The importance of good quality meteorological measurements.

Capture

n the past many national weather service organisations approached the challenge of understanding and forecasting the weather with a strategy of having as much data as possible, regardless of quality by monitoring the weather with as many data points as possible to be able to better understand the weather and then forecast it. However, many of the stations deployed had a lower standard of quality and additionally, the data was only provided at certain times during the day due to limitations such as power and cost.

Continue reading

A Free-Air Carbon Dioxide Enrichment (FACE) experiment

IMG 20180808 122019 1 1024x768 1

The University of Birmingham has built a Free-Air Carbon Dioxide Enrichment (FACE) experiment to increase the understanding of the dynamic response of forests to environmental change, including climate change.


Richard McKay, Adam Jolliffe and John Crilly visited the BIFoR FACE site. They viewed the extensive arrays of instrumentation including the R3-50 based Eddy Covariance station and future WindMaster installation sites.
We are pleased to be contributing to this project and look forward to seeing the results as they emerge.

Richard McKay, Adam Jolliffe & John Crilly visited the BIFoR FACE site.
WINDMASTER

Gill’s MaxiMet weather stations chosen to monitor weather in UK Beehive project

Gill’s MaxiMet compact weather stations are being used as part of the University of Bristol’s environmental project to monitor bee activity.

‘Live from the Hive’ is a research project put together by The University of Bristol, At-Bristol – a UK interactive science centre, and BeeBristol which aims to use social media and technology to educate people about the effects of human activity on bees.

A beehive on the science sites greenhouse roof is being monitored using an array of scientific equipment, including Gill MaxiMet all-in-one weather stations, to gather data on air quality and weather to see how it affects bee behaviour. This data will be compared with another bee colony located in the the city of Langford to compare how human behaviour impacts the bees. It is predicted that implications of the seven day air quality cycles which is influenced by commuter traffic and city living will have an effect on the activity of the bees.

MaxiMet GMX 100 and 501 have been chosen to provide the essential weather information for the project. MaxiMet 100 provides data on rain fall, while the 501 measures multiple weather parameters on wind speed, wind direction, temperature, humidity, pressure and solar radiation. The Gill weather stations offer multiple benefits over other instruments on the market, its flexibility to monitor a vast range of environmental parameters through different configuration options is foremost.

“We are delighted to be able to supply our MaxiMet weather station to the project” says Richard Mckay, Product Manager at Gill Instruments. “The 501 and 100 were chosen due to their weather monitoring options, compact design, ease of installation and the known reliability of Gill products.”

The project is the first of its kind to use social media and live webcams in this way to engage people with the project. Webcam images, in-character tweets and weather data reported from MaxiMet will be shared on the project website, Twitter accounts and has also run for three weeks as part of a feature on the BBC Two programme Springwatch.

If you have a requirement to measure environmental and weather conditions, please contact Gill on 01590 613500.

GMX100 GMX501 University of Bristol Bees on SpringWatch
MaxiMet GMX 100 & 501 are used to monitor weather on the site.