Abstract
Affordable and accurate weather monitoring systems are essential in low-income and developing countries and, more recently, are needed in small-scale research such as precision agriculture and urban climate studies. A variety of low-cost solutions are available on the market, but the use of non-standard technologies raises concerns for data quality. Research-grade all-in-one weather stations could present a reliable, cost effective solution while being robust and easy to use. This study evaluates the performance of the commercially available ATMOS41 all-in-one weather station. Three stations were deployed next to a high-performance reference station over a three-month period. The ATMOS41 stations showed good performance compared to the reference, and close agreement among the three stations for most standard weather variables. However, measured atmospheric pressure showed uncertainties >0.6 hPa and solar radiation was underestimated by 3%, which could be corrected with a locally obtained linear regression function. Furthermore, precipitation measurements showed considerable variability, with observed differences of ±7.5% compared to the reference gauge, which suggests relatively high susceptibility to wind-induced errors. Overall, the station is well suited for private user applications such as farming, while the use in research should consider the limitations of the station, especially regarding precise precipitation measurements.
Highlights
Weather monitoring plays a central role in the understanding of the hydrological cycle, weather forecasting, risk assessment and management as well as agricultural planning, the administration of natural resources, climate change studies and other public and private interests
This study focuses on the assessment of the ATMOS41 all-in-one weather station that holds 12 embedded sensors, developed and produced by METER Group, Inc
This study evaluated the performance of the ATMOS41 all-in-one weather station over a period of 73 days by assessing the inter-sensor variability of three stations and by comparison against high quality, highly standardized reference meteorological stations
Summary
Weather monitoring plays a central role in the understanding of the hydrological cycle, weather forecasting, risk assessment and management as well as agricultural planning, the administration of natural resources, climate change studies and other public and private interests. With the increasing use of wireless sensor networks [11], various non-standard low-cost weather monitoring systems have been developed in the past few years using a wide range of sensor hardware and different microcontroller architectures, such as Arduino [12,13,14] or Raspberry Pi [7,15,16] These stations can be very cost effective, with prices of several hundred Euros [3], but they often lack adequate calibration and testing, raising concerns about the accuracy, precision, and reliability of the collected data [17]. Their plug-and-play principle and the compact design are clear advantages since they facilitate non-expert use and make them suitable for continuous deployment in rural or remote areas
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