Climatic Information

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The Center has operated a continuously recording weather station since August of 1992. It keeps an hourly record of air temperature, relative humidity, solar radiation, wind speed and direction, and precipitation. This data is available on-line through the link above.

Instrumentation:

• Temperature and relative humidity are measured by a Vaisala 50Y humidity and temperature sensor mounted inside a 12-gill radiation shield, mounted 72" from the ground directly on the tower. Temperature and relative humidity are sampled once per minute and recordings are made once each hour of min, max, and average temperature and average relative humidity.
• Solar radiation is measured by a LiCor Model LI200 pyranometer mounted on a horizontal platform 83" from the ground. Solar radiation is sampled once each minute and averaged for each hour (units= watts/m2).
• Wind speed and direction is measured by an RM Young wind Sentry model ES-040 mounted at the top of the tower, 117" from the ground. Wind speed is averaged over a 1 second interval each minute (units= mph). Wind direction is determined once each minute (units= degrees azimuth). Net hourly wind speed and net hourly wind direction are determined using vector analysis and recorded. Maximum and average hourly wind speed are also recorded.
• Precipitation is measured by a Sierra Misco model ES-160 tipping bucket rain gage mounted in an enclosure near the tower. The base of the raingage is 26" from the ground. The enclosure contains two 100 watt light bulbs that are turned on to produce heat when air temperature is below freezing. Rainfall is accumulated by the logger and hourly totals recorded (units= inches).

These sensors are connected to an "EasyLogger 900" data logger with 128K of internal memory and an auxiliary 128K EPROM module. All power and signal lines are protected from lightning. Data from the weather station is periodically retrieved via short-haul modem and included in a database of hourly climatic data. These data are maintained at the Center and is available on request or on-line.

Click here to access our on-line climate database.