Sparks from the past: why weather scientists are hunting through a century of data from Britain’s northernmost observatory

By Giles Harrison, Professor of Atmospheric Physics, University of Reading

Built in 1913 as a naval radio station, the Shetland Isles’ Met Office at Lerwick provides the temperature reading you see on the top right-hand corner of the UK weather map. The site became part of the Met Office network in 1921 and began regular meteorological and magnetic recording, which continue today – capturing more than a century of atmospheric history.

Experiments with specialised measurements of atmospheric electricity started in 1925, using a clockwork recorder housed in a wooden hut at the edge of the site, with an oil stove to ward off damp. Inauspicious as that small hut…

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