MeteoHelix® Pro – the micro-weather station at Sigfox Connect

MeteoHelix® IoT Pro - the professional micro-weather station

Can the MeteoHelix® bring on a new revolution in professional meteorology? When many meteorological departments are cutting costs, it has become harder and harder to justify expansion of meteorological networks, especially for countries stuck in recession such as in Africa and South America. What if what was once before thought impossible now became possible?

A professional weather station meeting the stringiest World Meteorological Organization (WMO) accuracy requirements for sub 500 Euro? New technologies like the award winning helical MeteoShield® Professional and the advent of low-power wireless technologies enabled BARANI DESIGN Technologies to shrink a professional weather station and to make it so simple to install and use that even your grandma can use it.

“Precise enough for the professional, easy to use for everyone.”

This compact professional weather station enables just about anyone to have professional grade meteorological data in their backyard. While its affordability makes high-density meteorological networks not only possible but also financially viable.

The MeteoHelix® IoT Pro – Sigfox version will be presented and displayed along with its allMeteo® cloud platform at Sigfox Connect 2018 in Berlin Germany.

Will the BARANI MeteoShield® replace the Stevenson screen as the new reference for climate change measurements?

While temperature sensors are getting more and more accurate, uncertainty of air temperature measurement has remained mostly unchanged over the past decades. Where once iconic Stevenson screen shelters dominated the professional meteorological landscape, they are now becoming rarer and slowly replaced by smaller cheaper multi-plate radiation shields and fan-ventilated shelters. Are they still the benchmark of precision air temperature measurement or are upcoming technologies like the helical radiation shield from BARANI DESIGN Technologies ready to send them the way of the dinosaurs?

Measuring true air temperature is complicated. AWOS weather stations measure "near surface atmospheric air temperature" at a height of two meters according to World Meteorological Organization (WMO) standards. They usually use sensors calibrated in a liquid bath in adiabatic conditions, while real measurement inside radiation shields and Stevenson screens takes place in anything but adiabatic conditions. In layman's terms, sensor temperature in the real world is never in balance with air temperature, thus measurement error (uncertainty) due to varying sensor construction, sensor reaction time (time constant) and self-heating along with radiative heating and cooling is unaccounted for.

True air temperature

What is "true near surface atmospheric air temperature" is somewhat of a mystery. Before comparing various air temperature sensor systems, one must first understand what one is trying to measure... to understand what true air temperature is.

Like any substance, air is prone to heating and cooling through well know energy flows like solar radiation, infrared radiation, convection, conduction and emissivity. Other sensor related influences include dew condensation, evaporative cooling or phase transitions, direct, diffuse and reflected solar radiation, self-heating and of course, the above mentioned calibration procedures.

What affects real air temperature

First, lets take a look at heating from radiative sources such as the sun and infrared heat radiating from the surroundings, which seem to dominate air temperature error and uncertainty. Even though air is mostly transparent, it is well documented that each of its composing gases has a certain light sensitivity or absorbance spectrum and also emissivity (radiative cooling). This radiative heating of air accounts for the difference between incoming solar radiation from earth's sun and radiation reaching ground level as shown in yellow in the accompanying plot. A familiar example is the absorbance of UV light in the upper atmosphere by ozone molecules. 

Just like every other substance, air also has the ability to cool itself by radiating heat away in the form of infra-red radiation. This property known as emissivity is different for every material and color and contributes to the error which effects our measurement quality inside every solar screen and solar radiation shield used to house meteorological air temperature sensors.

The energy balance of our measurement systems effects the temperature our sensors read. In the professional community, it is widely believed that a larger solar screen is more accurate. Why some may think this, we will attempt to explain later, but first lets flip the cards around and look at air temperature from the perspective of an air molecule flowing in the wind two meters above ground according to WMO standards. (For this illustration, it is not important whether it is N₂, O₂, Ar, CO₂, H₂O, O3, NO, NO₂ or any other molecule or dust particle composing air.)

Temperature from the viewpoint of air

On a partly sunny spring day with remnants of intermittent snow cover over grassy fields an air molecule called Caeli moved through the shade of a cloud, where it reached an equilibrium temperature of 15 °C. In the shade, the atmosphere was in balance and Caeli was emitting exactly the same amount of heat through emissivity as was receiving from the surroundings like the ground, vegetation and from diffuse solar radiation while the sun's direct solar radiation remained hidden behind a cloud. 

