A weather station is a facility, either on land or sea, with instruments and equipment for measuring atmospheric conditions to provide information for weather forecasts and to study the weather and climate. The measurements taken include temperature, atmospheric pressure, humidity, wind speed, wind direction, and precipitation amounts. Wind measurements are taken with as few other obstructions as possible, while temperature and humidity measurements are kept free from direct solar radiation, or insolation. Manual observations are taken at least once daily, while automated measurements are taken at least once an hour. Weather conditions out at sea are taken by ships and buoys, which measure slightly different meteorological quantities such as sea surface temperature (SST), wave height, and wave period. Drifting weather buoys outnumber their moored versions by a significant amount.
The National Weather Service (NWS) is an agency of the United States federal government that is tasked with providing weather forecasts, warnings of hazardous weather, and other weather-related products to organizations and the public for the purposes of protection, safety, and general information. It is a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) branch of the Department of Commerce, and is headquartered in Silver Spring, Maryland, within the Washington metropolitan area. The agency was known as the United States Weather Bureau from 1891 until it adopted its current name in 1970.
Automatic terminal information service, or ATIS, is a continuous broadcast of recorded aeronautical information in busier terminal areas. ATIS broadcasts contain essential information, such as current weather information, active runways, available approaches, and any other information required by the pilots, such as important NOTAMs. Pilots usually listen to an available ATIS broadcast before contacting the local control unit, which reduces the controllers' workload and relieves frequency congestion. ATIS was developed and adopted by the FAA in the mid-1960s and internationally beginning in 1974. Before the adoption of ATIS, this information was routinely disseminated to each aircraft separately, increasing controller workload during periods of high traffic density.
In meteorology and aviation, terminal aerodrome forecast (TAF) is a format for reporting weather forecast information, particularly as it relates to aviation.
In aviation, the runway visual range (RVR) is the distance over which a pilot of an aircraft on the centreline of the runway can see the runway surface markings delineating the runway or the lights delineating the runway or identifying its centre line. RVR is normally expressed in meters or feet. RVR is used to determine the landing and takeoff conditions for aircraft pilots, as well as the type of operational visual aids used at the airport.
A pilot report or PIREP is a report of actual flight or ground conditions encountered by an aircraft. Reports commonly include information about atmospheric conditions or airport conditions. This information is usually relayed by radio to the nearest ground station, but other options also exist in some regions. The message would then be encoded and relayed to other weather offices and air traffic service units.
SYNOP is a numerical code used for reporting weather observations made by staffed and automated weather stations. SYNOP reports are typically sent every six hours by Deutscher Wetterdienst on shortwave and low frequency using RTTY. A report consists of groups of numbers describing general weather information, such as the temperature, barometric pressure and visibility at a weather station. It can be decoded by open-source software such as seaTTY, metaf2xml or Fldigi.
In aviation meteorology, a trend type forecast (TTF), also known simply as a trend, is a weather forecast written by a person on location at a major airport or military base. A TTF is a professionally considered forecast for weather over a two-hour period, and is based on an actual weather report, such as a METAR or SPECI and appended to the end of it. A TTF is similar to or sometimes in addition to a TAF, a terminal aerodrome forecast, but during the TTF's validity period is considered superior to a TAF.
Stony Rapids Airport is located adjacent to Stony Rapids, Saskatchewan, Canada.
A location identifier is a symbolic representation for the name and the location of an airport, navigation aid, or weather station, and is used for staffed air traffic control facilities in air traffic control, telecommunications, computer programming, weather reports, and related services.
Colour states is a system used for quickly showing meteorological conditions.
In meteorology, station models are symbolic illustrations showing the weather occurring at a given reporting station. Meteorologists created the station model to fit a number of weather elements into a small space on weather maps. This allows map users to analyze patterns in atmospheric pressure, temperature, wind speed and direction, cloud cover, precipitation, and other parameters. The most common station plots depict surface weather observations although upper air plots at various mandatory levels are also frequently depicted.
