Hot week - guess the temperature competition

[sunnijim]

17 minutes ago, James102 said:

Hi, I visited the Cambridge Botanic Garden site this morning and have uploaded three photos to Wikimedia Commons where you can see the current extent of bare soil and vegetation:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cambridge_Botanic_Garden_Weather_Station_from_the_South_West.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cambridge_Botanic_Garden_Weather_Station_from_the_North_West.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cambridge_Botanic_Garden_Weather_Station_from_the_West.jpg

 

 

Unless there is something wrong with the SS  to contradict the reading,then the site itself looks fine to me.

[sunnijim]

14 minutes ago, feb1991blizzard said:

Think they need to standardise it tbh to avoid confusion, i am not for one minute suggesting anything sinister is going on or any bias towards higher temperatures by any stretch of the imagination but other people will think it, just think it pays in this day and age to have it uniform.

There would be no reason to think it though surely? That is where the quality control comes in.They will be looking at all temperature data at a set radius from other recording sites.

If one or two are showing at higher reading than the official 38.1c ( say 38.5 and a 38.3) that would be going some way to verifying the new potential record.

That is not the only investigation,but it will play a part.

Poor handling of the thermometer could well lead to a higher reading.

[Man With Beard]

4 minutes ago, sunnijim said:

There would be no reason to think it though surely? That is where the quality control comes in.They will be looking at all temperature data at a set radius from other recording sites.

If one or two are showing at higher reading than the official 38.1c ( say 38.5 and a 38.3) that would be going some way to verifying the new potential record.

That is not the only investigation,but it will play a part.

Poor handling of the thermometer could well lead to a higher reading.

Sorry if this is a silly question, but which other recording sites? Surely they wouldn't consider any sites except official ones? 

[DaveL]

43 minutes ago, James102 said:

Hi, I visited the Cambridge Botanic Garden site this morning and have uploaded three photos to Wikimedia Commons where you can see the current extent of bare soil and vegetation:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cambridge_Botanic_Garden_Weather_Station_from_the_South_West.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cambridge_Botanic_Garden_Weather_Station_from_the_North_West.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cambridge_Botanic_Garden_Weather_Station_from_the_West.jpg

Thanks for that, and now I can add a screenshot of the BBC reporter's visit there today, from the 6pm news. It's, shall we say.... interesting, at the very least. Plenty of room for debate too!

Edited July 26, 2019 by DaveL

[feb1991blizzard]

Just now, DaveL said:

 

Looks really sophisticated cutting edge.

[sunnijim]

8 minutes ago, Man With Beard said:

Sorry if this is a silly question, but which other recording sites? Surely they wouldn't consider any sites except official ones? 

Of course not, otherwise they would be taking on board all sorts of 'helpful' enthusiasts with SS.

There will be other sites,similar to the Botanical gardens site that are Met office verified but only hand in their reports at the end of every day.Close enough by M.O standards and they will form some basis of the investigation.

[cheese]

This country really is a shambles at times - what other countries do smoothly and easily, we have to make as complicated and intricate as humanly possible. The Met need to get their act together.

Edited July 26, 2019 by cheese

[Relativistic]

34 minutes ago, sunnijim said:

Unless there is something wrong with the SS  to contradict the reading,then the site itself looks fine to me.

By no means an expert, but I'm struggling to convince myself that the open soil wouldn't be influencing the temperature (at least to some extent).

Edited July 26, 2019 by Relativistic

[Froze were the Days]

I wonder how many 'unofficial' sites there are now compared to say 30 years ago...can't help thinking that in such circumstances as per yesterday there is desperation to find the holy grail in breaking the UK record...not sure if this would have happened back in the day.

Remember only last year with the weather in the news so much after last summer we found the news spouting out how it was the hottest English summer on record but if you looked closely at the stats it was actually the 4th...

[Mike Poole]

3 hours ago, Summer Sun said:

Let's see how verification goes with the guidelines stated by the WMO

This is supposed to be the station

https://library.wmo.int/pmb_ged/wmo_8_en-2012.pdf page 20

Am no expert but looks quite innocuous to me!  One reason why the Met Office might be making absolutely sure on this one that hasn't been mentioned is betting markets.  We know the rules for a White Christmas are one flake of snow at a weather station, there must be quite specific rules on which money has been staked for the all time maximum, so it makes sense for making absolutely sure against those rules.  Maybe even meteorology comes second to the betting market on these matters these days, wouldn't put it past it, the way this country is going...

