Fair Isle WMO 03008 – An example of Met Office misinterpretations and meaningless machinations.

59.52607  -1.62959 Met Office CIMO Assessed formerly Class 1 but now Class 4 Installed 1/1/1974

The Met Office has a web page relating to “Weather Observation site classification” which states “The WMO Siting Classification for Surface Observing Stations on Land was formally introduced from 2014, enabling us to make broad comparisons of our weather and climate stations with those around the world. These WMO classifications focus on the exposure of an observed element at a site, with a Class 1 assessment being the highest standard and Class 5 the lowest.” It goes on to claim the higher standards are difficult to achieve in the UK. Despite this as can be seen from the CIMO list supplied to me in 2024 under Freedom of Information request, Fair Isle weather station managed to achieve Class 1…..or did it?

Fair Isle is the remotest weather station site in the UK being over 50 miles from the nearest others of Lerwick and Kirkwall. The island has a population of just 65 and lifestyles in such small communities are completely different to those of the vast majority of UK residents. The local primary school, for example, has as many staff as pupils while secondary school children are educated as boarders on Mainland, Shetland.

The weather station is manually reporting and operated by the National Trust for Scotland who also administer most of the island. {Image from their website including observer}

How representative this site can be of anywhere other than the unique 768 ha of Fair Isle for the purposes of historic temperature recording is questionable. So what CIMO rating would the Met Office assess this location as? In reviewing the Hastings site following receipt of the Met Office CIMO assessments, I discovered that the Met Office records system automatically defaults to Class 1 and “Excellent” (the Met Office’s own unique assessment system) unless manually overridden. Hastings was duly corrected to Class 4 following my challenge as was also Edenbridge station.

The CIMO listing of 2024 showed Fair Isle as Class 1 but now on the recently obtained 2025 list (to be published shortly) it is shown as Class 4.

Such a dramatic change can only indicate a previous “default error”. How many of these “errors” have the Met Office made? In just this review alone I have mentioned three. I have formally queried a fourth, the Class 1 rating of Cassley, which is also clearly not Class 1 having the entirety of a hydro electric power station within 100 metres. Is Cassley, like Fair Isle, so remote it is only rarely visited and details inadequately checked? If not, perfection will be assumed. The latest listing shows several other similarly improbable alterations indicating a lack of suitable oversight by the Met Office which I will detail in an updated list.

Going back to the specifics of Fair Isle, the site administrators – the National Trust for Scotland (NTS) – in common with the National trust for England – seem to consider themselves experts in everything including, of course, “Climate Science”. In their article on Fair Isle weather station they produce what can only best be described as grossly misleading nonsense. No credible science body ever compares data over differing time scales (1974 to 2000 with 2001 to 2023) but “Dave Wheeler ” does – so that’s okay then?

Surely if the NTS want to comment on the readings for Fair Isle they could simply use the data from the alleged experts ( the Met Office) rather than their own local concoctions. Perhaps these National Trusts should stick to their own “day job” rather than pontificate outside their own remit. The English authority’s blaming a building collapse at Malham Tarn on “climate change” and causing the closure of the weather station was matched by the Scottish variants forcing the weather station relocation through lack of overgrowth clearance at Poolewe. Or is it the case that they do not trust the Met office?

The data produced by Fair Isle weather station is no doubt accurate and suitable for immediate weather forecasting. However, the use of such a tiny outpost with unique conditions for inclusion in the historic temperature record and interpretation of any trends is highly dubious.