Speaker: Dr Beth Hall --- Dr Beth Hall, PhD, is director of the Indiana State Climate Office on Purdue's West Lafayette Campus. She is also the director of the Purdue Mesonet, and co-director and co-founder of the Indiana Mesonet. She has a BS in Geography and Meteorology, and an MS in Atmospheric Physics and Dynamics. (Email: hall556@purdue.edu) (Sponsored By: Don Cummings)(ID: 1910)
The Indiana Mesonet is a collaboration between the Purdue Mesonet (Indiana State Climate Office) and the Indiana Water Balance Network (at IU). These combined sensing networks, when expanded with new installations, will support more accurate and local weather, water, and soil data for decision-making, forecasting, and research. This information will be used by clients as varied as farmers, event organizers, researchers, recreational facility managers, utilities, and educators.
Program: Live and Zoom: The Indiana Mesonet (network of weather stations)
Speaker: Beth Hall, PhD, director, Indiana State Climate Office, Purdue University, West Lafayette; director, Purdue Mesonet; co-founder and co-director, Indiana Mesonet
Introduced By: Don Cummings
Attendance: NESC: 91, Zoom: 30
Guest(s): None recorded or mentioned.
Scribe: Alan Schmidt
Editor: Carl Warner
View a Zoom recording of this talk at:
Today's Program 100724
About the speaker: Beth Hall, PhD, is director of the Indiana State Climate Office on Purdue's West Lafayette Campus. She is also the director of the Purdue Mesonet, and co-director and co-founder of the Indiana Mesonet. She has a BS in geography and meteorology, and an MS in atmospheric physics and dynamics. (Email: hall556@purdue.edu)
The Indiana Mesonet is a collaboration between the Purdue Mesonet (Indiana State Climate Office) and the Indiana Water Balance Network (at IU). These combined sensing networks, when expanded with new installations, will support more accurate and local weather, water, and soil data for decision-making, forecasting, and research. This information will be used by clients as varied as farmers, event organizers, researchers, recreational facility managers, utilities, and educators. Common weather-related hazards include wet, icy roads, strong winds, diminished visibility in fog, drought, pests, diseases, extreme heat and cold, and poor air quality.
A mesonet is a network of automated weather observing stations that monitor environmental variables and report data subhourly. The units automatically report air temperature, precipitation, solar radiation, relative humidity, wind speed, and wind direction. Beyond station installation, occasional maintenance may be required including travel by a technician, network communications, and quality control (sensor calibration). Prior to these automated stations, local observers made once-a-day measurements, and that data goes back to 1895.
The mesonet data can be looked at in real time to ground-truth weather radar observations. The weather stations can give observations in microclimates such as on ridges or in valleys to detect large variations in weather conditions over short distances. Frozen anemometer wind sensors can indicate the extent of freezing rain conditions to alert and coordinate with safety agencies. Temperature
inversions, i.e. higher temperatures at higher elevations, can be a concern for chemical dispersion and air pollution at ground level. A Purdue weather station with a camera captured the image of a tornado forming and its wind data.
The Indiana mesonets are sparse, including a gap in west central Indiana, whereas other states such as Kentucky, Michigan, Florida, New York, and New Jersey have much denser mesonet grid coverage. The foresight of Senator Mitch McConnell in Kentucky enhanced the mesonet there. Kentucky has live mesonet broadcasts.
To have an automated weather observing station in every Indiana county, we would need 68 more units. They would each be budgeted at $10,000 without the necessary information technology support. For other states, the mesonet is a line item of the state budget. In Indiana with 92 stations, the operating cost could be $1.3 million with $35,000 per station and $670,000/year in personnel costs. People can advocate for expansion of the Indiana mesonet and offer to be a site for a mesonet station. In Indiana, data since 2004 shows temperatures are up with annual precipitation up, but with more precipitation in spring and less during summer.
Info from the presentation:
Beth Hall
