Specs on weather stations

24 08 2007

thermometer1.jpg

There’s been some discussion about specs on siting of weather stations and temperature measurement.

Coincidentally, I’ve been conversing with Jos de Laat of KNMI, the Dutch Meteorological Institute who offered some scans of weather station siting specifications from the World Meteorological Institute (WMO)

he writes:
OK then, you can find the first part of the report here (~ 1 Mb):

http://www.knmi.nl/~laatdej/TMP/WMO488.pdf

Especially the beginning of part 3 is relevant, I guess. Because of document size considerations for now I only scanned up to paragraph 3.1.2.1.7 (after paragraph 3.1.2.1.7 the description of requirements for measuring on other locations like sea and the free troposphere starts).

Descriptions of sensor and siting requirements are also available online (see below) …

http://www.wmo.ch/pages/prog/www/IMOP/publications/CIMO-Guide/Draft%207th%20edition/Part1-Ch01FINAL_Corr.pdf

http://www.wmo.ch/pages/prog/www/IMOP/publications/CIMO-Guide/Draft%207th%20edition/Part1-Ch02Final.pdf

… but they are more formal and largely based on WMO report 488, which contains some interesting quotes that are not present in later reports. The online reports also refer to the report below, which unfortunately I was not able to locate either online nor in our library.

World Meteorological Organization, 1993a: Siting and Exposure of Meteorological Instruments (J. Ehinger). Instruments and Observing Methods Report No. 55, WMO/TD-No. 589, Geneva.

These specs are worth a read, because they show that quite a lot of thought and analysis went info choosing the specs.

As for the 100 feet cited by the NWS on this page: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/coop/standard.htm

I suspect its a round off of 30.48 m where 30 meters is the minimum distance to an artificial heat source cited for a Class 2 climate site as defined by the specs used in the Climate Reference Network (CRN) which has a French lineage, and likely traces back to WMO.