Meteorological instruments, including meteorological sensors, are the equipment used to find the state of the atmosphere at a given time. Each science has its own unique sets of laboratory equipment. Meteorology, however, is a science which does not use much laboratory equipment but relies more on on-site observation and remote sensing equipment. In science, an observation, or observable, is an abstract idea that can be measured and for which data can be taken. Rain was one of the first quantities to be measured historically. Two other accurately measured weather-related variables are wind and humidity. Many attempts had been made prior to the 15th century to construct adequate equipment to measure atmospheric variables.
Airport weather stations are automated sensor suites which are designed to serve aviation and meteorological operations, weather forecasting and climatology. Automated airport weather stations have become part of the backbone of weather observing in the United States and Canada and are becoming increasingly more prevalent worldwide due to their efficiency and cost-savings.
Surface weather observations are the fundamental data used for safety as well as climatological reasons to forecast weather and issue warnings worldwide. They can be taken manually, by a weather observer, by computer through the use of automated weather stations, or in a hybrid scheme using weather observers to augment the otherwise automated weather station. The ICAO defines the International Standard Atmosphere (ISA), which is the model of the standard variation of pressure, temperature, density, and viscosity with altitude in the Earth's atmosphere, and is used to reduce a station pressure to sea level pressure. Airport observations can be transmitted worldwide through the use of the METAR observing code. Personal weather stations taking automated observations can transmit their data to the United States mesonet through the Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP), the UK Met Office through their Weather Observations Website (WOW), or internationally through the Weather Underground Internet site. A thirty-year average of a location's weather observations is traditionally used to determine the station's climate. In the US a network of Cooperative Observers make a daily record of summary weather and sometimes water level information.
A Volcanic Ash Advisory Center (VAAC) is a group of experts responsible for coordinating and disseminating information on atmospheric volcanic ash clouds that may endanger aviation. As at 2019, there are nine Volcanic Ash Advisory Centers located around the world, each one focusing on a particular geographical region. Their analyses are made public in the form of volcanic ash advisories (VAAs), involving expertise analysis of satellite observations, ground and pilot observations and interpretation of ash dispersion models.
Swiss International Air Lines Flight 850 was an international scheduled passenger flight from Basel, Switzerland, to Hamburg, Germany. On 10 July 2002, the flight was unable to land at Fuhlsbüttel Airport due to weather. Attempts were made to divert to other airports at Berlin and Eberswalde before the crew decided to land at Werneuchen. On landing, the aircraft struck an earth bank which ripped off all three undercarriage legs, and came to rest on its belly with an engine on fire. One of the sixteen passengers suffered minor injuries. The aircraft was written off.
ICAO Meteorological Information Exchange Model (IWXXM) is a format for reporting weather information in XML/GML. IWXXM includes XML/GML-based representations for products standardized in International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Annex III, such as METAR/SPECI, TAF, SIGMET, AIRMET, Tropical Cyclone Advisory (TCA), Volcanic Ash Advisory (VAA), Space Weather Advisory and World Area Forecast System (WAFS) Significant Weather (SIGWX) Forecast. IWXXM products are used for operational exchanges of meteorological information for use in aviation.
The Weather Information Exchange Model (WXXM) is designed to enable the management and distribution of weather data in digital format (XML). WXXM version 2.0, set to be finalized in 2014, is based on Geography Markup Language (GML) and is one of the GML Application Schemas. It is being developed by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation (EUROCONTROL). WXXM is a member of a family of data models designed for use in aviation safety, notably Aeronautical Information Exchange Model (AIXM) and the Flight Information Exchange Model (FIXM).
The present weather sensor (PWS) is a component of an automatic weather station that detects the presence of hydrometeors and determines their type and intensity. It works on a principle similar to a bistatic radar, noting the passage of droplets, or flakes, between a transmitter and a sensor. These instruments in automatic weather stations are used to simulate the observation taken by a human observer. They allow rapid reporting of any change in the type and intensity of precipitation, but include interpretation limitations.
