconds each) is not going to give a genuine impression of a day’s weather let alone a 30-year rolling climate trend. To a “Climate Activist” this antiquated system is a golden opportunity to manipulate input data to produce a pre-determined end result. As noted in the Achnagart report, in the past meteorologists would ignore and rule out one-off occasional phenomena now it is evident such spurious data is actively chased and used to manipulate data presentation.