13th Conference on Applied Climatology

1.5

Beware of Stitching Together a Mesonet

Brian B. Ayers, Penn State University, University Park, PA; and P. G. Knight

The Office of the Pennsylvania State Climatologist has embarked on a COMET sponsored project to develop a mesoscale network using hourly weather observations from four diverse data sources. The network includes the Pennsylvania’s Department of Transportation’s Roadway Weather Information System (RWIS), sites from the state’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), the Federal Aviation Administration’s automated surface observing systems (ASOS) and the state’s Integrated Flood Observing and Warning Systems (I-FLOWS). Each organization’s instruments are optimized for recording specific atmospheric parameters, which are then encoded into a unique format. In fact, within one institution, three different types of instruments were employed, each with a varying approach to its data output. This posed a formidable challenge to developing a real-time relational database from this network. The issues of reliability and quality of the data stream along with the usefulness of its data products will be addressed.

extended abstract  Extended Abstract (88K)

Session 1, Climate Networks
Monday, 13 May 2002, 9:00 AM-10:15 AM

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