The UK Met Office’s Junk Temperature Measurement Scam: A Deliberate Distortion of Climate Data, By James Reed and Richard Miller (Londonistan)
The UK Met Office, tasked with providing accurate weather and climate data, has come under fire for what critics, including The Daily Sceptic on August 6, 2025, call a "junk temperature measurement scam." Allegations suggest the Met Office is inflating temperature records to support a Net Zero-driven climate alarmist narrative, using poorly sited weather stations and fabricated data from non-existent sites. With 77.9% of its 380-plus stations classified as World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Class 4 or 5, prone to errors of up to 2°C and 5°C respectively, and 103 stations found to be non-existent yet still reporting data, the Met Office's credibility is in tatters. Placing gauges near heat sources like airport runways, where jet exhaust can skew readings, exemplifies this flawed approach. We argue that the Met Office's practices, whether due to incompetence or deliberate manipulation, distort climate science, mislead policymakers, and undermine public trust, all to prop up a failing Net Zero agenda.
The Met Office's temperature measurement network is riddled with issues, as exposed by citizen journalist Ray Sanders and reported by The Daily Sceptic. Of the 380-plus UK weather stations, 48.7% are Class 4 (errors up to 2°C) and 29.2% are Class 5 (errors up to 5°C), meaning 77.9% are "junk" or "near-junk" for climate reporting under WMO guidelines. These classifications reflect poor siting, stations near heat sources like tarmac, buildings, or, notoriously, airport runways. For example, the RAF Coningsby station, which recorded the UK's all-time high of 40.3°C in 2022, is near a runway where Typhoon jets operate, their exhaust potentially spiking readings. Similarly, St James's Park in London, a Class 4 site near a busy tarmac path, recorded 40.2°C that day, inflated by urban heat island effects.
The WMO explicitly states that higher-class stations aren't "low value" but are unsuitable for broad climate trends due to local influences like shade or heat sources. Yet, the Met Office uses these stations to claim precise measurements, such as 2023 being 0.06°C cooler than 2022, a level of accuracy impossible with such error-prone sites. Placing gauges at airports, where jet fuel exhaust can raise local temperatures by several degrees, is particularly egregious. A 2024 study by Arup estimated London's urban heat island adds 4.5°C on average, yet the Met Office doesn't adjust for this in its headline-grabbing "record" temperatures.
Even more damning is the revelation that 103 of 302 stations providing long-term temperature averages don't exist. Ray Sanders, through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and site visits, found that stations like Dungeness (closed since 1986) still report data, derived from "well-correlated neighbouring stations." The Met Office's refusal to disclose these neighbouring sites, dismissing FOI requests as "vexatious," raises suspicions of data fabrication. For instance, the Dover station is listed at coordinates on a beach, likely submerged regularly, yet it produces precise 30-year averages. In Kent, four of eight stations, Dungeness, Folkestone, Dover, and Gillingham, are "fiction," with no WMO classification.
The Met Office claims it combines data from closed stations with nearby ones to preserve long-term records, a method published in a 2005 International Journal of Climatology paper. However, this practice, while standard in some climate science, lacks transparency when the "neighbouring" stations are undisclosed or also non-existent. Sanders argues this "statistical sleight of hand" misrepresents historical data, especially as rural stations (which record cooler temperatures) were closed in favour of urban ones during automation in the 1970s–1980s, skewing averages upward.
The Met Office's methods seem tailored to produce alarming temperature spikes. It relies on 60-second data from sensitive electronic thermometers, capturing fleeting heat peaks, like the 40.3°C at Coningsby, coinciding with jet activity, or a 29.3°C May Day record at Kew Gardens, 2.6°C higher than the 2 p.m. reading. Dr. Eric Huxter's analysis found daily "extremes" in May 2024 averaged 0.8°C above hourly readings, suggesting cherry-picking of short-term spikes. In the last decade, 81.5% of new stations were Class 4 or 5, with eight of 13 opened in the last five years being junk status, such as Whitesands in Wales, cited by Sanders as "a deliberate attempt to produce artificially elevated readings."
