Weather station

About: Weather station is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1789 publications have been published within this topic receiving 42864 citations. The topic is also known as: meteorological station & meteorological observation post.

Development of a low cost weather station using free hardware and software

Abstract: Weather stations are a valuable tool to many different areas, like agriculture, aviation, construction, sports and recreation, specially because they collect weather data, which can be stored and processed to gather specific information to correlate events to the weather action. This work shows a development model of a low cost weather station, using only free hardware and software, connected to the internet, giving real time data taken from the station, as well as history of the stored data. This station, even though using low cost or handcrafted sensors, like those that measure wind speed, wind direction and rainfall index, showed consistent results costing only 10% of the price, in comparison with some professional weather stations, allowing its popularization in agriculture, homes and institutions.

Real-time flood forecasting coupling different postprocessing techniques of precipitation forecast ensembles with a distributed hydrological model. The case study of may 2008 flood in western Piemonte, Italy

Abstract: . In this work, we compare the performance of an hydrological model when driven by probabilistic rain forecast derived from two different post-processing techniques. The region of interest is Piemonte, northwestern Italy, a complex orography area close to the Mediterranean Sea where the forecast are often a challenge for weather models. The May 2008 flood is here used as a case study, and the very dense weather station network allows us for a very good description of the event and initialization of the hydrological model. The ensemble probabilistic forecasts of the rainfall fields are obtained with the Bayesian model averaging, with the classical poor man ensemble approach and with a new technique, the Multimodel SuperEnsemble Dressing. In this case study, the meteo-hydrological chain initialized with the Multimodel SuperEnsemble Dressing is able to provide more valuable discharge ranges with respect to the one initialized with Bayesian model averaging multi-model.

Atmospheric boundary-layer fluxes and structure across a land-sea transition zone in south-eastern africa

Abstract: The structure of the lower atmospheric boundary layeralong the southeastern escarpment of Africa duringNovember 1993 is investigated. The study region fallsin a transition zone between dry desert to the westand sub-humid vegetated areas bordering the AgulhasCurrent to the east. The physical environment isdescribed by in situ observations from aircraft and acoastal weather station; from satellite composites ofsea surface temperature, vegetation reflectance andcloud temperatures; and synoptic weather data.

Integrating climatic and fuels information into National Fire Risk Decision Support Tools

Abstract: The Wildland Fire Assessment System (WFAS) is a component of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service Decision Support Systems (DSS) that support fire potential modeling. Fire potential models for Mississippi and for Eastern fire environments have been developed as part of a National Aeronautic and Space Agency-funded study aimed at demonstrating the utility of NASA assets in fire potential decision support systems. Climate, fuels, topography and ignition are recognized as important components for modeling fire potential in Eastern forests and grasslands. We produced temporal and spatial water budget estimates using daily assessments of precipitation and evaporation (P-E) in a Geographic Information System. Precipitation values are derived from Doppler radar-based estimates of hourly rainfall accumulation, published on the Hydrologic Rainfall Analysis Project (HRAP) grid. Precipitation data are routinely available, but evaporation data are not. Regional estimates of evaporation have been produced to fill this void. Regression models that estimate daily evaporation in the Southern region of the United States were developed from readily available weather station observations. Evaporation estimates were combined with precipitation to compute the cumulative water budget. Improvement of these estimates when compared to Keetch-Byrum Drought Index (KBDI) was demonstrated using fire location data in Mississippi. Evapotranspiration (ET) from the NASA Land Information System (LIS), is currently being evaluated as a landscape moisture variable. We have implemented a hierarchical modeling methodology that combines information derived from ICESat (GLAS) data and MODIS Enhanced Vegetation Indices (EVI) to describe fuels structure. A graphical user interface (GUI) has been developed using Visual Basic (VB) that accesses an ESRI geospatial database that integrates water budget and fuels. The ignition component is derived from gravity models that assess the interaction of population density and forest areal size.

Evaluation of employing local climate zone classification for mesoscale modelling over Beijing metropolitan area

Abstract: Urban land use and landscape morphology exert notable influences on local climate and its surrounding environment. Better understanding of the complex interplay between urban landscape and overlying atmosphere could contributes to decision-making related to urban planning and risk assessment. This paper classifies local climate zones (LCZs) over Beijing metropolitan area following the World Urban Database and Access Portal Tools (WUDAPT) level 0 method, and evaluates the effect of LCZ classification on mesoscale Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) modelling over the city. Specifically, according to the method proposed by Stewart and Oke (Bull Am Meteor Soc 93(12):1879–1900, https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00019.1, 2012), the LCZ classification across Beijing is created based on the Landsat imagery of the Earth’s surface. The derived LCZ system is then imported to the WRF model, and coupled to different urban canopy schemes, i.e. single-layer urban canopy model (SLUCM), multi-layer urban canopy model (BEP—building effect parameterization), and the BEP model with a simple building energy model (BEP + BEM). The performance of employing this refined land use classification scheme versus those using United States Geological Survey land use data is evaluated by comparisons with weather station observations. The results, e.g. the spatial distribution of 2-m temperature and the diurnal variation of the surface heat fluxes, indicate that the LCZ classification scheme yields better comparisons than the default land use method, especially when coupled to the SLUCM as compared to BEP and BEP + BEM. This finding qualifies the coupling scheme of LCZ and SLUCM as a promising albeit simple option for weather modelling in a finer resolution.