sites for official weather rec0rds

[redbird]

This was a comment to a friend, who was wondering why so many weather stations are at airports:

I think it's partly for convenience -- airports have weather stations because pilots and air traffic control need to know things like wind speed and direction, visibility, and whether it's raining or snowing. Because they need it for aviation, they're checking every day if not every hour, which is useful when you're looking for patterns.

City center temperature numbers might be slightly higher than airport numbers, because of the urban heat island effect. All those official measurements are taken in the shade [at a standard height above the ground], and major airports tend to be near open fields or large bodies of water.

US sites and discussions of new records tend to give the location and how far back the data for that location go. New York City's official weather records are from Central Park, not at either city airport, because the current Central Park station was established in 1920, replacing one about a mile away that ran for 1868-1920.

Comments

[cmcmck]

It bothers me that they take a reading from an airport- Heathrow in the UK as it happens- to declare a new 'record high' but people don't live in airports, they live in cities (or on my case a small, rural market town).

[redbird]

The temperature at Heathrow might be different from the temperature elsewhere in the London area, but I don't think that matters when the temperature record is for the entire country.

Also, if the official numbers have been from a major airport for decades, people are used to that--you don't need a nearby personal weather station to know, say, that if it's 27 at Logan, it will be uncomfortably hot in Arlington, if you've lived at that Arlington address for ten or fifteen years.

For scientists and meteorologists looking at patterns, whether it's hotter at the center of London than in Finchley is less important than whether the averages in both places are higher than they used to be. The record highs for both the United States and Canada were set at desert stations inland where few people live, because places with weather extremes tend to be unpleasant at least part of the year. (Death Valley, Cal., and Lytton, B.C.)

[cmcmck]

As it happens it's already been beaten by somewhere up in Lincolnshire- by .1 of a degree.

We lack the deserts in these parts of course! :o)

[ranunculus]

They take readings from airports because airports are likely to have large areas of open land. Recording instruments for things like rain need to be in the open. The standard is something like 3x the height of any surrounding item, building, tree or whatnot. Trees, buildings are likely to distort rainfall and wind readings as they swirl around the corners/branches. You can, of course, put the station high above such obstructions, but that has its own problems. Why do I know this? Because Donald got me a small weather station and I still haven't put it up due to lack of a suitable site on the Ranch. Well, I do have one, but it is in an otherwise awkward place - oh, and within 300 feet of internet....
Small weather stations are not that expensive I think we got ours from Scientific Sales. Love their plain old rain gauge.

[cmcmck]

We have a digital one which runs from Satellite readings but as you say, the plain old anemometer and rain gauge need a garden.

Apparently, St James's Park in London had the same readings as Heathrow.