Islay: Port Ellen WMO03105 – Dramatically different increments in temperature from “well correlated” sites . Must be selective CO2.

55.681326 -6.249790 Met Office CIMO assessed Class 4 Installed 1/11/1968

This review started as a routine assessment of a remote aviation site (former RAF Port Ellen now Islay Airport) on a picturesque Scottish isle in the Inner Hebrides that is well known for its whisky distilleries. What I uncovered in my initial investigation lead to discovering yet more covert data modification by the Met Office quite possibly in response to an earlier report of mine querying it. The routine so often seems to be anything but with the Met Office.

When the late Tim Channon reviewed this site, he felt that what should have been a straightforward reasonably good site was marked down by the “Devil in the detail“. Tim estimated CIMO Class 3 – the Met Office subsequently arrived at Class 4. My initial impression was, in general terms, that this was an “okay” site . Yes, the runway will have an effect but flights here are few and far between as RAF activity ended decades ago. Although the former main runway (12/30) is just about long enough (5,085 feet) to take off commercial jetliners capable of transatlantic flights, it is, in reality, very little used and only for local routes with smaller aircraft using the shorter runway.

There really is no likelihood of urban heating on Islay and the long runway actually runs out to the seafront beach. Still air conditions are very rare occurrences here so even a naturally aspirated screen is unlikely to experience any distorting still air effects. There is a perimeter access way which, though formerly a taxiway, no longer appears to perform that function. The vegetation to the east around to the north east is not blocking viewing the site in the distance from the nearby road as below. The Stevenson screen is just discernible to the left of the faintly visible wind mast in centre screen.

Neither a good nor especially bad site and no doubt well suited for its original aviation purposes – or is it really? The RAF would not have located a weather station so far from the control tower and runway – being difficult to take regular readings and too far from the runway for specific take off and landing data. Was it elsewhere in the past? The very last posting in the archives:-

2000-10-09

Current

SITE INFORMATION

OLD SITE WAS AT GRID REF 1329E 6516N ELEVATION 18M

The original location was indeed in front of the control tower at the end of the more regularly used runway (07/25 2,083 feet) and was relocated in 1990 when the new helipad took over its former location. The Red kite marks this former location.

The relocation date is relevant as is the renumbering of the station’s readings from DCNN6012 up to 1990 and DCNN6014 from 1990 onwards. As previously noted many times, sites are only renumbered “Where the distance moved is large, or, where the exposure at the new site is sufficiently different that a detectable impact on the measured climatology is judged likely, it is appropriate that observations from the new site are labelled by a different set of identifiers.”

Thus up to 1990 readings were taken from a significantly “climatologically” different site to those subsequent readings. This would surely make those location specific long term averages non-continuous given the change but the Met Office certainly is not about to own up to that. No doubt the Met Office will claim various homogenisation processes and modifications/adjustments to overcome this change but given this is the only station on the island it seems somewhat improbable to homogenise or correlate to anywhere remotely close. And this is where things became very interesting.

That Colonsay:Homefield closed in 2015 and Portrush in 2014 is par for the course with these stats but what caught my eye was the “Historic Station” of Ballypatrick Forest and the outrageous Met Office antics used there in bonding disparate datasets from different locations producing highly “engineered” figures. The Report is essential reading in full before progressing with comparing its data to Islay

Ballypatrick Forest DCNN9168, DCNN 9169 WMO03916 – Totally unacceptable behaviour by the Met Office.

The most striking feature noted about these climate averages recorded at Ballypatrick was the remarkably high increment in average minimum of 1.15°C over a 60 year period between the two climate periods of 1960 to 1990 and 1990 to 2020. From my previous report

How does the Met Office explain that Islay only manages a 0.63°C increment in minimum – barley more than half of Ballypatrick over the same 60 year period?

Period 1960 to 1990

Even more dramatically how do they explain that Machrihanish (also an airport site) only manages a tiny 0.41°C minimum increment (barely more than a third of Ballypatrick) again over the same period?

Is this a case of CO2 molecules being incredibly selective in their “Catastrophic Global Warming” effects over a matter of less than 40 miles? Or are all these absurd levels of variance in the same vein as noted at nearby Killowen and simply down to variations in site quality, relocations, instrument changes, site deterioration, lack of adequate maintenance, changes in readings and recording protocols, inadequate screen ventilation and all other manner of shortcomings the Met Office sloppily manages?

Well if anyone could possibly think it was the Met Office’s shortcomings they really must be a swivel eyed loon because everybody knows it just must be CO2 molecules picking and choosing where they affect and by how much!…..don’t they???

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2026/08/10/islay-port-ellen-wmo03105-dramatically-different-increments-in-temperature-from-well-correlated-sites-must-be-selective-co2/