OT: Yesterday’s temperature record

Our local metman/oceanographer was suspicious of the Southampton 1976 record and then the new provisional Gosport one got him thinking .

"Look> My curiosity was raised by the new temperature record set, of all places,

Zone 5

The revolution in the availability of smart kit means there must be tens if not hundreds of thousands of external measurements all over the UK. Admittedly indicative rather than definitive, but overall enought to give a very good picture.

Yesterday in Brum, my external shaded sensor peaked at 34.1C I have records going back at 5 minute intervals to October 2024. I have the same for each room in the house too. Which shows (for example) that when I got up this morning and opened all the external doors the cross draught cooled the lounge by 1C in a couple of minutes.

On 25/06/2026 13:38, Spike wrote: [snipped rubbish]

The temperature is the temperature. It is what it reads on the thermometer.

It's no good saying the temperature would be different if there weren't all these buildings/trees/expanses of water/fields/runways/car parks/ roofs/hills/whatever. That is what the whole of the UK is like. You may as well say the reading is invalid because it's caused by unusual weather.

TW

To be fair, if the temperature were actually taken inside an oven one might quibble. Short of that, I agree, the temperature is the temperature where actual people are to be found. Subject to the usual screening from direct sunlight, etc.

I think the old British standard was that louvred box, a certain height off the ground, shaded, ventilated.

TW

Certainly, the current level of temperatures is caused in part by other means than just saying It Ain’t Arf Ot, Mum.

The mechanism was explained in a BBC TV weather forecast during the last heatwave, but for some reason the BBC have now stopped mentioning it.

A handful of years ago a temperature record in Europe was broken. Some time later it emerged that the site in question was located in an urban heat island, and also the thermometer was out of calibration and was due to be replaced.

A few km away the temperatures were some 3degC lower, but by then we’d had all the now-unjustified climate hype.

That’s interesting, thanks for posting.

I’ll keep an eye out, but if the MetO pronounce on the veracity of this reading and I don’t see it, would you mind posting a link?

The 'Stevenson Screen'. Still the definitive method of recording weather, AFAIK. If it has been superseded, fair enough, but all compared readings should be from that or it's replacement assuming it has been installed correctly in the first place.

It's not quite that simple.

I have an outdoor wireless thermometer whose readings would be affected by its immediate location, even if it gave the temperature accurately.

I live on a hillside, so the back of the house is subject to cold air settling and gets trapped in way which prevents it rolling down the hill.

I want the reading to reflect what I would feel if I walked outdoors (not the ground temperature) so the device is mounted about 5 feet up, on a handy washing line pole.

Perhaps you should bury the themometer in a block of ballistic gel, in a cotton bag, to simulate a human body.

You are right. I simplified it for Spike, hoping he would understand. TW

This sort of thing was mentioned on a BBC report I heard earlier today - one reason for the delay in any announcement is due to the setup of the Stevenson screen etc being checked as correct. Some of these scientists do know what they are doing, you see...

Well, the new June record was recorded at the Royal Naval Air Station Merryfield, close to a nice black-tarmac taxi-way that connects the three major runways.

Co-ordinates from the Met Office:

Can someone explain why all temperature records occur in either airfields, airports, or urban heat islands? And none at country locations?

Merryfield, deep in the Somerset countryside, miles from any urban concentration of tarmac and steel roofs, well off to the side of an airfield which is 95% grass...

...you are a right wing Farage loving moron

TW

That one is at a country location - look it up. And if you don't know (did you miss that class?), why don't you ask the met office? Might be nice to touch base with your fellow climate scientists.

I did ask them when I used to use their data, and got a detailed reply. A couple of weather stations were in quite 'challenging' locations and I wondered how they dealt with it. Can't remember the exact reply but it was something to do with weighting.

Ah…weighting…add a little weighting here…take off a little weighting there…and you can change ‘global warming’ into ‘global cooling’, or pay off the National Debt in half-an-hour.

Rather like the 48 Siberian bristlecone pines that were cut down, to examine the effects ‘global warming’, only one of which was chosen to ‘prove’ that ‘global warming’ existed.

Real scientists should run with the data they have, not the data they want to see.

Down in the South West, the local TV weather forecasts regularly show two areas that greatly exceed the forecast temperatures for the region in general, generally 6 to 8 degrees hotter.

Where are these two areas?

Yes! Exeter airport and Yeovilton Naval Air Station.

Is the following true, partly true, or right-wing denier lies?

Figures were said to be compiled from “well-correlated neighbouring stations”, but research by citizen sleuth Ray Sanders found there were no such operations within a 40-mile radius.

At the time, the Daily Sceptic referred to the matter as a “smoking gun” and said that unless the Met Office could finally reveal its workings out, “the only realistic conclusion to draw is that the data are invented”.

No explanation has been provided but in a shock unannounced move the Met Office has now withdrawn all the Lowestoft data from its historical record back to when the site closed in 2010. Similar withdrawals of data have also occurred in the stations at Nairm Druim and Paisley.”

Or there’s this…

Temperature measurements are taken from 63 Met Office stations in England and Wales but over half of these sites have internationally recognised ‘uncertainties’ of between 2°C and 5°C. [!!!!!]

Payments in the rural areas around Sheffield depend on readings from a City-based site where the station is rated Class 5 by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) with a 5°C margin of error. [!!!!!]

The site, which is by the A57, is blanketed with urban heat corruption and will record much higher temperatures than those found in the surrounding Peak District.”

More denier lies?

Actually because that is where most of the weather stations are. Flying needs accurate weather so as far as I know every airbase or airport has a weather station.

Its pointless saying its influenced by the tarmac, its likely every record from the past was influenced by tarmac, so it might be a little higher than the surroundings, but so were all the previous records....

Dave

No thermometers out in the cuntry

At, Typical country. 10 feet from a tarmacked taxiway and surrounded by bare earth.

Sort of place adders come out to sunbathe, it's so hot.