How to rewrite the past, in the present, to control the future – a guide for would-be “Climate Scientists”.

Map showing all 15 Met Office weather stations operational in summer 1976 in Kent.

This post is a demonstration of how easy it is to manipulate long term climate trends simply by amending the sampling points used. The Met Office and “Climate Science” holds data homogenisation in great stead but is this mashing all numbers up together to derive a reified average just a ploy to cover up data manipulation? In this post I will change a selected part of the historical climate record to demonstrate how easily this can be done and highlight just one of the very many problems within the system that can be readily “played”.

Exactly how the Met Office derives climate averages for any given location, gridded point, area or region is something the UK general public is prohibited from knowing. The Met Office may claim their process is “Peer Reviewed” but seemingly those “Peers” are anonymous as well. To put this into context, addition and division could easily be defined as “Peer Reviewed ” processes but obviously without any open declaration of the input data then any derived “means” are literally “meaningless”. As I, and others, have repeatedly attempted to get the Met Office to divulge their statistical processing and sadly failed, I feel it is necessary to derive a new climate history of the UK myself hence this Surface Stations Project.

Whatever the Met Office may claim, data can only come from existing weather stations – it cannot be invented as that would be fraudulent. There have to be sample points and these, from their previous responses, can come from all or any sites to contribute to averages. Changes to the sample points, such as how many and where located, can make huge difference to means as I demonstrated in London in geographic terms. Here I will demonstrate rewriting history in hard numbers.

The Met Office and media outlets went into full on hysterical overdrive over this summer with endless, and rather pointless comparisons, to the summer of 1976. This one for example was from Senior Meteorologist Dan Holley who has, in the past committed to email responses to me regarding how low grade some Met Office stations actually are that I will remind him and the Met Office of in due course – more in a future post. Meanwhile –

The Wikipedia entry for the summer of 1976 made the following comment:

“Heathrow had 16 consecutive days with daily maxima over 30 °C (86 °F) from 23 June to 8 July^[5] and for 15 consecutive days from 23 June to 7 July temperatures reached 32.2 °C (90 °F) somewhere in the United Kingdom”

I decided from this to draft an average temperature for that sample period of 23/6/1976 to 9/7/1976 for my home county of Kent using all those operational stations for that period as shown on the headline map. Below is a precis list with links to earlier reviews where appropriate.

Dover RMS Duke of Yorks Royal Military School. Rural site on Military boarding school playing fields.(Closed 1979) replaced by Langdon Bay site see below.

Dungeness Very long term site on Europe’s largest shingle promontory (Closed 1976) Still a climate averages site 50 years after last readings.

Elmstone Very good quality CIMO Class 1 site. Holder of UK COLDEST temperature for both 19th January -18.9°C in 1966 and -21.3°C for 30th January in 1947 (Closed 1994)

Folkestone Municipal run site on edge of playing fields latterly compromised by nearby car parking on new housing development. (Closed 2003)

Gillingham Municipal run site along river strand of large urban area. (Closed 1981)

Hadlow Reliable good quality Agricultural College site. (Closed 1984) UKCEH site replacement recently installed.

Herne Bay 1976 iteration for a town that has had multiple different weather stations since the 19th century was then outside the urban area at the water treatment works. Only recorded to nearest 0.5°C (Closed 1979) Latter replacement closed 2006.

Margate Long term municipal seafront tourism location to promote the town. (Closed 1988) Latter replacement closed 2009.

WYE Excellent long term CIMO Class 1 site at agricultural college (Closed 2006) Considered suitable for new national historic climate reconstruction for its 80 year period operating period.

Ulcombe Very rural World Meteorological Organisation reporting site. (Closed 1996)

Manston Former RAF/USAF aviation site – multiple relocations – 1976 location at eastern end of over 10,000 feet exceptionally wide runway by the control tower – now at the western end of runway – CIMO Class 2 Still operational but oddly with a second simultaneous site Manston 2 also being data archived just 55 metres away.

Favershan Reading University home of National Fruit collection. Very poor site that was originally closed in 1990 due to encroachment of recently planted Leylandii wind break. Controversially re-opened in 1998 in heavily compromised location with subsequent national maximum record contested by Royal Meteorological Society. CIMO Class 4 Still operational

East Malling. National Institute of Agricultural Botany site in a different location to current site. Current site claimed CIMO Class 1 but recently heavily compromised by massive poly tunnels. 1976 location to be subject of further review but then further from extraneous influences. Still operational

Edenbridge. Wrongly claimed to be CIMO Class 1 by Met Office readjusted to Class 4 following my challenge. By artificial reservoir dam wall. Still noted as operational but possibly not.

Goudhurst Originally in an open woodland clearing of Bedgbury Pinetum. Subsequent extensive tree growth leading to wind shaded site. CIMO Class 4. Still operational

I extracted the readings for each site and tabulated them as below for 23/6 to 8/7 – all numbers can be verified from the MIDAS archives.

The first striking thing from this chart is the very large range of maximums over such relatively small distances – a daily range of maximums up to 11.5°C over a county the size of Kent is unusual but not improbable. However, discrepancies of nearly 8°C over the 4 miles between Manston and Margate are indicative of coastal weather effects of low cloud/mist dulling solar irradiance. That coastal resorts and seaside areas such as Herne Bay, Margate, Dover, Folkestone and Dungeness are recording so consistently lower than inland sites in summer is perfectly normal for a county with a north, east and south coastline.

Equally notable is the consistently warmer readings from inland sites in west Kent c.f. Margate with a 16 day mean maximum of 22.6°C compared to Goudhurst at 30.9°C.

