Winterbourne No 2 DCNN4405 – A Met Office Parody of extraneous heat sources.

52.45640 -1.92763 Met Office CIMO assessed Class 5 Installed 3/2/2011

Winterbourne No 2 weather station is a modern fully equipped automatic reporting unit located in the Edgbaston area of Birmingham and is associated with the University of Birmingham. It is assessed as the lowest possible CIMO standard of Class 5 defined as having “additional estimated uncertainty added by siting up to 5 °C. As is self evident from the above image, the site is somewhat compromised by the nearby busy Edgbaston Park Road, significant areas of “heat sink” hard standing and paths and, of course, the greenhouses. All of these pale into insignificance compared to the mind bogglingly perverse reasoning of the UK Met Office.

In aerial view the site looks poor and given that this is a newly relocated site I wondered firstly how bad must the old site have been to warrant this one and also why, in such recent times, could the Met Office not at least make some attempt to improve things. Firstly the old site had been vastly superior to the new choice as seen below in 2003. {reference coordinates 52.45445 -1.92438} This was possibly as good as it could be anywhere in the UK’s second largest city – a guestimate Class 3 or maybe even better.

Site development had understandably enforced relocation (and further increased the huge Birmingham Urban Heat Island) but such a major downgrade to the new site seems highly questionable. Viewing the site at ground level only reveals the proximity of more problems.

This view may possibly foreshorten distances but that tall hedge actually runs ESE to WNW and casts a lot of shadow. The walling is on the eastern flank above the pathway and together they will be enhancing absorption of morning sunshine. The wind break effect of the hedge and trees lining the whole area when added to the greenhouses create almost a cauldron effect of trapped and artificially warmed air similar to a walled garden. This is in the horticultural college of the University after all.

But NONE of the above represents the perverse parody regarding extraneous heat sources I headlined.

To understand the situation here (and for those possibly not familiar with my previous reviews) the comments made regarding both Amersham and the further Met Office supplied “reasoning” at Bingley No 2 should be held in mind. In these examples the Met Office has chosen to locate weather stations in extremely close proximity to 400kV electricity sub stations with transformers known to be emitting thermal energy measured in multiples of millions of watts. My conservative calculations came to a minimum of 5MW confirmed by research showing consideration of using such large amounts of heat sufficient to run large scale district heating systems. The Met Office response quite astonishingly completely dismissed this huge extraneous heat source as irrelevant because it fell outside their predetermined “exclusion” zone of just 3 metres. As well as electricity sub stations, gas turbine exhausts or fighter aircraft engines can blow an inferno straight onto a Stevenson screen but as long as it is coming from more than their very short set distance away, it effectively does not exist.

So consider this line from the Met Office themselves regarding Winterbourne No 2.

The Met Office has taken steps to (presumably) reduce the number of junction boxes on the screen stand down to just one to “REDUCE THE NUMBER OF HEAT SOURCES”

For the benefit of those at the Met Office reading this, the SI Prefix for 10⁶ ( million) is Mega with the symbol “M”. The prefix for 10^-3 (thousandth) is milli with the symbol “m”. The difference in these units is a factor of one billion. The waste heat from electricity substation transformers (typically 0.5% of load) is measured in MW and they can handle thousands of MW of electrical load. The waste heat from low voltage electrical junction boxes (insignificant) is measured (if detectable) in mW and for small scale electronic appliances these will only handle an electrical load of a few watts.

No rational person would concern themselves with probably infinitesimal levels of immediate waste heat dissipating from the stand whilst totally ignoring massive heat sources at a fraction over 10 feet away.

But of course for the Met Office all those multiple MW are over 3 metres away whilst those single digit mW are close by and they have to abide by the rules – don’t they? Well no the site is Class 5 junk anyway so why bother. You could not make it up but they do.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/01/30/winterbourne-no-2-dcnn4405-a-met-office-parody-of-extraneous-heat-sources/