Department of Geography Weather Station

The School of Geography and Lincoln Centre for Water and Planetary Health have recently set up an automatic weather station (AWS) on the rooftop of the Isaac Newton Building. This is a Davis Vantage Pro 2 model, which is industry standard and widely used worldwide.

We are logging data every 5 minutes of the following parameters: air temperature (nearest 0.1 degrees Celsius), relative humidity (percent), barometric air pressure (millibars), wind speed (miles per hour) and direction (degrees), precipitation (rain-+snow-fall in millimetres), and solar radiation (Watts per square metre).

The air temperature and humidity sensors are in a white louvered plastic radiation shield to protect them from the Sun and rain, and have a solar-powered fan to improve measurement accuracy. There is also an ultraviolet light intensity meter, and we plan to add a sky-view camera to provide a record of changes in sky conditions and cloud cover.

Meteorological data, which we began logging on 21 December 2018, are archived in perpetuity and are freely available to anyone in the University for teaching or research purposes. Please contact Professor Edward Hanna or Dr Joe Harwood if you would like access to the archived data, clearly stating what time period and parameters you are interested in receiving and a brief purpose of your project.

Within the School of Geography we plan to use the data in a variety of student projects and for micrometeorology and climate change research. Example studies might include of the urban heat island effect in and around Lincoln, and short-term meteorological variations linked to extreme weather events. It is also planned to submit monthly summaries of our weather data to the Climatological Observers Link national network.