So what actually is the “average” maximum for Kent over this period in 1976?

Using my own “peer reviewed” process I added up all the numbers and divided by 16 – the process is clear and the inputs are all visible –

The mean maximum temperature from the 15 operational weather stations in the county of Kent between the 23rd June to 8th July 1976 was 27.3°C

Moving this comparison forward, how could this be compared with 2026 or any other year’s similar period? This is where the problems start. Of those 15 sites, two thirds of them are now closed. In order to compare “apples with apples” the only way that could be done is to compare those 5 remaining sites so what was the 1976 mean maximum of Manston, Faversham, East Malling, Edenbridge and Goudhurst? Same peer reviewed process of adding them all up and dividing by 5.

The mean maximum temperature from the 5 operational weather stations in the county of Kent between the 23rd June to 8th July that are still operational today was 29.0°C

Consequently in one easy exercise I have increased the historic mean of over 50 years ago by 1.7°C! Of course it is impossible to change the weather of 1976 and it could be argued that my example is very contrived, however the point remains – rewriting history by adjusting the sample points used has worked to change the appearance of the past. And this sleight of hand can change any past. present, and into the future to almost any number required for any area.

The real numbers from the real sample points can be very easily gamed if they keep changing. Of course that is very easily detected thus to “hide” the process simply invent figures by a deliberately undisclosed but allegedly “peer reviewed” process for sites/gridded cells that simply do not exist.

Enter those Location Specific Long Term climate averages for sites closed up to 60 years ago . Presumably this peer reviewed process {which is claimed to be for general interest only – part of the “light entertainment budget perhaps} is still producing numbers (not data) for long closed sites such as Gillingham, Dover, Folkestone and Dungeness and thus deriving modern day climate means. Imaginary numbers modelled from imaginary locations through a process that we are not allowed to know. This is not science, it is black box computer games.

The Met Office has hugely reduced the number of weather stations from well over 600 in 1976 to under 400 in 2026 so clearly this area of Kent has encountered a much larger reduction than other areas. Additionally, they have installed new sites in the interim – so how many of these were in Kent and how reliable are they?

In Kent there are now the 5 established sites as above remaining plus 2 newer ones as follows.

Langdon Bay. This is actually very close to the old Dover RMS site just a mile distant and is almost certainly an intentional replacement opening shortly after the old site closed. The former military school site was in an open location adjacent to the school’s playing fields. As I previously reported the replacement site is absurdly close to the car park with exhausts literally within 3 metres/10 feet of the screen. Coastguard and Air Sea rescue helicopters regularly pass low overhead to land nearby. This location is far more compromised that its open site predecessor.

Frittenden If there was ever a case of motivated locations of “official” weather stations it is this one. The headline map indicates this site is very close to long established sites at Goudhurst, East Malling and Edenbridge. The data table for 1976 indicates these were also the three hottest reporting sites. The logic appears to be to close down the 5 coolest reporting sites in east Kent at Herne Bay, Dungeness, Folkestone, Margate and record holding cold Elmstone, and then to pack another site into the hotter recording area.

Was this by accident? The Frittenden site was a long established amateur’s hobby in a local sheep farmer’s back garden. For decades it had reported to the local media but was not an official site. Only in 2011 did the Met Office chose to adopt the site and it clearly lived up to its expectations.

Talkshop close collaborator Doctor Eric Huxter recently produced this excellent detailed presentation for a Tom Nelson Podcast that I strongly recommend viewing.

Eric, who has kindly supplied me with extensive assistance and data for my work, also supplied enlightening evidence of the incidence of daily national highs of the year. Just look how many times Frittenden appears and how Goudhurst and East Malling never do. Frittenden beats its senior neighbours every time – its inclusion, for no otherwise obvious reason, was clearly an excellent choice to ramp up the numbers. 50 days of national highs at Frittenden plus a further 20 at relocated Manston (clearly cooler nearby Margate had to go!)

Ultimately how do my 1976 figures compare with those of 2026 – unfortunately the Met office does not supply this data free of charge and not only is per station data very expensive, would be buyers need authorised reasons to be allowed to buy them. As a result I cannot supply a direct comparison until the data for 2026 is released in mid 2027. In lieu I opted to look at 2025 which – according to the Met Office, was almost as high in mean daily maximum as 1976 in England as shown below. This summer was also hailed at propaganda levels for multiple “heatwaves” whenever some nice sunny weather came along.

The first site I looked at was the 1976 highest of Goudhurst averaging 30.9°C. – in the entire summer June, July and August this site only broached that average on one occasion in fact on only 3 of the 92 summer days did it exceed 30°C. East Malling and Edenbridge only exceeded 30°C. twice and Edenbridge stopped readings entirely on the 30/9/2025 – I have no idea if it is even still operating or not. Predictably Frittenden broke the 30°C threshold on 4 occasions and the highest recorded day of the year was at the equally absurd Faversham site now recording in a completely different league to its 1976 variant solely due to its degraded setting.

Further analysis of annual comparisons will follow in future reports, but for now I feel the point of sample point alteration over time and the ability to use these changes to alter reported averages has been demonstrated. In the absence of of the Met Office acting transparently and disclosing the INPUTS used to derive its OUTPUTS then the only assumption that can be drawn is one of them deliberately selecting the data used to fit a narrative of predetermined outcomes.

Source: https://talkshop.blog/2026/10/03/how-to-rewrite-the-past-in-the-present-to-control-the-future-a-guide-for-would-be-climate-scientists/