The Scandal of the Scottish Met Office Station Still Providing Temperature Figures Six Decades After it Closed

When will the Met Office admit it is making it up as it goes along?

Another shocking example of decades-long invented temperature figures at non-existent UK Met Office measuring stations has come to light. The Lephinmore ‘station’ was situated in the upper reaches of the Firth of Clyde, and according to the “location-specific long-term averages” Met Office database it can supply monthly temperature readings along with rainfall amounts going back to 1960. This supply can be considered a modern scientific wonder given that the actual station closed five months before England won the World Cup in 1966.

The usual form when the Met Office is asked to provide further and better particulars on its invention techniques is for the explanation to be given that batches of figures from “well-correlated neighbouring stations” are modelled by a computer. But in the case of location-specific station Lephinmore, there are no neighbouring stations, well-correlated or otherwise.

The three nearest with any long-term records are CIMO Class 4 ‘junk’ station Dunstaffnage at 27 miles distance, Class 4 Glasgow Bishopton 29 miles away, and the Class 4 airport site 45 miles away at Prestwick Gannet. A station called “Bute: Rothesay” is said to be 18 miles away but this closed some time ago. A new station “Bute: Rothesay No 2” opened in 2012 and this is also in the Class 4 junk portfolio. The considerable distances involved and the ‘junk’ nature of all the sites with internationally recognised uncertainties of up to 2°C, would appear to rule out well-correlation for either a single ‘station’ or a fudged ‘location-specific’ claim.

Not to put too fine a point on it, the idea that an airport site can provide scientific information about likely temperature and rainfall conditions at a rural location 45 miles away is little short of risible. A Class 4 site is unable to give a true ambient air temperature in its own backyard, let alone one tens of miles distance.