This pattern aligns with the Met Office's narrative of a warming UK, with 2024's State of the UK Climate report claiming a 0.25°C per decade rise and 2015–2024 being 1.24°C warmer than 1961–1990. Yet, these claims rely on a network unfit for such precision, especially when urban heat and jet exhaust distort data. The Central England Temperature record, dating to 1659, is cited as evidence of unprecedented warming, but its reliance on flawed stations undermines its authority.
Critics, including science journalist Matt Ridley, argue the Met Office has been "duped by activists" to push a Net Zero agenda. Its purple weather maps and frequent warnings of "extreme" weather amplify fear, despite natural variations like warmer summers or milder winters being consistent with historical cycles. The Daily Sceptic notes that 2023's June, claimed as the hottest since 1884, ranked only fifth in the Central England Temperature record, behind 1846, 1676, 1822, and 1826. The Met Office's dismissal of critics as undermining "decades of robust science," ignores legitimate concerns about data integrity, especially when it refuses to engage with Sanders' evidence or disclose its methods.
The accusation of a "scam" stems from the perception that the Met Office prioritises political goals over scientific rigour. By reporting temperatures to hundredths of a degree from a network with errors up to 5°C, it fuels claims of a "climate crisis" requiring drastic Net Zero policies. The Met Office's silence, coupled with mainstream media's reluctance to cover the issue, suggests a broader agenda to suppress scepticism.
The Met Office's distorted data has real-world impacts. Policymakers rely on its reports to justify Net Zero policies, like renewable energy mandates, which have raised energy costs, UK household electricity prices rose 25% from 2020–2024. Public trust erodes as exaggerated "hottest ever" claims clash with lived experiences, as seen in X discussions questioning the Met Office's credibility. Economically, Net Zero's focus on decarbonisation diverts resources from practical adaptations, like flood defenses, despite the Met Office's own warnings of rising sea levels. Socially, fear-mongering weather warnings, like purple heat maps, risk desensitising the public, as The Daily Sceptic notes.
To address this scandal, the Met Office must:
1.Remove Junk Sites: Phase out Class 4 and 5 stations for climate reporting, using only Class 1 and 2 sites (13.7% of the network) for accurate data.
2.Transparency: Disclose all data sources, including "well-correlated" stations, and publish raw data to counter fabrication claims.
3.Adjust for Heat Sources: Exclude readings from sites like airports or urban areas unless corrected for jet exhaust or heat island effects, as Arup's 4.5°C estimate suggests.
4.Independent Audit: Commission a third-party review of its network and methods, addressing Sanders' findings and rebuilding trust.
The UK Met Office's reliance on junk temperature stations and fabricated data from non-existent sites is a scandal that undermines climate science, which for us is a good thing. Siting gauges near airport runways, where jet exhaust can inflate readings, or in urban heat traps like St James's Park, is not just poor practice, it's a deliberate choice to produce misleadingly high temperatures. With 77.9% of its network unfit for climate reporting and 103 ghost stations still "reporting," the Met Office's claims of record heat lack credibility. This fuels a Net Zero narrative that distorts policy, burdens the economy, and erodes public trust.
"The UK Met Office has lurched into conspiracy theory territory in a desperate attempt to rescue scientific credibility in its Net Zero-weaponised 'junk' temperature measuring network. In a recent public pronouncement, it claimed: "The efforts of a small number of people to undermine the integrity of Met Office observations by obscuring or misrepresenting facts is an attempt to undermine decades of robust science around the world's changing climate." The astonishing outburst relates of course to the recent revelations of the Daily Sceptic and a number of citizen sleuths. In March 2024, the Daily Sceptic disclosed that nearly 80% of all UK measuring sites are so poorly located they have massive temperature 'uncertainties'. Meanwhile, Ray Sanders and Dr Eric Huxter have provided convincing proof of the lamentable state of the unnatural heat-ravaged network and its tendency to produce elevated temperatures and short-term heat spikes.
