|
Sensor PointTM Detailed Historical & Climate Data
|
| Why would anyone use Sensor PointTM Virtual Sensor StationTM historical and climate data rather than 'official' government raw station observations? |
There
are only a few thousand global certified weatehr stations and
these tend to be clustered in population centers compared to
over 640,000 Virtual Sensor StationsTM uniformly distributed
every 35 km across the globe (land and water). Further, raw
station observation data presents problems for many users. Besides the
formatting idiosyncrasies of global station output, raw surface
observations also can be missing and contain entry errors, sensors are
relocated and land use patterns for areas surrounding the station can
change. This is a particular problem for most commercial calibration
and modeling systems which require consistent, gap free input. What’s
more these observations are only valid for the weatehr station location
and lose their validity the farther away your site is. |
| How is the Virtual Sensor StationTM climate data procduced? |
As the
30+ years of detailed hourly weather data is being pre-processed for
each of the over 640,000 Virtual Sensor Stations™, minimums, maximums
and averages are calculated by month, year and the entire period. This
data is stored for key variables including temperature, precipitation,
wind and solar radiation and made available directly and through a
map-based, site research tool. |
| How does Sensor PointTM produce the Virtual Sensor StationTM detailed history data? |
The Sensor Point™
system uses "re-analyzed” stored government global historical forecast
data for the site selected and processes that data with a combination
of stored observations from nearby certified sensors and 3D physical
model and other NWP techniques to create an hour-by-hour time series of
virtual sensor readings for that site. |
| What is Sensor Point'sTM source of current and historical surface observations? |
Every hour Sensor PointTM
takes in the current observations from the Global Data Assimilation
System (GDAS) posted in support of world aviation. Historical
certified surface station observations are provided by several sources,
including the US government archives of raw observational data at its
center in Asheville, NC. International agreements also make raw station
observations from foreign weather stations available to us. |
