“Climate Champions Who Can’t Keep Their Own Weather Stations Running.” – The Field Studies Council and their 13 Met Office official weather stations

{Headline suggested by GROK AI when confronted with the observations record for Field Study Council sites}

Google “Field Studies Council+Climate Change” and you will be confronted with literally tens of screen pages referencing the Field Studies Council’s dedicated and diligent work in both “Climate Research” and “Climate Education”. Various web pages and much of the FSC’s promotional material revolve around the subject of Climate Change for both students from early school years up to undergraduate courses as well as providing extensive teaching materials for main stream education. The FSC certainly”Talks the talk” in this subject – the important question though is whether it actually “Walks the walk”

This review concerns no fewer than thirteen weather stations that the Field Studies Council operates/operated on behalf of the Met Office and the merits/value of their “Data”.

In alphabetical order, this list links to my reports on each of these FSC weather stations with brief precis details . It also shows the number of days on which complete air temperature readings were successfully taken in 2025 together with the percentage success rate of achieving this task. {The full surface Stations Index is available here https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/surface-stations-project-2024/}

Amersham Installed 2015. Manually observed. CIMO Class 4 Located alongside a National Grid sub-station. (134 days – 37%)

Betws-y-Coed Installed 1976 Manually observed CIMO Class 5 Heavily shaded with cars parking alongside. (ZERO Days 0%)

Blencathra Installed 1992 Automatically observed. CIMO Class 4 High altitude rural site. (365 days – 100%)

Dale Fort Installed 1959 Manually observed CIMO Class 4 Located in a bunker (150 days – 41%)

East Bergholt Installed 1959 Manually observed CIMO Class 4 In a field. (123 days – 34%)

High Beach Installed 1978 Automaticaly observed. CIMO Class 5 In a woodland clearing. (365 days – 100%)

Malham Tarn Installed 1949 Automatically observed CIMO Class 4 (FSC site now closed) (100% since reopening 2/8/2025)

Margham Installed 2015 (removed 2026) Manually observed CIMO Class 5. (ZERO Days – 0%)

Mickleham Installed 1899 Manually observed CIMO Class 5 In front of a south facing wall. (49 Days – 13%)

Nettlecombe Installed 1968 Manually observed CIMO Class 5.Observers park vehicles in front of the screen. (161 Days – 44%)

Preston Montford Installed 1976 Manually observed CIMO Class 5 Somewhere in the shrubs. (221 days – 60%)

And of course the headline image refers to research at Slapton Ley where “Every day at 0900 GMT, a member of staff records the weather conditions from the last 24 hours.“

Slapton Installed 1960 Manually observed CIMO Class 4. Multiple undisclosed relocations. (82 days – 22%)

Two obvious points come to mind. Firstly automatic weather stations appear to reliably transmit readings. Secondly the manual observations standards at Field Studies Council Sites consistently rank as amongst the very worst in the entire UK. Slapton is certainly not observed every day.

These above facts demonstrate issues that seem to be all too prevalent within the so called “environmentally conscious” movements and protagonists of anthropogenic global warming. – virtue signalling, hypocrisy and plain untruths. The FSC declared a “Climate Emergency” in 2019 but cannot even manage to perform basic but highly relevant tasks such as records observations that may, or may not, support their extreme rhetoric.

Consider my report on their Preston Montford site. The FSC marketing made great play of World Meteorological Day but they could not manage to take any observations on such an “important” (to them at least) date. 6 other sites simultaneously failed to take observations on that same day in 2024 – in 2025 even fewer managed readings on WMO day.

“As part of our commitment to teacher CPD, high quality fieldwork and sustainable education the Field Studies Council has been working in partnership with the Rob Gamesby (Cool Geography) with the Royal Meteorological Society, to develop resources for teachers and students to us in schools and the local environment.  

“We know how important geographical fieldwork opportunities are and want to ensure all students are able to collect high quality data in and around their local space, these resources are designed to fit into the National Festival of Fieldwork, in which the Geographical Association and Field Studies Council are promoting fieldwork opportunities.“

As an organisation that is seen as being a prime mover in both student and educator experience regarding environment and with an exceptionally high profile in meteorology (no other organisation has so many Met office weather stations in their custody) it would be reasonable to expect the highest of standards. Instead the real world evidence displays a total lack of any regard to their duties. Their weather stations are all low grade CIMO class 4 and 5 with the approach to fulfilling the basic function of observations at best described as cavalier.

The Met Office are of course the responsible body that has authorised all these weather stations so what are their views? It would appear they really do not care that much. Dave Woolcock, the Surface Stations Project data presentation specialist, contacted the Met Office regarding the dearth of data from one site (Mickleham). The response is effectively an abnegation of responsibility to provide reliable data by the Met Office and their oversight.

” Good Morning Dave,

Looking at Mickleham it is a Field Studies Council site.

This means that it has a high turnover of staff usually with a new observer each year. They tend to need to have one committed member of staff to keep engagement going, even if they are the supervisor not necessarily taking the readings. When they move on engagement drops off sharply. I would guess that is what happened at this site.
Over the last 10 years or so, there has been a general drop off in observations from all of our FSC sites. We get peaks when a new person starts and is enthused, then it drops off again as they get busy with other duties.

I hope that helps answering your query.

Kind regards,

Marc

Weather Desk

Met Office  FitzRoy Road  Exeter  Devon  EX1 3PB  United Kingdom“

The Met Office “Weather Desk” may well feel that helps answering a query but as this email was from January 2025, clearly nothing is changing. Doesn’t actually having official weather stations impose a duty to take readings? If not why waste the time and expense of keeping them? Is the Met Office incapable of managing its own estate?

The critical factors to bear in mind are that such a lack of reliable observations is indicative of not particularly being diligent nor likely to be well trained hence the actual reading accuracy is possibly not very good. There is a skill in reading thermometers notably to avoid parallax errors. For example, the once held world record high temperature at El-Azizia in Libya was ultimately ruled out on the basis that the temporary observer was believed to have taken readings in line with the top of the “rider” in the thermometer rather than the bottom.

There are numerous very easy ways to get readings wrong. Unfortunately, this potential lack of accuracy does not seem to overly trouble the Met Office who have awarded the all time highest temperature of the specific day of the year on six occasions to FSC sites notably High Beach (Class 5) 3 times in a woodland clearing with frequent flat calm and the barely ever observed Class 5 Mickleham (3 times) in front of its south facing wall. It is worth remembering that in the event of observations being missed at other locations, readings can be infilled from any Met Office site regardless of how uncertain those replacement readings may be.Reading from FSC site will be included in homogenisation practices.

Despite all of this demonstrated poor siting, lack of maintenance and only very occasional observation, the education system has to push its students into a belief system for which its propagators cannot even ensure the basic provenance by adequately managing their own resources. Hypocrisy, disinformation, virtue signalling and a complete lack of evidence seem all rolled into one……but it is, of course, a “Charity”.

The state of “Climate Change” education in the UK is suffering a crisis and the weather seems to have nothing to do with it.

Codicil; I will forward this report to the FSC (as well as the Met Office) as it is only reasonable to allow them both to comment. I do not, however, expect a response as “cancellation” and a refusal to engage with anyone who questions authority is the modern day norm.

Betws-Y-Coed – “Climate Change” by the car park.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2026/08/07/climate-champions-who-cant-keep-their-own-weather-stations-running-the-field-studies-council-and-their-13-met-office-official-weather-stations/