From The Tallbloke’s Talkshop

By Ray Sanders

The Forrest Estate is a large, wooded estate in Dumfries and Galloway noted for not only its “country pursuits” of shooting and fishing but also for holding stages of motor rallying on the private roads. The weather station was installed as a manually reporting unit in 2016. Quite why the Met Office is using such new very low grade and intermittently reporting sites in the 21st century is the topic of this review.

The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) formed the Commission for Instruments and Methods of Observation (CIMO) to standardise meteorological observations worldwide several decades ago. The UK Met Office formally adopted these standards with effect from 2014 and it is the 2014 standard that I link and refer to in every review. It would be reasonable to assume that every subsequent new weather station installed after 2014 would be intended to meet the best possible standards of 1 and 2 for any reputable organisation. Unfortunately, the Met Office clearly does not feel constrained to meet even the lowest standards if Forrest Lodge Weather station (installed 2016) is an example of their operating standards.

The Met Office claims Forrest Lodge meets Class 4 “Class 4 (additional estimated uncertainty added by siting up to 2 °C) “. This would be bad enough in itself even before detailed examination reveals the site does not even meet that standard and in reality, is an unacceptable “Class 5 (additional estimated uncertainty added by siting up to 5 °C) Site not meeting the requirements of class 4. “

Above are 10 and 3 metre radius circled areas from the exact pinpoint of the screen. The first blatantly obvious point to note is that screens should be situated on flat ground………. flat ground does not cast shadow!

Wind the clock back on google Earth Pro images to 2005, well before the screen installation, reveals a completely different topography in the area of the screen. N.B. the ground is not casting shadow only a few shrubs.

The site has been levelled to accommodate a new roadway, parking area and expansion of the clubhouse facilities with the spoil dumped and grassed over producing a sheltering embankment area. On top of this they have latterly installed the screen. I cannot find images of the screen itself, but I have identified this below as showing the embankment area in front of the clubhouse.

The screen is sitting on top of an artificial mount of approximately 2 metres height with ground falling away on two sides within 3 metres – this in itself rules out Class 4. Furthermore, the height of the surrounding coniferous forest evident above will inevitably lead to unacceptable levels of shade.

Now contrast this Forrest Lodge Met Office judgement at Class 4 with their condemnation of their perfectly flat Levens Hall site rated as Class 5. indicating a 30 metre radius (10 times that shown above) clear circled area. There is something seriously wrong with Met Office CIMO ratings assessments if Levens Hall is considered much worse than Forrest Lodge.

The next issue is one of observations. The sole purpose of a weather station is for observation to be taken as without them they are entirely pointless. On the Met Office WOW site there are often “Gold, Silver and Bronze Awards” shown with Forrest Lodge awarded a “Silver” as below.

{N.B. I regularly have to reset my internet connection due to getting this from the Met Office with almost boring regularity – they really do not seem to like me.

After resetting this is what showed:

So what is all this awards system about? I asked Grok.

“WOW is a public platform run by the UK Met Office where volunteers, amateur meteorologists, schools, and others submit manual or automatic weather observations from personal weather stations or manual readings.The Silver Award specifically recognizes consistency in submitting daily manual observations over the course of a year. According to the official WOW FAQ:

• Sites earn a Bronze award for over 300 manual observations in the year.
• Silver for over 330.
• Gold for over 350.

(Note: These thresholds refer to manual entries—likely one or more per day but focused on reliable daily manual reporting rather than automated uploads.) “

Forrest Lodge is an official site noted on its list of Synoptic and Climate weather stations and thus the public would assume a high standard rather than awards being offered for managing barely 80% of the prime function. So how does Forrest Lodge compare in the real world? I checked the Midas data file for the most recent year on file – 2024. Here is a typical example section with column I am showing maximum temperature, column J minimum and “NA” indicating no reading successfully recorded:

The first point to note is that both maximum and minimum readings are required to derive a daily average/mean. The absence of either render that function impossible. Secondly, the minimum readings are taken from a standard Liquid in Glass thermometer (LIGT) which requires resetting after reading for it to function for the following day. As a result, even if a minimum reading is taken the day after a failure to read, then it is effectively an unacceptable reading as it is not known to which day the reading applied. 

Are such dubious quality readings used to infill gaps at other stations when they are known to be almost certainly wrong?

In 2024 alone there were 81 days where one or the other reading was missing plus a further 34 days following no minimum observation/reset. Out of 365 days when readings should have been taken, 115 (32%) were failures. This is not an award-winning standard by any stretch of the imagination, I also feel that if observations are so “hit and miss” what credence can be given to observation accuracy? Taking temperature readings from an LIGT requires training and skill that may, or may not, be reflected in the readings.

At the other end of the scale, I then looked at the first year of observations from 2016 – under 10 years ago. At this time both maximum and minimum readings were by LIGT. Readings first commenced from 25/4/2016.

Despite this frankly atrocious observation standard from the very start (13 missing readings in the first 30 days alone) the Met Office changed the maximum LIGT to a Platinum Resistance Thermometer with Data Logger from 5/11/2017……but even this new “toy” was not read twice in that very month.

Taking all this a stage further as Forrest Lodge is a relatively new site, the WMO started advising the use of Artificially Aspirated sensors (which use a small fan to ensure adequate air movement to avoid stagnant air distortions/ Aitken Effect) in 2008. Realistically all new sites should utilise these relatively simple systems to overcome problems known to have existed since Scottish meteorologist John Aitken first identified it in 1884.

Would any other scientific organisation continue with practices and equipment known to be seriously inaccurate such as 19th century naturally aspirated Stevenson Screens and then fit 21st Century high tech equipment known to respond rapidly to transient heat spikes and distorting effects?

In conclusion Forrest Lodge is symptomatic of all that is wrong with modern Met Office climate science:

All new sites should always be at least Class 2 which is not, in reality, difficult to achieve – The CEH manage it very well.

They should all be automatically reporting to overcome time of observation bias and ensure readings are actually being made regularly and reliably.

All new sensors should be artificially aspirated with the days of Victorian antique pieces of Stevenson screens replaced with 21st Century designs. This alleged “gold standard” Stevenson Screen will be the subject of review shortly.

The Met Office should be independently scrutinised as it is obviously not capable of performing to an acceptable standard as Forrest Lodge demonstrates.