Thomastown WMO 03901 – Northern Ireland’s best in direct contrast with probably its worst.

54.32957 -7.59502 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 2 Installed 26/6/2012

There are 28 Met Office weather stations in Northern Ireland but none of them are considered Class 1. There are clearly no extraneous heat sources likely to affect the relatively new Thomastown station which is close to Enniskillen so It is hard to see why this site is not Class 1. Perhaps there are minor sloping issues, unnatural vegetation (a nit pick surely) or the nearby hedging is considered a down grading factor. However, there is no problem with a Class 2 site being accurate and representative of the wider natural environment. This is a good, well equipped, automatic reporting site – so why not end there? Unfortunately quality sites do not get the correct publicity from the Met office, but bad ones do.

I reviewed Derrylin:Cornahoule to specifically identify why weather stations in domestic back gardens can never be considered reliable. That review showed camping tents by the unenclosed screen and both uncontrolled and uncontrollable issues affecting readings. It also showed a UK daily “extreme” highest temperature. By contrast Thomastown is secure and unlikely to be adversely affected by such issues – I do not recall the site registering any records. Whilst the Derrylin site is an unacceptable Class 5 (Junk) and only ever likely to be inaccurate and unreliable, Thomastown is almost as good as it gets. The two sites are also under 10 miles apart.

Here we have, yet again, the regular example of Class 5 junk sites being proclaimed as “extremes” and aiding all those alarming headlines of an ever warming climate’

Was someone burning hedge trimmings in the garden, cooking on a barbecue, turning over a compost heap, camping or just eager to get on the map again with an electricity extension lead and a hair dryer? I have no wish to disparage the owners of the Derrylin site, however, if I was going to commit my country to £trillion spending and massive lifestyle changes in pursuit of “temperature control”, I would want rather more surety of data quality than this junk site supplies. Fortunately just a short distance away is a reliable site and indeed if you click on the hyperlink for Derrylin it will take you to the fully equipped Class 2 site known as…….

So checking out the reliable and accurate data for Thomastown indicates it did NOT record so high a temperature only peaking over a degree lower.

Furthermore a few miles south of Derrylin in the Republic of Ireland is the high quality Ballyhaise:Cavan fully equipped automatic station at the Ballyhaise Agricultural College. Its data is equally visible online and it also did NOT record so high peaking over a degree less.

Thus available to the Met Office was the accurate data from a quality site in the UK (Thomastown) in conformity with equally good site a short distance away in the Republic of Ireland (Ballyhaise) BUT in between is a poor quality unreliable Class 5 junk site recording questionably hotter. Which one do they opt to highlight in their never ending search for “proof”……. ? Real meteorologists must be embarrassed to be associated with this sort of thing.