Narrative-obsessed mainstream media has been on its best behaviour and kept quiet about the growing scandal, but the shocking state of the Met Office recording operation, and its continued use to raise climate alarm, is widely discussed on social online media.
"Despite online speculation," said the Met Office, "much of which demonstrates a clear misunderstanding or misrepresentation of the facts, Met Office weather stations are subject to stringent national and international guidelines." The Met Office team is said to carry out hundreds of site inspections a year. "A rigorous quality assurance system, including a long-standing and well-honed site inspection methodology, ensures that data produced at our sites are as accurate as they can be," it observed. Ray Sanders recently discovered that 103 sites providing long-term data did not actually exist and measurements were being invented/estimated from "well-correlated related neighbouring sites". Alas, subsequent efforts to discover the identity of these vital well-correlated inputs drew a blank with Freedom of Information requests denied as "vexatious" and not in the public interest.
The 'uncertainties' mandated by the World Meteorological Organisation mean 48.7% of the network, based in junk Class 4, is subject to errors up to 2°C, while an almost unbelievable 29.2% in super-junk Class 5 could be out by up to 5°C. One-minute heat spikes, such as that behind the 40.3°C all-time UK record at RAF Coningsby at a time of nearby Typhoon jet activity, are common. Despite international guidance, the Met Office insists on using 60-second data recorded by recently installed sensitive electronic devices to declare individual records and higher average daily totals. Dr Huxter's recent work indicated that daily 'extremes' declared throughout last May were on average 0.8°C higher than the two recordings made at the before and after hour mark. At Kew Gardens, the Met Office claimed a national May Day record high of 29.3°C at 2.59pm, but this was a massive 2.6°C higher than the 2pm recording and 0.76°C above the 3pm reading.
Like many self-important and unaccountable bureaucracies, the Met Office has a marked tendency towards supercilious arrogance. "We understand that the data from thousands of independent global weather stations (over the last seven decades) which shows a warming trend may be an uncomfortable reality for some." Nobody, of course, denies the world is in a warming phase and that humans may have contributed by using hydrocarbons. This arrogance is a silly red herring. The Met Office has a basic temperature network that has grown from a largely amateur base in response to the needs of specific groups such as the military. It was never designed to provide an ambient, uncorrupted air temperature of the UK, let alone be utilised to help provide a global figure. It was good enough for the rough-and-ready purposes for which it was designed, but it is unable to show, as the Met Office claimed, that 2023 across the UK was 0.06°C cooler than the record year of 2022. The Met Office is simply pulling the public's chain if it thinks it can claim recordings accurate to one hundredth of a degree centigrade using its current crappy nationwide network.
The science journalist Matt Ridley recently laid his finger on what has gone wrong at the Met Office. It has been "embarrassingly duped by activists". It believes that most of the recent warming has been caused by humans, even though the evidence for this statement arises mainly from simplistic climate models. Net Zero has died in the United States and sceptical voices are increasingly being heard. Decades of politicised settled science are being replaced with a broader wish to understand how the atmosphere works. The role of natural variation is being discussed and the 'greening' benefits of higher temperatures and carbon dioxide are being considered. The idea of a 'settled' anthropogenic climate opinion is starting to look rather dated. The scare/scam was useful for promoting the hard-Left Net Zero fantasy, but that fantasy is rapidly falling apart as hydrocarbon reality sets in.
Stuffed with activists, the Met Office continues on its deranged course of political Net Zero fear-mongering, turning weather maps purple in summer and issuing constant weather warnings to the amusement of grown adults. The only "uncomfortable reality" is that suffered by the Met Office with its inability to counter the charge that it is using junk statistics to claim that warming is higher than it actually is.
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