"Desperate Dan" wrote in message
...

This s symptomatic of what I said in an earlier post re senior managers not
understanding the importance of standards. All Met O AWSs are inspected
annually and sensors are standardised and calibrated every six-months. There
are ongoing QC checks on all data, which allows sensor errors to be picked
up quickly. There's a Metadata database for all official sites. WOW data is
interesting but not reliable enough. No sensor checks, no exposure checks
beyond self certification. GIGO!
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TBH if the WOW input software is suitably written, it would be reasonably
easy to ascertain over the course of several weeks/months evaluation which
WOW reporting stations were generating the best quality data and to weight
them appropriately. When WOW was first being set up there was input from
several parties to the effect that some ranking of stations by QoD would be
a good idea, much as CWOP is able to do (primarily) in the US, but there's
no obvious sign that this suggestion was taken on board.

John Dann
www.weatherstations.co.uk