Reading University:White Nights DCNN 5576 – Nothing is ever quite as it seems with the Met Office.

51.44128 -0.93813 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 2 Temperature records at this site from 1/1/1968.

AI tells us the following “The University of Reading is widely recognized as the leading institution for meteorology in the UK. It is home to the only dedicated meteorology department in the country, and its research and teaching in atmospheric science are highly regarded internationally.”  Personally speaking I am rarely impressed by reputation and certainly do not consider it an issue of scientific integrity. On reviewing this site I found some strange issues with this site and Reading in general that are worth airing in public.

There have been three principle weather stations in Reading since 1908 at three distinctly different locations, two of them at campuses of the University itself and another at a seed specialists, Sutton Seeds. The suggestion of bonding data sets from different locations always causes me concern as it is so easy to concoct changes over time this way. The “Historic Stations” Met Office page is a list of mostly such bonded datasets with extremely misleading examples such as Whitby, Braemar and Stornoway though nearly all on the listing have been subject to significant relocations.

The multiplicity of sites led me to question many of the assumptions used in the data representation of Reading which produced some strange findings. Some history first.

Reading University’s original weather station site (n.b. not a Met Office site and only one whose data was accepted from) was at their London Road Campus from 1908 to 31/12/1967 and is the now much changed location below.

This station was read by University staff and students and continued to record in Fahrenheit up to closure at the end of 1967 despite all official Met Office sites having switched over to celsius reading by the end of 1961. The site was then moved to the White Knights campus some 1.9 km distant as below and readings commenced there from 1/1/1968.

The Met Office both renamed and renumbered the site records in recognition of the different climatological conditions. Most notable is that there was no overlap period of the two sites running simultaneously to give any correlation standard between the two sites. More strangely this new site continued to record in Fahrenheit and only to the nearest whole degree equating to 0.55°C and requiring the variable rounding principles as documented at Faskally. I presume the same instrumentation was used from the former site to avoid new equipment. it seems incredibly odd that a major meteorological education institution was not only recording to the lowest permissible accuracy level but also to a scale well beyond universal Met Office changeover and after a relocation. This does not seem either challenging training nor particularly accurate observing practice. As I noted at Manby the “Air Ministry” trained observers were reliably taking readings from LIGT to the tenth of a Fahrenheit degree which is more accurate than the defined 0.1°C subsequent to scale change – an important point to note.

Although the University claims it can reconstruct a continuous record from 1908 that is clearly not the case with data being from significantly different locations. To cross check this point I noted an overlap period from the third Reading location in 1968. This was the old “Suttons Seeds” site which operated from 1938 to 1968 at the now built up site below.

Again this was a completely different location and with different instrumentation also recording in Fahrenheit but in this case with observers comfortable reading to the tenth of a degree Fahrenheit.

Briefly scanning this one year period of overlap demonstrated regular discrepancies over 2°C with White Knights recording warmer particularly in overnight minima. I will endeavour to do a detailed comparison (I know a man who can!) to confirm the level of difference there can be within the same urban area.

It appears that instrumentation was finally changed at White Knights around the early 1970s to celcius recording but the relocation continued with the screen being again moved within the White Knights complex in 2003. It was then 1/8/2012 that the Met Office themselves installed their own automatic reporting unit within the University’s enclosure from which readings have been used subsequently. The Met Office is no longer archiving any new Reading University manual observations though I suspect the University itself is. If so comparison would be interesting if allowed. Another notable feature is that although research was carried out here into the accuracy benefits of artificially aspirated screens over conventional units, the Met Office unit continues to use old fashioned naturally ventilated design proven to over record over 140 years ago.

Of course the overlap year discussed above was 56 years ago, what has changed since and does Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect come into play with any Reading site? Both the Met Office and the Reading meteorology department like to highlight “climate averages” since 1961.

https://www.met.reading.ac.uk/~brugge/reading_climate.html

Has UHI had any effect? The population of the Reading urban area in 1961 was quoted as 193,000. This is how that has changed

The population growth over the period alone is equivalent to a very large urban area. Approaching 1/3 million is now a major area. I only opt to discuss UHI where it is an obvious feature notably London and Sheffield amongst others. I feel it is quite obvious that, in the case of Reading, such a significant increment (amounting to an imminent population doubling in 65 years) must be distorting readings. The CIMO issue of tape measuring, assessing shade and slope etc was not intended to account for wide area UHI.

To demonstrate the expansion, Reading in 1950:

Reading now.

In summary weather Stations within Reading have been at climatological different locations, with significant alterations to surroundings and corrupted by major UHI changing effect over the period of rapid and ongoing urban expansion. For all the claims of the University they do not appear to have followed best meteorological practise for the basics and cannot demonstrate , despite their contrary claims, to have a reliable temperature historical record. They, of course, will argue differently though i suspect that will be those academic “climate scientists” rather than the practising professional meteorologists.

In conclusion Reading is not the reliable long term site that the University itself proclaims and the only purpose I feel its data can represent is to record creeping urbanisation effects rather than long term nature wide area climate changes.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/07/09/reading-universitywhite-nights-dcnn-5576-nothing-is-ever-quite-as-it-seems-with-the-met-office/