Wiggonholt Addendum – More redacted readings from a site that falls far below accepted standards

{Image Credit: Haydn Thomas Photgraphy taken from Youtube Clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YD9NFHK2wc}

Following on from my review of the recent “rejection” of alleged records from the Eastbourne weather station, I will now further review the similarly rejected readings from the CIMO Class 5 Wiggonholt screen which the Met Office described thus:

“A broken slat on the Stevenson Screen at Wiggonholt invalidated the readings from that site and remedial work is now underway.“

This further review details that there is hugely more wrong with this site than just an occasional broken Slat.

My initial Wiggonholt review featured on the Met Office use of incredibly spurious readings from this low grade site to cross (or rather appear to cross) arbitrary “Thresholds” as a means of introducing supposedly scary “Tipping Points”. In the first review I also alluded to a nearby private weather station that only reached 27.9°C on that same day and (given the prevailing weather conditions) was an implausible 2.1°C cooler than the 30°C recorded by the Met Office in their low grade site.

I subsequently reviewed the neighbouring PWS “Ashington Met” with a direct comparison to Wiggonholt. The Ashington site is vastly superior in all measures to the Met Office location being well sited (a worthy CIMO Class 2), uses artificially aspirated ventilation to avoid static air overheating (Aitken Effect) and very well exposed. It was again noteworthy that not only then, but also many times since, that Ashington records much cooler than Wiggonholt. Ashington was recording the correct wider area temperature whilst the Met Office were acheiving their “Climate Change” mantra objectives of crossing thresholds however improbable the data source.

Put bluntly, the Wiggonholt site is of Junk status for accurate wider area representative climate reporting. Looking deeper into the historic provenance of this site and events leading to the readings ultimate rejections is very revealing. This unsuitability may well have been more by design that accident – a view that the nearby Eastbourne debacle only reinforces.

Wiggonholt certainly does not disappoint in the daily highs stakes. Dr Eric Huxter’s research in this area analyses PRT “spikes” in relation to CIMO site rankings against Met Office reported daily “extremes”. Appearing at 7 in this “Hit parade” with 43 record highs over the sample period, Wiggonholt is “earning it’s keep”.

So a deeper dive into the site history. Originally installed in 1995 as a manually observed site, temperature readings are archived from 1/2/1995. However, it was not in its current location being some 40 metres NNE of its present day site as shown in the aerial image of 27/4/2026.

The observation frequency was sadly very poor indeed – not quite as bad as Eastbourne but at times a close match. This below is typical and again not only “NA” where readings should be but also numerous missing days in the date file. 10 of the 31 days in January alone show no attempt made to take observations at all in addition to 11 days of incomplete readings.

It always puzzles me how one or other reading is missed – one reading indicates the screen was visited. If this is the case of visiting but not correctly recording both maximum and minimum, the competence of the observer has to be questioned. Correctly reading a LIGT (as both would have been at the time) is a skill requiring training to avoid parallax errors and other misreads – I question the likely accuracy of readings taken by often unskilled observers likely seconded from other duties at this RSPB Pulborough Brooks site.

The Met Office chose to automate the site from 20/7/2011 and relocated it 40 metres to the WSW. Instrumentation changed from LIGT to PRT simultaneous with this move but there is no overlapping data on the public file to demonstrate whether or not any difference in temperature readings was noticed. To justify this expense they must have considered this site potentially important – or “useful”. The image below is from just prior to that relocation also indicating the original site and new site. Contrast the dramatic changes elsewhere on this site with the 2026 image above.

My headline image is taken from a delightful youtube clip by wildlife photgrapher Haydn Thomas. The pond he lies down by to photograph dragonflies from did not even exist when Wiggonholt weather station was relocated to its present site. The entire site has been significantly developed even further since his images. Ponds, pathways, paved areas, play areas, significant planting and that notorious canopy for outside class room lectures are all new additions. Furthermore there was no public access to the minimal screen enclosure area with the access route originally the opposite side of the fence.

The site is on a significant and readily visible slope and is shielded from winds from NEW hedge planting to its north and around through east to south east. There is effectively no scecurity from tampering from the significant number of general public visitors to the area. Winds from the open side southwest pass over the artificial pond and are reduced by the attendant rushes. The extensively exposed free draining sandy soil of the area is the equivalent of hard standing areas and certainly not vegetation “natural of the region” as CIMO regulations stipulate. Everything taken into account, this is a rapid warming artificial suntrap that will unnaturally record overly warm in dry sunny conditions. In almost the exact same way that “Topsy Turvy” Santon Downham ” in Suffolk (or Norfolk depending on which one you chose!) with its sandy soils also records both extreme highs and lows (often on the same day) – so does Wiggonholt which also regularly records cold conditions.

Bear all these demerits in mind and then consider that the only reason the Met Office gave for not ratifying this record is a “broken slat”…….but rest assured “remedial work is now underway.” Is this another Sussex euphemism just like the grass not cut or “nearby interference” as at Eastbourne?

What the Met Office has in fact finally recently admitted is that CIMO Class 5 sites are, by their own assessment, “Unsatisfactory” and should not be used for claiming records. Even though they are adamant that people like me making the claim of Class 5 being unsuitable are misinformers and do not understand the CIMO Classifications nor the Met Office’s own categories. {My bold to emphasize “word salad” nonsense}

“WMO guidance does, in fact, not preclude use of Class 5 temperature sites – the WMO classification simply informs the data user of the geographical scale of a site’s representativity of the surrounding environment – the smaller the siting class, the higher the representativeness of the measurement for a wide area. Indeed, it should be noted that WMO Class 5 is not the same as a Met Office ‘Unsatisfactory’ inspection assessment, which ultimately determines the ongoing use of a site. We use the Met Office grading system to determine record verification because; it has historical relevance, covering a wide range of long-standing criteria at UK observation sites, the equipment, and the exposure in a holistic manner and has clear meaning to what is acceptable or not. It tells us how much confidence we have in the data and permits comparisons.“

However, another much more relevent quote has been recently uncovered regarding a real site assessment where the site was found to be :

“…outside satisfactory limits…..so has been scored CIMO Class 5/Met Office Unsatisfactory”

The next post of this 3 part series relates to the similarly rejected record at Cardiff: Bute Park and some other astonishing admissions by the Met Office unearthed following Freedom on Informtion request by a Talkshop reader.

To conclude this review of Wiggonholt, it is clearly in a highly compromised location which, in the same way as Eastbourne, was recently relocated by the Met Office themselves. It represents another part of the process of selected sample point sites showing artificially warmer such as number 4 in the above “Hit Parade” Frittenden demonstrating Kent temperature uplifts. Although this particular weather event will (possibly) be redacted from the record books, all the site’s other modern climate data will remain to continue distorting the modern climate record in the same way as so many others modern sites do. Met Office “Climate Series” data are not reliable demonstrated by this and multiple other locations.

Source: https://talkshop.blog/2026/10/31/wiggonholt-addendum-more-redacted-readings-from-a-site-that-falls-far-below-accepted-standards/