Gringley-on-the-Hill DCNN 4268 – Had it not been for 3 Typhoon jets would the Met Office have really given this the UK all time record?

53.40617 -0.88429 Met office CIMO Assessed Class 4 Temperature records from 1/4/1998

Gringley on the Hill weather station was installed in April 1998 to replace (according to the Met Office) the West Retford station (DCNN4257) located at the local sewage treatment plant. When Tim Channon carried his reviews in 2012/3 he focused on the WMO synoptic sites but also opted to review this relatively new Gringley site, expressing his personal suspicions over its likely accuracy. Ten years later in 2022 his suspicions of this site were confirmed when it recorded the UK’s highest ever temperature outside of the UK largest urban heat island (London) and a highly spurious RAF site reading.

The first point to note is that Gringley is, as its name suggests, near a hill known as Beacon Hill with wide ranging views at 82 metres amsl. The continuous southerly slope past the weather station (at 64 metres and under 200 metres from the spot height) carries on downwards to just 12 metres at the nearby Chesterfield Canal. Such a south facing slope is inevitably prone to localised weather effects.

Looking at the detail of the site indicates that not only is it in a very unusual form of oval close by farm buildings. Historic imagery indicates continually changing land use from contour ploughed cropping and harvesting to livestock scrubbed bare earth at times around the screen. The (sadly fuzzy) image below is from just 3 days before that “record” breaking day and indicates a very recently combined cereal crop.

Conversely an earlier image displayed livestock comings and goings past the screen had scrubbed the surfaces to bare earth. Both animals and mechanisation can come into extremely close proximity to the screen. A modern Platinum Resistance Thermometer will pick on any short term heat pulse that a traditional Liquid in Glass thermometer would not have.

One does wonder what was actually happening on that 19th July 2022 – ploughing a recently cropped field in an air conditioned cab tractor is quite probable after recent cropping with regular passes by the enclosure. Given the Met office’s unwillingness to question any data they “approve of”, such as at Faversham where senior RMETS members officially contested the readings, I doubt there was any investigation at all into the veracity of Gringley’s reading.

Another important question to ask here on behalf of the general public is how much credibility should be given to this site’s readings. I doubt many people would imagine that these record figures were being recorded at a basic poorly sited stand alone and probably originally amateur location, behind some barns, on a south facing sloping field, somewhere they cannot freely access and anything in normal agricultural daily life could have been happening to affect readings. Furthermore, on a more technical note that the Met Office seem unwilling to openly disclose, the wind speed that day was below a measured 2 metres per second (at nearby RAF Waddington as there is no wind anemometer at Gringley) at which low velocity the Aitken effect can, in these extreme events, over record by as much as an officially accepted 2°C due to a design flaw of naturally aspirated Stevenson Screens used by the Met Office.

From all of the above it is noticeable that if one perfectly legitimately ignores the headlined London urban heat island distorted site readings at Heathrow, St James Park, RAF Northolt, Kew Gardens and the absurdity of Coningsby and those Typhoon jet blasts, then Gringley on the Hill would hold the UK record – how credible would that be considered.

Interstingly the met Office seems equally coy in advertising that Gringley even exists let alone declare its readings. Below is their WOW website using its “back in time” feature. It indicates by blue dots two sites in Gringley (the more southerly being the official site, the northern one being presumably a private station or more likely an error) but unlike other stations official sites fails to show any readings.

Whilst the Met Office seems reticent to display Gringley’s data they do openly show Waddington’s as below but then again even that does not concur with the fictional 40.3°C that they opted to archive but declined to subsequently discuss.

I have discussed this July 2022 weather event through several reviews of the alleged high point recording stations, and in every one there are elements of significant doubt, dubious metrology, and spurious readings. It was unquestionably very hot by UK standards but then again on occasions heatwaves are an aspect of UK weather. It is worth considering though how these readings are represented for dramatic effect and pushing an ideological agenda rather than scientific process. The general public will be unaware that a senior professional of the Royal Society (Doctor George Hunsley-Fielding) – who actually designed and operated accurate meteorological observation practices – had his record of 38.06°C in 1868 expunged way back almost 100 years after the event. Conversely, now, the modern day Met office expects readings taken by known inaccurate screens, in known inaccurate locations and during known compromising events to be accepted as “proof” of “catastrophic” and “anthropogenic” climate change.

This is clearly not objective science.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/04/18/gringley-on-the-hill-dcnn-4268-had-it-not-been-for-3-typhoon-jets-would-the-met-office-have-really-given-this-the-uk-all-time-record/