Weather station returns to Nevis
RESEARCH scientists scaled Ben Nevis last week to install a weather station that will record conditions on the summit for the first time in more than a century.
Last Tuesday (November 8), a group of scientists from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) hiked to the top of the UK’s highest mountain in the hope of being able to record weather readings after 113 years without data from the top of the mountain.
The expedition is the latest stage of Operation Weather Rescue: Ben Nevis, which launched in September.
The campaign is appealing to the public to help digitise two million ‘lost’ weather measurements taken by a group of Victorian volunteers known as the ‘Weathermen of Ben Nevis’ by hand, every hour on the hour, each day of the year, from 1883 to 1904.
Since September, more than 3,500 volunteers have digitised more than 1.25 million weather observations.
Dr Barbara Brooks and her team from NERC’s National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) were joined by guides from the John Muir Trust to install the temporary, automatic weather station.
The station will record wind speed and direction, pressure, temperature, precipitation and humidity, relying on 3G coverage to transmit weather data. From next week the data will be available for the public to view in real time on the NCAS website.
Dr Brooks said: ‘This is a temporary weather station, which for four weeks will do the same work as the Victorian weathermen all those years ago. Thankfully, technology has moved on so there’s no need for our team to be stationed on the summit over the winter months.
‘If we can prove that the technology works and the data is robust, we’re hopeful this could lead to a new, permanent weather station on the summit, which would be invaluable for meteorologists.’
NERC-funded climate scientist Professor Hawkins, who is leading the project, said: ‘Unearthing this type of data feeds into the bigger picture; helping international researchers understand climatic changes and ensure better forecasts for the future.’
Dr Brooks hopes the new, temporary weather station will produce comprehensive weather data that can be compared to the Victorian records. The team aims to have initial com- parisons on show at NERC’s free interactive showcase event, UnEarthed, at Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh over the weekend, opening tomorrow (November 17 to 19).
‘The Ben Nevis weather data will tell us more about extreme rainfall which is thought to be becoming more common in the UK.’
To help complete the digitisation of ‘lost’ data, visit www. weatherrescue.org to find out how.