Cheltenham DCNN 4967 – Where are the likes of now?

51.89556 -2.08088 Likely CIMO assessment Class 5S Installed 1/1/1874 Closed 31/1/2001

The centre of the 10 metre radius circle marks the tree that was planted on the site of this former weather station that set the 1990 all time national “record”. A nearby memorial plaque honours the achievement. When reviewing a former Scottish record breaking site Greycrook, Tim channon made these interesting remarks

“I’ve posted this article so it is on file and as an incidental where looking at record breaking sites tends to show poor sites. Curiously records or near records tend to be set followed by site cessation or sudden site change / equipment change.

No mention of an instrument check or a site check.”

So I decided to further investigate this claim …………….

Up until the late 1970s the UK’s highest recorded temperature was regarded as 38.06°C on 22/7/1868 at Tonbridge in Kent. Despite being measured by an eminent scientist and member of the Royal Society,  Dr George Hunsley Fielding, it was later expunged from the records (over 100 years after the event) as being inaccurate. Many disputed this removal, nevertheless the decision was upheld. This left the official UK record being changed to 9/8/1911 of 36.7°C independently recorded at both Raunds in Northamptonshire and Canterbury in Kent. {An interesting observation is that despite recording the annual highest temperatures several times over the years, both the Raunds and Canterbury sites were closed down with no nearby replacements.}

This new record stood for 79 years until 3/8/1990 when Cheltenham entered the arena. Here is a local press report into the background of this record breaking site. A snippet below:

A charming tale of a dedicated observer at a manual station. However, to consider the site, the location is well known, marked locally and still just visible (blurry) in the 2001 Google Earth Pro aerial image. It was then, as now, not only an unnatural location in Montpelier Park but very regularly subject to large scale events as noted in the article above. Although a park, it is surrounded on all sides by housing and busy roads, winds are broken by trees and is in a significant Urban Heat Island creating this artificial sun trap. Whatever classification it may have been allocated by the Met Office back then, it would be CIMO class 5S (subject to shading) by today’s yardstick. Attempting to get a street view image of the modern site supplied this.

The weather station site was almost dead centre of the above, just to the end of the Marquee to the left and just before the smaller green banner in the distance. I have been informed by a former local resident that there was a similar style event to the above on that record breaking day (apparently these are very common throughout the summer high season) and I am trying to get documentary proof to confirm this. {Talkshop comment: if anyone can help in confirming this please put a note in comments}

It is quite clear the site was, as Tim put it, one of those “poor sites” at the best of times and was very probably further compromised by event activity. More damning is that the CEDA archives do not show that any calibration test or site inspection followed. The Met Office seemed somewhat desperate to break that 79 year old records simultaneously set at two different locations over 135 miles apart.

Although that day in 1990 was obviously very warm, was the high point actually verified by other readings in the area? Meteorological site “WeatherSpark” provides a very detailed analysis of areas over time as detailed below. This is well worth a detailed read as it indicates, from surrounding area data, that the Cheltenham site reading was likely an abnormal spike and only indicative of an extremely local and possibly non-meteorological nature.

https://weatherspark.com/h/y/39569/1990/Historical-Weather-during-1990-in-Cheltenham-United-Kingdom

As I discussed in my letter to Peter Kyle, these types of manual reporting stations were often closed if not deemed worthy of the expense or difficulty in converting to early forms of automation, though automation here should not have presented any problem. When the observer retired, they simply closed it down as readings were probably considered far too unreliable. The reporter in the article above suggests it was moved to the nearby airport – whatever did actually happen, there is no CIMO assessed climate reporting station now in the locality – the somewhat unreliable Hartpury College being the nearest.

An amusing sideline to this part of the story goes to the ineptitude of BBC reporters. An archived article about the Cheltenham record includes the line ” A Leicester weather station recorded a temperature of 37°C in Cheltenham, one degree higher than the previous record in 1911.” I seriously doubt the residents of Cheltenham in Gloucestershire would appreciate re-location to Leicestershire!

I feel the above demonstrates the start point of a growing imperative on the part of the Met Office to exaggerate and over-stress such trivial and extremely dubious records whilst progressively neglecting scientific integrity. The Cheltenham record was, at best, an outlier but more likely just plain inaccuracy caused by poor siting and/or an unfortunate “intervention by persons unknown” . This latter term was actually used by Phillip Eden, chief executive of the Royal Meteorological Society, when reviewing the subsequent record breaking site in 2003 at Faversham . I shall discuss my own personal knowledge of that particular station’s record in a review shortly. This apparent lack of formal verification seems to reflect the poor quality control of the time as demonstrated at Greycrook and continued with the examples at Motherwell and Floors Castle.

In these more recent examples social media, availability of imagery and extensive access to information made it possible to hold the Met Office to account and correct such errors. In the 1990 (and even the 2003 subsequent record breaking event) these facilities were much less, or not at all, available. Most notable now is that current records such as Coningsby and Cranwell were achieved at sites with no general public access and limited access to photography.

The levels of alleged scientific integrity applied to major retrospective analysis of century old events identified at Tonbridge seem to be totally absent in similar analysis of current events where, it seems, anything goes.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2024/11/22/cheltenham-dcnn-4967-where-are-the-likes-of-now/