Observing details at the Otter
Valley Weather Station
Daily at 09:00 (GMT & BST)
Temperature:
Readings are taken manually from Met Office sheathed minimum and
maximum thermometers housed in a Stevenson Screen positioned
1.25 metres above grass. These are
then reset.
Humidity:
A
wet & dry bulb hygrometer gives humidity readings, these are
noted and relative humidity is calculated using a slide rule or
the
humidity calculator.
Rainfall:
A
standard 5" Casella rain gauge is checked for rainfall during
the last 24 hours.
Pressure:
A pressure reading is taken from a digital barometer.
Grass temperature:
A
minimum overnight grass temperature is noted and the
thermometer reset.
Soil temperatures:
Readings are taken using soil thermometers at depth of 10, 30 & 100
cm.
Daily at 22:00 (GMT & BST).
Sunshine:
A
reading is taken of the total sunshine for the day and the
display reset to zero. Also one minute interval data sets are
produced via an ADC-16 data logger which are uploaded to a
computer and total sunshine is calculated by using a
spreadsheet.
AWS:
Data from a Davis Vantage Pro+ 2 Automatic Weather Station (AWS) is uploaded to a
computer and incorporated into a spreadsheet along with the
manual recordings made at 09:00 & 22:00 on that day. The AWS
provides continuous 5 minute data sets for temperature,
rainfall, wind speed and direction, humidity, dew point, UV,
solar radiation and air
pressure, grass and soil temperatures.
Monthly:
All
the weather monitoring data collected is then used to produce a
monthly report which is submitted to the Climate Observers Link
and also uploaded to this website.
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