Title with apologies to Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young.
In my last post, part 77 of “How not to measure temperature” I pointed out that the National Weather Service in Upton NY has a weather station that is way out of compliance due to the way it is setup and the proximity to bias factors such as the parking lot.
There are thousands of weather stations across the USA, some run by various agencies. Often we’ll see them at national parks with interpretive displays. This one I encountered in Ely Nevada on my last road trip to finish the Nevada USHCN station surveys was part of an air quality and environmental monitoring program jointly run by the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Desert Research Institute (DRI).
It is an impressive station with multiple state of the art sensors, solar power, and a datalogger with a satellite uplink to DRI’s HQ. You can look at hourly data from the station at the CEMP DRI website here.
It is located about 2 miles northeast of town on government property, BLM land:
What is unique about this station is that it has an interpretive exhibit with live data readouts. I applaud DRI/DOE for doing this. Here are what the they look like closeup:
Click for larger images to read the text on the interpretive displays
As I said, I applaud DRI/DOE for doing this. Taking the effort to make such a wonderful educational display is a good use of taxpayer funds.
Except, that is, when they miss one critical detail.
Yes, the expensive satellite uplinked state of the art interpretive educational weather station is sited in the middle of two asphalt parking lots. One is for RV storage, the other is the parking lot for the Ely District Office for the Bureau of Land Management.
Here is the the view to the northeast of how the temperature sensor sees the BLM land:
Here is the aerial view of the placement:
With the parking lots on both sides being active with cars and RV’s, I would imagine that a fairly variable albedo exists, especially on weekends and holidays.
This wouldn’t be so bad if it was only an educational station with an interpretive exhibit, as one could explain it was placed here for the convenience of viewing and science really doesn’t advocate measuring the temperature of parking lots.
Except that this station is used for an active science project. How much of the other data measurements and calculations for such things as Tritium dispersal, gaseous pollutant volumes, etc are dependent on the temperature, humidity, and dewpoint data gathered here, all of which would be affected by the siting?
Contrast it to the ASOS station siting at the airport across the road. The ASOS is about 1000 feet NW of the southern runway intersection which you can see here in Google Maps
Normally ASOS stations are much more poorly sited than state of the art stations, but this example illustrates how spending tens of thousands of dollars on hi-tech measurement gear can be undone by lack of simple planning.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
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On you Nevada trip did you happen to visit Lake Tahoe. The National Weaher Service in Reno has a Weahter Station at the Coast Guard station in Tahoe City. the Temp Sensor is right next to the parking lot (about 2 feet) and roughly 3 feet off the ground under a Pine Tree that provides it Shade pretty much year round. And, when it snows the station’s snow plow covers half the Temp Sensor’s stand. Leaving the sensor about a foot off the packed snow.
Hello, my name is Ted Hartwell and I manage the program that is the subject of this post. My intention was to contact Mr. Watts directly to give him the opportunity to clarify and correct some of the information about the Community Environmental Monitoring Program (CEMP) that he has posted here, but I was unable to locate a direct contact link for him (my apologies, Mr. Watts, if this information is available on your site somewhere…I’m afraid I’m an inexperienced blogger, so I’m a bit new to these things!).
First, I want to thank Mr. Watts for the parts of our program that he applauds, and for providing links to our web site. However, the criticisms that have been made regarding the siting of this station vis a vis the temperature sensor would be valid only if the objective of the CEMP were to measure long-term temperature trends and document local or global change. However, this is not the purpose of the CEMP. The CEMP is a network of monitoring stations located within communities and at ranch sites that surround or are downwind from the Nevada Test Site (NTS), where the U.S. conducted nuclear testing until 1992. The Desert Research Institute (DRI), a non-profit environmental research arm of the Nevada System of Higher Education, operates the program for the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. Its purpose is to give local stakeholders a direct hands-on role in the monitoring of airborne radioactivity that could result from past or ongoing activities at the NTS, and also to provide as much public transparency and accessibility to the monitoring data as possible.
Since 1999, the communications systems at the stations have been upgraded and a public web site developed at http://cemp.dri.edu/ so that the public could access near real-time data for most of the network. The data are managed by the Western Regional Climate Center (http://wrcc.dri.edu/) which DRI manages for NOAA. Contrary to comments in the post, there are no expenses associated with maintaining the satellite uplink for the six stations in the network that use this mode of communication…this service is provided to us at no charge through Wallops Island. In fact, the Ely station itself does not use a satellite uplink, but instead has a wireless internet connection to the web. The cost for this service is the same as for a residential wireless connection. This allows two-way communications with the stations for remote trouble-shooting and programming, which provides a significant cost savings to the program. Automated data collection is one of the factors that allows the network to be operated for approximately 60 percent less in total cost today compared to as recently as 1998.
The other significant action that DRI took was to install a full suite of meteorological equipment and interpretive displays at each of the stations, which were at that time simply platforms for real-time gamma radiation monitoring and continuous air sampling for monitoring for gross alpha and beta radiation. The meteorological sensors allow us to track changes in background radioactivity that result from weather events. Mr. Watts asks in his post, “How much of the other data measurements and calculations for such things as Tritium dispersal, gaseous pollutant volumes, etc are dependent on the temperature, humidity, and dewpoint data gathered here, all of which would be affected by the siting?” The answer is “none.” We do not measure for such things as “Tritium dispersal and gaseous pollutant volumes.” The weather events that are most closely associated with changes in background radiation are precipitation, and to a lesser extent, barometric pressure; these are worldwide phenomena. Our ability to correlate the two is not affected by the station’s siting. The remainder of the meteorological sensors across the network help fill in lots of data gaps across the southern Great Basin and northern Mojave Desert. Mr. Watts is correct that some of the sites (such as this one at Ely) are inappropriate for tracking long-term trends with regards to looking at issues such as climate change. However, the primary purpose of the meteorological data is the interpretation of radiological monitoring results, and they are perfectly adequate for tracking current conditions (as well as trends) within the communities themselves.
I apologize for being so long-winded with this post, but I felt, based on the direction that the comments seemed to be taking, that there was a significant misunderstanding of the purpose of the CEMP station. The majority of this information is available in our interpretive materials or online on our web site, and there are many email and phone contacts listed in these materials as well. I would be happy to answer any questions anyone has about this program, its history, and public participation. Feel free to contact me directly at ted.hartwell@dri.edu or via phone at (702) 862-5419.
Thanks for reading, if you’ve made it this far!
Sincerely,
Ted Hartwell
Program Manager, Community Environmental Monitoring Program
Desert Research Institute
Las Vegas, Nevada