My point boils down to this, Met Office happy to release data from a station that has peaked below the max, more checks on one that might be above the max....we will see...

Edited July 26, 2019 by Mike Poole

[DaveL]

37 minutes ago, Relativistic said:

By no means an expert, but I'm struggling to convince myself that the open soil wouldn't be influencing the temperature (at least to some extent).

Also the bushes and trees. Thick bushes and/or a hedge on the southern side are within 20 metres, and some very tall trees with dense foliage exist within 30 metres. On the eastern and south eastern there are dense tall bushes within 20 to 30 metres, this is a sheltered site. Here are the Cambridge Airport METARs for the time period in question:

Quote

Observations for CAMBRIDGE, United Kingdom (EGSC)
Location: 52.20N 0.18E 15 meters
1550Z 24 Jul 2019 to 1650Z 25 Jul 2019

STN     TIME   ALTM TMP DW RH DIR SP  VIS
     DD/HHMM    hPa      C   C   %  deg m/s   km  
==== ======= ====== === === === === === === ====
EGSC 25/1650 1008.0  34  20  44 140   3     10.0
EGSC 25/1620 1008.0  34  20  44 140   4     10.0
EGSC 25/1550 1008.0  34  20  44 130   4     10.0
EGSC 25/1520 1009.0  36  17  33 160   6     10.0
EGSC 25/1450 1009.0  38  18  31 170   6     10.0
EGSC 25/1420 1009.0  38  17  29 170   6     10.0
EGSC 25/1350 1009.0  37  17  31 150   5     10.0
EGSC 25/1320 1009.0  37  17  31 180   5     10.0
EGSC 25/1250 1010.0  37  18  33 180   5     10.0
EGSC 25/1220 1009.0  37  18  33 150   6     10.0
EGSC 25/1150 1009.0  36  18  35 140   5     10.0

Winds from just east of south at 5-6 m/s (12-ish mph) but that's at the airport at 10 metres. Much lower at the Cambridge Bot Gdn screen, I'll bet. Low wind speeds translate to anomalously high temperature readings in Stevenson screens in bright sunshine.

Edited July 26, 2019 by DaveL

[Aleman]

I think the trees at 20m might make it a Class 3 site - still much much better than Heathrow Airport but is it fit for national headlines?  They obviously think Heathrow is, and that looks like a Class 4, so it seems nobody cares! Google street view shows an old image of the small site surrounded by corn and big plastic cloches so it might have been as low as a Class 5 at that time - which raises HUGE questions over consistency. Imagine planting and watering 2 metres from a temperature sensor that might be used for national headlines and then seeing the corn grow taller than the Stephenson Screen.

And how much would all UK stations rise by if we dug them all up at the start of every heatwave and watched the soil dry out?

Edited July 26, 2019 by Aleman

[The PIT]

Well at least it isn't located next to an air condition unit......

Looks fine to me.

[cheeky_monkey]

1 hour ago, Relativistic said:

By no means an expert, but I'm struggling to convince myself that the open soil wouldn't be influencing the temperature (at least to some extent).

Yep open soil is almost as good as asphalt in absorbing heat and warming the surrounding 2m air temps

[Derecho]

1 hour ago, Mike Poole said:

Am no expert but looks quite innocuous to me!  One reason why the Met Office might be making absolutely sure on this one that hasn't been mentioned is betting markets.  We know the rules for a White Christmas are one flake of snow at a weather station, there must be quite specific rules on which money has been staked for the all time maximum, so it makes sense for making absolutely sure against those rules.  Maybe even meteorology comes second to the betting market on these matters these days, wouldn't put it past it, the way this country is going...

My point boils down to this, Met Office happy to release data from a station that has peaked below the max, more checks on one that might be above the max....we will see...

Or alternatively the Netweather competition for who can guess the highest temperature, gotta have the right winners  

[Mike Poole]

1 minute ago, Quicksilver1989 said:

Or alternatively the Netweather competition for who can guess the highest temperature, gotta have the right winners  

I think that's already been announced, hasn't it?

