From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Every day, the Met Office publish a list of daily extremes like the one above.

The Met Office have sent me a list of the daily high temperatures so far this year and I have analysed them for the summer months by WMO Classifications, which they supplied last year.

The results speak for themselves – overwhelmingly sourced from junk weather stations where temperatures may be inflated by as much as 2C or even more by poor siting.

Out of the five highs set at Class 1 sites, four are in the urban heat island bubble of Cambridge, so are equally meaningless from a climatological point of view.

The usual sites we are very familiar with are well represented – twelve are next to the tarmac at Heathrow. The car park in Hull appears six times, and the garden suntrap in Cavendish four times. Interestingly Cirencester, a Class 4 site, crops up nine times, which might arouse local interest.

Pershore also appears on the list nine times, in addition to two more at Pershore College. Both are junk Class 4 sites, with two degrees of uncertainty.

I hardly need to point out that there are hardly any daily highs at good quality sites. The only other Class 1 site to the urban jungle in Cambridge happens to be at Weybourne in Norfolk – readers comments welcome!

As to the three Class 2s, two were at Kew Gardens, inside the three degree urban heat island of London. The other was at Holbeach in Lincolnshire, near the Wash where I went cycling a few years ago.

I hardly need to ask why there are virtually no daily highs recorded at pristine rural stations!