Field Studies Council Weather Stations – Blame it all on Covid 19……..even before 2019! Further dubious data accepted by the Met office. Both as bad as each other.

I recently reported on the exceptionally poor observations standards at the weather stations operated by the Field Studies Council (FSC) here.. In that report I stated I would forward it to both the Met Office and the FSC for their comments. As I confidently expected, the Met Office’s “Press Office” declined to reply as nobody at the Met office ever does respond to any of my questions. It would seem taxpayer funding does not extend to actually communicating with those who contribute to their salaries.

The FSC Press Office, however, did respond after my contact with the full knowledge that I may publish their response. This is the subject of this further report with the addition of more details demonstrating the problems of poor quality sites and poor observational quality.

My email of the 8th of August to the FSC ran as follows:{Note the President of the FSC since 2014 is Professor Timothy Burt. a close collaborator with Dr Stephen Burt but not related}

Hello Press Office

Do you have any comments to make regarding my recently published and critical report of your observations standards of official Met office weather stations at your sites? This is clearly of high relevance to you given your President’s status.

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

Regards

Ray Sanders

Not expecting a reply (none has so far come from the Met Office who I also separately contacted at the same time} I was somewhat surprised by the nature of the response that I did get from the FSC.

Field Studies Council Marketing	14 Aug 2026, 18:06 (4 days ago)
to me

Dear Mr Sanders,

Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

There have been considerable changes at our centres since Covid, so we are reviewing operations. In the meantime, we will look to update or remove the relevant information from our website.

Kind regards

Carol

Starting with the first of this two sentence response, quite why “Covid” has been introduced into this is frankly beyond me. If there is some suggestion that the poor observations record was due to Covid restrictions that is frankly absurd given the data I highlighted in my report related to 2025. All of the last legal Covid restrictions in England were lifted 24/2/2022 and “Freedom Day” was 19/7/2021. Furthermore the poor observations standard predates Covid by a long time.

To consider just the Mickleham site as a typical representative example of FSC weather stations, in 2019 before any applied Covid restrictions only 134 days full readings were taken. 231 missing days ranks in probably the worst 3% of all Met Office weather stations which also happens to be the same percentage of total Met Office sites that the FSC operates. Perhaps this is possibly just a very modern phenomenon? Certainly not, going back 2 decades to 2006 shows only 275 days readings were taken with 90 missing days. This is not some random cherry pick either as the following year of 2007 resulted in only 241 days reading with 124 missing observations. Bear in mid this is an environmental studies educational institution focused on climate issues that is not succeeding in achieving the most basic of objectives. Most other sites manually observed sites were similarly below any reasonable standard of observations.

A further point I made in my report was the likely unreliability of readings taken by presumably ever changing observers who evidently are not especially diligent. What credence should be given to “records” taken by such irregular observers? In their Surface Weather Assessment Team (SWAT) reports, the Met Office places great measure on the competence of the observers. In the Shirburn Model Farm example, despite the thermometer being broken and taped up, the “calibre” of the observer was taken into account.

In the more recent example of the all time June highest temperature record at Lingwood, despite the CIMO Class 5 status of the site and its notably atrocious CIMO Class 5 location the Met Office still cited the observer quality of someone not even adequately cleaning the screen – external cleanliness is a crucial factor for accuracy.

Regarding the FSC site I noted 6 occasions were one of their sites holds the record for highest daily temperature ever for that date. In the case of Mickleham this has happened on 3 occasions, the latest being 21/12.2015 at 16°C. Just as a trial example what was the readings standard at Mickleham like at that ttime?

Columns “I” and “J” are maximum and minimum respectively. {n.b. Maximum readings from manually observed sites are attributed to the calendar day before. In addition to there being no date marked entries for 26th, 30th and 31st December, of the other 28 days there are 7 marked “NA” indicating no readings. Of the potential 31 days, almost a third (10) are missing and yet the Met Office readily accepted the reading as reliable – but was it?

The nearest official Met Office sites to Mickleham are the notoriously warm reporting sites of Royal Horticultural Society Wisley which only recorded 12.9°C and Charlwood set towards the western end of the Gatwick Airport runway which only recorded 12.3°C.

In the SWAT report for Lingwood the Met Office referred to nearby Private Weather Stations (PWS) to assist verification of the Lingwood figure. The Met Office Weather Observations website (WOW) which highlights PWS readings allows historic data to be shown by turning it back through time. This is the image for 14:00 on the 21/12/2015 showing the PWS real time hourly transmissions. around Mickleham.

Mickleham is just north of Dorking – that reading of just 7°C is from a site (no longer reporting on WOW) that was known as “Mickleham Church”. None of the PWS recorded within 3°C of the alleged Micklehan FSC high but all conformed to the region of the Wisley and Charlwood ones. Despite all evidence indicating the FSC reading was wrong and likely taken by an inexperienced/inadequately trained observer taken from a LIGT (the sites PRT was not fitted until 2017) it was still accepted by the Met Office – so much for quality control.

All this above confirms that the FSC is operating the official weather stations entrusted to it with an unacceptably poor observations standard from what are already poorly sited Screens. If “diligent/reliable” observers at Shirburn (taped up broken thermometer) and Lingwood (dirty screen) are shown to not be adequately maintaining their sites, one does have to be very concerned what state such infrequently observed FSC ones are actually in and the accuracy of the readings. For record high readings, and indeed any readings, to be accepted by the Met Office from such questionable quality sites/observers is an equally unacceptable poor standard on their part and in many cases these readings are just plain wildly wrong.

So now to the implications of the second sentence of the FSC Press Office response.

“In the meantime, we will look to update or remove the relevant information from our website.”

A reassurance or aspiration even that operating standards would be improved? No, just a removal of any incriminating evidence from their website. All the rest of the hypocritical, virtue signalling and “directed education” they promote will remain and the dubious provenance of all the hard data will almost certainly not improve one iota. The “message” is far more important than any of the science it may, or may not, be based upon.

This whole issue is one of unacceptably poor standards from all parties involved with no indication whatsoever that anything will actually ever improve under the current regimes. Despite this the same anthropogenic climate change mantra will be relentlessly pursued regardless of whether or not there is any reliable source data supplied.

I will be forwarding both these reports to Professor Hunt via his institution email address for nay views he may wish to offer in public debate.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2026/08/18/field-studies-council-weather-stations-blame-it-all-on-covid-19-even-before-2019-further-dubious-data-accepted-by-the-met-office-both-as-bad-as-each-other/