Coldest since Dec 2010: Official vs unofficial weather stations

With talk of record breaking cold across Scotland, what weather stations are temperature records actually based on?

Sunday December 11th, was the first coldest night of the season so far with -15.7C at Braemar. That same day it was also the coldest day for the UK since December 2010, with -9.3C.

Those records were then succeeded by the following night's, with Monday December 12th seeing temperatures plummet to -17.3C, once again at Braemar, a notoriously cold weather station.

Braemar is an official Met Office weather station that recorded the lowest temperatures, but there will of course be other unofficial weather stations that recorded lower. So why can't we use them?

Weather stations are monitored by different government agencies of the countries they are located in, with ours being the Met Office in the UK, and Met Éireann in Ireland.

The Met Office has over 200 automatic weather stations dotted across the UK, whilst Met Éireann has over 100. All of which have to be at an ideal site and with standardised observation methods.

The data collected is all automatically logged, produced at minute intervals from all sensors. After data is collected, it then has to bypass numerous quality control checks. So if you've ever heard a record as 'preliminary' that is before those checks.