Everyone knows the Hockey Stick model of global temperature changes in our measurement record. Late 20th and early 21st century average temperatures have increased in a worrisome manner resulting in many UN climate summits and VIPs flying around in their private jets. Now, according to a recent Freedom of Information request to UK’s Met Office, over 100 of the 302 weather stations listed as supplying temperature averages do not exist. The Met Office declined to tell “how or where the alleged ‘data’ were derived” for these over 100 sites that do not exist.
This is not just UK issue, NOAA has been claimed to fabricate data for over 30% of their reporting sites by taking the averages of the surrounding stations to represent a defunct, or a ‘ghost’ station, although the numbers at least are labeled as estimates. In UK, some closed weather stations ‘continue’ with similar reported estimated monthly data.
Unreliable measurements from the actually existing weather stations are another large problem. Nearly 8 out of 10 Met Office sites are rated in junk classes with error margins ranging from 2C to up to 5C, or unsuitable for climate data reporting. The default classification for Met Office weather stations is 1, “unless manually adjusted” so there may be more unreliable data sources.
The disproportionate closure of rural weather stations compared to the urban ones has further skewed the average temperatures, because urban environments tend to generate heat islands, so loss of rural stations will increase the average temperature of the remaining measurements.
While unreliability of measurement data was discussed in terms of Net Zero in The Daily Sceptic, I wonder about its effects on near term weather forecasts. Maybe the invented data is also being fed into models predicting daily weather?
Muhos, Finland, in February
PlanktonPunkt 