Plymouth Mountbatten WMO 03827 – A question of Trust.

50.35492 -4.12107 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 4 Installed 1920

Reviewing this Class 4 station should have been very straightforward until some conflicting numbers came out concerning a station now only publicly shown as “Plymouth” (i.e. with no Mountbatten addition) from the Met Office. This followed on from a previous release of spurious data that deepens the mystery and calls into question whether or not the Met Office is actually entirely trustworthy.

When Tim Channon reviewed this site in 2012 he was able to use the 2011 street view image to get a glimpse of the station which he assessed as likely Class 3.

Over the intervening years the surrounding vegetation has grown unchecked so that the latest image from the self same vantage point only indicates the wind mast and that the screen is effectively surrounded by dense vegetation. This is a recurring theme with very many Met Office sites. Plymouth Mountbatten is a fully equipped sophisticated site, however, its readings are being knowingly degraded by lack of basic maintenance – a case of “sinking the ship for an hap’orth-o-tar”.

This surrounding vegetation will inevitably hold in warmer air at times allowing a heat build up and a relatively unnatural elevatiion of temperatures. If “frost Hollows” are unsuitable due to microclimate cold spots then such “cauldrons” are equably unsuitable. The Met Office clearly reflect this in their grading as “2.5 Class 4 (additional estimated uncertainty added by siting up to 2 °C)“

So where do the questions of conflicting data and “trust” come into this? Referring back to Plymouth:Kinterbury Point, as a reminder, this site (that did not appear on CIMO Listing) recorded a national high daily temperature. I queried this with the Met Office as did Paul Homewood at NALOPKNT and he got the following response.

“Subject: Plymouth Kinterbury

Hi Paul, thank you for your enquiry.

I have checked the weather station you mentioned in your enquiry and it has come to light that an administrative error resulted in data from this site recently making it on to our external website for extremes.

This is a customer-only site and as such is used to inform the customer’s specific decisions rather than being used for public records. As this site is used to provide very specific customer information, which is not climate related, it therefore does not have a CIMO rating and should not be available for our external website for extremes. The issue has now been resolved and will no longer be seen in any of our products.

Thank you for making us aware of this.

Nicky

Nicola Maxey BSc (Hons) Senior Press Officer”

In my report I made the following point:

“A further point worth noting is that prior to the above date, whenever Plymouth recorded a regional or national high, it was always shown as “Plymouth:Mountbatten” {or Plymouth:Kinterbury Point as above} but subsequently it is now only shown as “Plymouth” i.e. with no further identifier. Is the omission of this site specific identification another administrative error or are the Kinterbury Point figures still being used…..who actually knows?”

I decided to keep an eye on developments at Plymouth having noted that the Mountbatten site could well be closed down given its unfavourable location. Then on the 1st March 2025 a discrepancy occurred between the Met Office “Daily Extremes” web page and the Met Office “X” feed. I contacted the Met office for verification as below:

What is your explanation for this discerpancy?

Ray Sanders”

{I had confirmed the Mountbatten temperature of 11.8°C with the weatherobs day’s readings}

As always a response was received with a case number of CS0090481 as below

Servicedesk  Unsubscribe	Sun 2 Mar, 10:25
to me

Thank you Ray for contacting the Met Office concerning Public – Daily Extremes – Plymouth 1st March 2025 Discrepancy which has been logged under our reference of: CS0090481.

A member of our Customer Service Team has already received your request and will be in touch shortly, with a response. 

All requests are reviewed and depending on the nature of your request this may take several days as we contact the relevant team and await a reply from them or if it relates to an IT data issue we have already informed 2nd line support of this issue who are now investigating it. We will of course keep you informed of any updates.

Kindest regards

Anoushka

Customer Support Analyst.”

But now three weeks on there is still no reply despite a polite reminder from me after 10 days. This issue may seem trivial but conveniently adding a 0.5°C enhancement to the temperature record from a non-approved source can go a long way in “proving” a theory if you can get away with it . As was demonstrated in the case of Waddington and the similar lack of a response when queried the Met Office has been shown to directly transfer readings (by their own admission despite denials) from one site to another. Is the Met Office going to claim error upon error regarding the picking up of data from Kinterbury Point or are they going to claim a “typo” – either option seems highly improbable. Most likely is, yet again, the lack of any response at all. I find it increasingly difficult to trust any Met Office data with this displayed level of secrecy.

If I get a response I will advise by way of an update…..but don’t hold your breath!

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/03/22/plymouth-mountbatten-wmo-03827-a-question-of-trust/