Weather Monitoring in the environment - J David Cooper

Weather monitoring has evolved over the past few centuries from an amateur pastime, traditionally done by country vicars, to a well-organised professional activity spanning the globe, vital for a very wide range of economic, commercial, environmental, military, civil protection and food production purposes. An effective monitoring programme needs to take into account the likely uses to which the information collected will be put. This article is primarily concerned with environmental applications. These include:

Atmospheric pollution: dispersal of pollutants in the atmosphere is driven almost entirely by the weather and so weather information is vital in both monitoring and predicting the course of events. Wind speed and direction, temperature, humidity and rainfall may all be important factors in the processes.

Pollen and seed dispersal: These are affected by much the same factors as atmospheric pollution.

Water resources, water quality and hydrology: Input to hydrological systems in the form of rain is clearly a weather phenomenon, but weather also drives evaporation, plant growth, photosynthesis and transpiration. It also affects chemical transformations in the environment, which may be controlled by temperature, light levels or biological activity.

Ecology: All living organisms are affected by the physical state of their environment, the most important aspects of which are controlled by the weather.

Agriculture: Farming has always been heavily dependent on the weather, both for its control on the quality and quantity of a harvest and its effect on the farmer’s ability to work the land or to graze his stock.

Climate change: Weather monitoring is important in defining present climate, in detecting changes in climate and in providing the data to input into models which enable us to predict future changes in our environment.