Technology
Features
Weather watching online
With global warming the hot topic du jour, interest in climate has never been higher, writes Andrew Stucken
And the recent east coast storm surge saw the weather completely dominating the news agenda.
Increasing numbers of Britons are setting up their own weather stations and getting up and running has never been easier or cheaper.
A barometer has long been a feature of many a British home, but in the computer age the technology has gone digital.
As to the cost of the equipment, it is really a question of how much you want to pay.
Countless weather stations are on the market, ranging from basic devices for under £40, to more than £1000 for a top-of-the-range automatic station.
Many weather watchers choose to link their software to a PC - and maybe the internet as well. Data/logging software is available to add another dimension the experience of owning the device - some of which is free. There is a large archive at http://cirrus.sprl.umich.edu/wxnet/software.html
Anyone drawn to invest in a digital weather station will probably have an existing interest in meteorology. To decide which station to go for you will need to ask yourself what you are hoping to get out of it.
There is no point spending a lot of money on complex equipment if all you really want to is record maximum and minimum temperatures. But for someone with a genuine interest in the subject, the amount of data available and its presentation in graphs can be absolutely fascinating.
A full-featured station would include a hygrometer (device for measuring humidity), anemometer (records wind speed) as well as a thermometer, barometer and rain gauge.
There are plenty of online shops for browsing the range of equipment. Entering 'weather stations' into a search engine will soon bring up the choices.
If you want to take the subject really seriously it is even possible to become an independent automatic weather station - the website http://www.weatherstations.co.uk/aws_map.htm shows the existing network - useful also for getting the most current local weather readings possible in any given location.
Internet newsgroups contain a wealth of established enthusiasts - who will give support and advice. The most serious UK group is uk.sci.weather and an alternative discussion forum is on www.theweatheroutlook.com
Serious weather-heads can even hook up to climate model data-gathering experiments - which brings us back to global warming.
With a rare cold winter being forecast, this would be as good a time as any to go electronic with your interest in weather.
