An electronic differential microbarograph system

The importance of the effects of gravity waves on all scales of atmospheric motions is increasingly being recognized. These effects are especially important on the meso- and microscales. Accordingly, field research and operational observation programs on these scales should be able to observe gravity waves over a wide range of time scales. This paper describes a low-cost electronic differential microbarograph system which is designed to be highly portable and to resolve pressure perturbations over a wide range of time scales. A differential pressure gauge measures the pressure difference between a sealed and thermally-insulated reference chamber and the atmosphere. Changes in reference chamber temperature introduce drift in the measurements; however, this drift can be removed during post processing by recoding the external temperature. In the event of sensor saturation, the chamber pressure is set to ambient pressure by opening a solenoid controlled valve. It is demonstrated that pressure perturbations over time periods can be constructed, and examples of observations from several field trials are given.