[Aleman]

27 minutes ago, cheeky_monkey said:

Yep open soil is almost as good as asphalt in absorbing heat and warming the surrounding 2m air temps

Well, it will be a lot drier and less shady than previous years when they were watering the crops - a no no for station siting.

[cheese]

53 minutes ago, The PIT said:

Well at least it isn't located next to an air condition unit......

Looks fine to me.

Regardless of where the record is set I am absolutely certain you’ll get people doubting its validity. If the Met Office say it’s fine then that’s good enough for me.

Edited July 26, 2019 by cheese

[Man With Beard]

I suppose it is impossible to make all recording stations uniform, there will always be one liable to be slightly warmer than another. And therefore that's probably why one station gets the record over the others. Maybe why Heathrow often beats Northolt. If you keep discounting the warmest site, you'll eventually have none left!

The Met Office are probably doing the right thing, they have a set of loose criteria that all their stations can fit into, and it would be strange to now turn around and say an official station does not count, if it had previously been passed as OK. 

[pinball wizard]

Anyone know how long it will take to confirm or rule out the 38.7? 

[cheeky_monkey]

12 minutes ago, Man With Beard said:

I suppose it is impossible to make all recording stations uniform, there will always be one liable to be slightly warmer than another. And therefore that's probably why one station gets the record over the others. Maybe why Heathrow often beats Northolt. If you keep discounting the warmest site, you'll eventually have none left!

The Met Office are probably doing the right thing, they have a set of loose criteria that all their stations can fit into, and it would be strange to now turn around and say an official station does not count, if it had previously been passed as OK. 

There was a big rumpus in California last year..where they were reporting record heat from certain stations that had been deemed to be OK but although the locations hadn't changed the surrounding environment had changed..one notable station had always been in parkland but that parkland had been developed the previous year and the station was now stuck in the middle of a parking lot of a strip mall..yet because the station was an official station those high temps still stood...granted that is an extreme example.

[Nick L]

I'm sorry, but any site used in official readings should already be deemed fit for official use. It should not require extra checks just because it might have a record resting on it, standards and checks should already be stringent enough. If they're having to check THEIR OWN SITE to see if it's fit to be giving data, just because there's a record at stake, then frankly that's poor form for a globally renowned institution.

[feb1991blizzard]

2 minutes ago, Nick L said:

I'm sorry, but any site used in official readings should already be deemed fit for official use. It should not require extra checks just because it might have a record resting on it, standards and checks should already be stringent enough. If they're having to check THEIR OWN SITE to see if it's fit to be giving data, just because there's a record at stake, then frankly that's poor form for a globally renowned institution.

Yes, for instance how many of these sites are there in the CET zone, if they are only verified when extremes occur, how can we trust the CET data.

[Interitus]

The Cambridge Botanic Gardens weather station is an official Met Office climate station which reports daily values on a monthly basis as opposed to synoptic stations reporting each day or indeed in real time. The station is valuable for climatic studies as data goes back to 1898, and also as such exact precise values are less important than the homogeneity and length of the data series.

However, from appearances the site certainly wouldn't be immune to criticism, despite the assertions that the MO know best and sly digs at 'amateurs'. If in any doubt read the article from the journal Weather by Stephen Burt and the late Philip Eden linked to earlier -

The August 2003 heatwave in the United Kingdom. Part 2 - The hottest sites - https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1256/wea.10.04B

Sites such as Heathrow, Northolt, Gravesend, Kew Gardens and Wisley all appear to be less than perfect at the time of their analyses. Meanwhile, the Brogdale/Faversham record was considered to be possibly an anomaly of 2 degrees,- but the site looks state of the art compared to the photos of the Cambridge one.

[johnholmes]

4 hours ago, feb1991blizzard said:

What i don't get though John is they can definitively say somewhere that reached 38.1 is validated immediately, yet somewhere else has 38.7, oh well we will have to have a look at it, surely they should validate it as an official weather station if it is fit for purpose and then any readings from then on are official, its almost like some stations are semi-pro and some are pro.

Indeed they are, best you look at the Met web site that lists all their stations, full, part time etc.