Morpeth: Cockle Park DCNN 2084 – A Venerable old station no longer properly cared for.

52.212586 -1.6854742 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 4 Installed 1897

Cockle Park is 262 hectare farm owned and managed by Newcastle University for agricultural research. Despite its original “Second Order” status, this is an important weather station site hosting its own 128 year old Phenological Garden and “conducting the longest running grazing and hay cutting experiment in the world that was started in 1896”. The data from here is valuable and should be carefully protected – but then this is the Met Office so expect the worst.

The Met Office proclaims Cockle Park as one of “their” longest running time series and it is heavily featured on their website https://weather.metoffice.gov.uk/learn-about/how-forecasts-are-made/observations/recording-observations-for-over-100-years

Technically it was not a creation of the Met Office (most old sites were not) and they were simply accepting the data from the research centre in much the same way as at Rothamsted . The researchers involved had no motivations other than to record, as accurately as they were able, the exact weather conditions (note “weather”) and those readings were later analysed against noted crop growth and development. The term “Anthropogenic Climate Change” would not have been featured in their vocabulary.

It is important to note that when installed all UK sites recorded in Fahrenheit. Some stations recorded to the nearest whole degree F (i.e. 0.55°C) though Cockle Park recorded to the nearest 0.5°F (0.278°C) and a very few fully manned “First Order” sites did for a period try to register to the nearest 0.1°F. This latter accuracy would have required a very high level of observation skill to avoid parallax reading errors and is no longer considered within the ability of the instrumentation in use back then. When compiling historic comparisons these step change conversion differences must be borne in mind given that modern day readings are to 0.1°C. {and some silly Met Office representatives claim to the 5th decimal place!} A typical 19th Century hand written return from Cockle Park was as below.

Note how appropriate the location was for their specific purposes from this aerial image indicating a 100 metre radius.

There really is nothing to mark down this site apart from the difficult to assess issue of changing ground cover. There are certainly no UHI effects to consider, the area is flat, no shading nor any extraneous heat sources. I would rate this as definitely a Class 1 site – so why is it only assessed as Class 4 by the Met Office? The answer is incredibly simple…..this is NOT the current site of the weather station.

The original site above operating from 1897 was a manually recording unit with an impeccable readings record typical of research sites such as at Cawood. From 2014 the Met Office deemed the site should be automated and seemingly to facilitate that (for ease of electricity and data comms access) relocated the site as below. The former screen is still visible as the small square in the field to the north west.

An object lesson in how to degrade a site from almost certainly pristine Class 1 to an unreliable Class 4. From a trained, dedicated research observer to an automatic “2.5 Class 4 (additional estimated uncertainty added by siting up to 2 °C)” in one swift jump. 117 years of excellence are now “dumbed down” to a subsequent 11 years (and counting) of inaccurate data that was only ever going to result in higher readings caused by the compromising buildings to three compass points.

A cynic, like me, might suggest ulterior motivation in such a site degradation, however, another institution also seemed to be underwhelmed by this relocation. The UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology has both a Met Office weather station and its own separate and highly sophisticated automatic unit at their Wallingford site. Subsequent to the Cockle Park Met Office relocation on 19/2/2014, the UKCEH opted to open their own separate site at Cockle Park on the 21/11/2014.

This is where this independent automatic reporting unit is located.

The UKCEH managed to get a fully functioning site that (ground cover issues aside) operates perfectly well and is significantly over 100 metres from any problems. Why could the Met Office not manage the same feat? I do not know the reason behind the UKCEH decision to install a new unit but the timing does seem to be remarkably coincidental.

Considering how the Met office opts to represent Cockle Park’s readings is equally illuminating. They operate a Historic Station Data web page which includes some sites with data only going back to the latter 1970s but completely overlooked Cockle Park with one of the longest of all records. However, what really makes the vaunting of the site’s long history so strange is the Location specific Long term Averages data page for Morpeth.

Cockle park is not shown at all. This page gives climate averages covering rolling 30 year averages from 1960 to 2020. Cockle Park could not possibly be any more “Location specific” for Morpeth and the Met Office have certainly confirmed it is very “Long Term” indeed…..so why not just show its figures, it really cannot be that difficult can it? Well, obviously it is given that none of the alternative “data” offered is actually genuinely “Location specific ” nor adequately “Long Term” The numbers offered are, by definition, fabrications.

Albemarle is 13 miles away, Class 5 junk, and did not come into existence until 18/2/2002. Any “average” for the period from 1960 to 2020 is pure invention – it is physically impossible to derive any 30 year rolling average from a specific location that has not existed for any 30 year period. Clearly the numbers presented are made up from unspecified locations that the Met Office have been proven to be unable to verify. elsewhere.

Tynemouth is 15 miles distant, or actually not, because it does not exist. This coastal site, that bears no climatological similarity to Cockle Park at all, closed in 2001. Every number since is a work of pure fiction.

Boulmer (aka RAF Boulmer) 18 miles distant is absurdly claimed to be Class 4 but is really more Class 5 junk (will be reviewed shortly) and also did not come into being until 1975 meaning there are 15 years of “creative accounting” in compiling the first two the claimed 30 years average concoctions…..and where did those numbers come from? I doubt the Met Office can (or will not) supply that information.

Redesdale Camp 25 miles distant, a mere 400 feet higher elevation yet again Class 5 Junk and this one only came into existence in 1979 so almost 2 decades of nonsensical comparative calculation.

Durham 28 miles distant, yet more Class 5 UHI ridden low quality but at least it was around for the entire time.

In summary Cockle Park used to be, until very recently, a good quality reliable site that was well maintained with an impeccable readings record. The Met Office chose to relocate it to a poor quality site on automation for no apparently necessary reason – it could have been automated where it was. Other institutions have felt it necessary to subsequently install better quality weather stations to maintain the reliable site history. The Met Office themselves decline to present the available raw data as a simple rolling period average preferring to portray “peer reviewed” computer modelled nonsense from sites not even in existence for the whole period. In an exact replica of Cawood the Met Office openly declines to provide simple averages that would either confirm or refute their “peer reviewed” concoctions – I wonder why?

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/03/23/morpeth-cockle-park-dcnn-2084-a-venerable-old-station-no-longer-properly-cared-for/