Bisterne – The motivations behind new weather station locations.

50.805666 -1.785905 Met Office CIMO Assessment Not Known Installed****** MARCH 2026*******

The new Bisterne weather station was recently installed in the grounds of Bisterne Manor which lies about 7.6 km/ 4.5 miles due north of Christchurch and is within the bounds of the New Forest National Park. The site has hosted a rain gauge since 1902 and is what would have been a “traditional” location for a late Victorian weather station though apparently none was ever installed. This is thus a review of a very new Met Office site that would not normally be available for public scrutiny lying within private grounds.

Derek Tipp has been of invaluable support to my efforts with the Surface Stations Project in both moral support through a long hard slog, and in being very effective at getting things done! His assistance with having questions raised at government Ministerial level was a crucial milestone.

As Derek is a local authority councillor (and formerly Chairman of New Forest District Council) when I discovered a new site on his “turf” I simply asked if he knew anything about the area. No sooner asked than Derek managed to gain an invite to view this new Met Office location and supply detailed site imagery and descriptions.

The first most striking aspect to notice about this brand new site is that it is within the walled kitchen garden of the Manor. The sole objective of the creation of a walled garden is to create a micro climate. This is not “rocket science” every gardener, horticulturalist and even tourist to such visitor attractions will be fully aware of this. Wikipedia even has a section of its page on walled gardens that clearly states:

“The shelter provided by enclosing walls can raise the ambient temperature within a garden by several degrees, creating a microclimate that permits plants to be grown that would not survive in the unmodified local climate.“

As if that were not a clear enough statement it goes on to add details of one particular site:

“The garden is protected from sudden changes in weather conditions and from harsh winds, thanks to its hollowed out terraces and the big trees …. The gardeners make the most of the northern or southern exposures and the permanently shady areas of this little, sheltered valley. Within just a few metres, temperatures can range from 15 to 20 degrees C, what one would call a micro-climate“

For reasons that completely baffle me, the Met Office and ALL of its meteorologists seem to turn a blind eye to this obvious fact and then install brand new weather stations that can only ever meet the unregulated CIMO Class 5 and JUNK status in locations intentionally designed to NOT represent the surrounding region.

Again a pause for thought. What is the possible motivation in installing a weather station from which observations will be used both to derive the natural climate of the UKin such a modified position? The report on data use from Newton Rigg demonstrates that all CIMO assessed synoptic and climate reporting weather stations contribute to the overall historic climate data for the UK, thus yet another micro climate site is being added to further distort the readings ever upwards.

Darrell Huff’s seminal work “How to lie with Statistics” actually starts with a chapter regarding sample bias. Surely introducing yet more walled gardens into the Met Office mix of sites indicates a dubious selection process – the sample with the built in bias.

So what are the reasons given for such sample bias and how did this site come about. It was noticeable at both the recently installed Bewcastle and North Somercotes that site seletion came down to motivated individuals simply asking for their own official Met Office weather station. This is no slur on those individuals themselves as the responsible body is the Met office itself, however, it certainly seems that someone just asking is really not best scientific practise. What was the situation at Bisterne? When Derek visited the site he met the gardener who pointed out the site had been a long term rain gauge location –

” There has been a rain gauge there for some time overseen by the Environment Agency. When they came to inspect it she happened to meet with them and said the was interested in weather, so they suggested she contact the Met Office. They agreed to put a station there and it duly arrived. It is all manually recorded by her {ed. note the gardener} and she enters the data on a website.”

It appears that no more is required than a polite request and a willingness to take observations. A cynic might add to that though that an unacceptably warm location is also required. I do wonder if the Met Office would be so eager to oblige a request from me for a station in my south facing largely walled garden surrounded by vineyards in east Kent and in a prime water catchment area – it would be a warm site but the “observer” may not be quite so eager to please!

Further studying the site imagery offers this view looking to the housing and trees to the west and southwest. The prevailing winds will be completely sheltered from reaching the screen inevitably increasing events of stagnant air within the screen .

The image below, looking eastwards, is sadly reminiscent of so many sites such as Bewcastle referred to above and the likes of Frittenden or Whitechurch and literally tens and tens of others with the ubiquitous poly tunnel in close proximity. Not only is there the compulsory modifying heat source but also note the ever present tall trees that typically surround walled gardens to act as a preliminary windbreak outside the walls.

The following is from the former Met Office guide to weather station siting.

2. Methods of observing

1. The site should be representative of an area up to several tens of km from the station
2. The instruments should be installed on level ground
3. There should be no steeply sloping ground in the vicinity and the site should not be in a hollow
4. The site should be well away from trees or any other large obstructions. The distance of any such object should be not less than twice the height of the object, and preferably four times the height
5. The site should be adequately protected to exclude entry by unauthorised persons
6. It must be possible to meet the exposure requirements of the raingauge, sunshine recorder and anemometer. Separate sites may be chosen for these instruments.

So clearly most of these requirements are simply not being met at Bisteren, however, there is also one further aspect that always causes me extreme concern.

“Most instruments at the station are located close together in the enclosure, a flat area of ground approximately 10 m by 7 m covered by short grass and surrounded by fencing. Typically the enclosure contains one or more raingauges, a screen containing the thermometers, soil thermometers, a concrete slab with a concrete minimum thermometer, a grass minimum thermometer, and a sunshine recorder. Where there is a 10 m anemometer mast it is often at a separate location. The barometer may be located in a building, often some distance from the enclosure, such as the forecast office if the station has a forecasting function.“

In the absence of any enclosure whatsoever, the issue of activities either inadvertantly or potentially deliberate can never be ruled out. Perfectly innocent modern practises using internal combustion engine devices, for example, can lead to transient heating effects. All Met Office sites, regardless of whether manually observed or automatically reporting, now utilise Platinum Resistance Thermometers taking sample readings ever 15 seconds with just 4 being averaged to give 1,440 minute readings per day. Meteorological averaging operates on to just 2 of those 1,440 readings to produce daily minimums, maximums and averages. As a result a brief pass of a leaf blower, mower or strimmer, the parking of a mini tractor with engine running or any of a myriad of hot exhaust sources can be detected when there are no limitations of access proximity. In the former eras of using Liquid in Glass thermometers these sensors would not react rapidly enough to detect such spikes and indeed the likelihood of them even happening was much lower or even not possible in the historical past.

In the absence of an enclosure, the issue of deliberate action is not one that can ever be ruled out – a point noted by the RmetS report on the Faversham 2003 record where actions by “persons unknown” was considered a very real possibility that was often cheekily referred to in local hostelries at the time by those “in the know”.

If this report seems overly cynical, bear in mind that Bisterne is about 15 miles from Southampton Mayflower Park which was (until the current questionable set of 2026 readings ) the former holder of the all time June high from 1976 . If this Bisterne reading had beaten the 1976 record (it quite possibly did) and also been the UK highest, it would have been heralded by the Met Office in exactly the same way as the even worse sited Lingwood station was. The general public would be none the wiser as to how absurd the site was for claiming national “hottest evah” in a deliberately manufactured micro climate – and those attempting to clarify the details (like me) would be dubbed “Disinformers” and sworn at on social media.

This image is possibly no less phoney than the unmodified original.

Again my thanks to Derek Tipp for his invaluable assistance and my hopes I haven’t got him into too much trouble!

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2026/07/04/bisterne-the-motivations-behind-new-weather-station-locations/