Crossing the threshold of shade into the sun, direct solar radiation bombards Caeli with five times the energy of diffuse radiation. The ground below is of no help since it too is heated by the sun and radiating more heat toward Caeli's bottom than the ground in the shade of a cloud. While exact calculation of Caeli's warmup is beyond this article, her temperature rise is almost immediate and Caeli and her molecular friends find themselves dancing at 3 °C higher temperature than in the shade. 

Stevenson vs. BARANI

As Caeli's journey continues, she suddenly hits a white gauntlet. Smacking directly into a Stevenson screen shelter, Caeli flips upside down and slides through its slots into a chamber hidden from the sun and filled with thermometers. She quickly shakes off the extra heat accumulated in the sun and peacefully slides past a temperature probe. It remains a mystery what her exact temperature was and if she had enough time to find her new temperature balance before squeezing through the back-side louvers and out into the free air in the sun where she quickly regained her warmth. Was Caeli’s temperature drop measurement error caused by the Stevenson screen?

A few meters later her head starts spinning again as she finds herself skimming past a temperate probe. This time she entered a helical solar shield and before she even noticed being in the shade, she rubbed elbows with the temperature probe. The shield's smaller size and easy air access to the sensor gave Caeli almost no time to shake off accumulated heat from the direct sun as compared with the Stevenson screen. 

The future of air temperature measurement

• What did the sensors inside the Stevenson screen and BARANI’s helical MeteoShield® Professional measure?

• How was the measured air temperature affected by each shelter?

• Which measured temperature is closer to the real atmospheric air temperature?

These are the questions aimed to be answered by the Consultative Committee on Thermometry of BIPM in their 2023 - 2027 roadmap and by a new project being launched this year by EURAMET. The first goal, however, will be to identify all of the components of uncertainty by the International Surface Temperature Initiative or ISTI which will start preparing a joint paper with members of CCT on this topic.  

WMO radiation shield comparisons

A more detailed comparison of BARANI DESIGN MeteoShield® Professional and the Stevenson screen shelter can be found in a WMO radiation shield comparison study by the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium (RMI). “Intercomparison of Shelters in the RMI AWS Network”

A notable study was also performed by METEOMET where multiple radiation shields were compared in a winter alpine setting for the effects of snow and sun reflections. “An experimental method for the evaluation of snow albedo effect on near surface air temperature measurements.”

DESIGN UPDATE 2020

The class leading MeteoShield® Professional has been significantly improved in 2019 based on data from WMO testing and new manufacturing possibilities. Uncertainty of measurement has been lowered significantly for all weather conditions and robustness has been improved as demonstrated by customer experience.

BARANI DESIGN TECHNOLOGIES IS A MANUFACTURER OF the helical MeteoShield Pro, Meteorological sensors, PROFESSIONAL WEATHER STATIONS AND METEOHELIX PERSONAL WEATHER STATIONS

Royal Belgian Meteorological Institute proves "The New Standard in Air Temperature Measurement is the BARANI helical MeteoShield®"

Following a long-term study by the Royal Belgian Meteorological Institute the results of the performance of the patented design of the MeteoShield® Pro, on which the MeteoHelix® IoT Pro micro weather stations are based, were finally published at on October 08, 2018 at the CIMO-TECO-METEOREX - WMO as part of the Meteorological Technology World Expo 2018.

Under the skeptic eye of the Royal Belgian Meteorological Institute, two units of the MeteoShield® Professional were paired against two fan-ventilated atmospheric air temperature measurement systems used as the ultimate atmospheric air temperature references.

The results should have been predictable

Until the introduction of the helical (spiral or twister type) radiation shield by BARANI DESIGN Technologies, the results of radiation shield testing were mostly predictable. Fan-ventilated (fan-aspirated) shields that use an electric fan to drive air around a temperature sensor typically surpassed the accuracy of naturally ventilated multi-plate shields or Stevenson screens by 0.5 °C or even by up to 3 °C. Some of the most reputable air temperature sensor companies and their customers placed $300-$1500 precision sensors into expensive poorly performing shields only to end up with mediocre accuracy for a large financial investment. Affordable Davis Vantage Pro weather stations were many times able to surpass the accuracy and reliability of professional weather stations at 1/10th the cost. This was the status quo.

BARANI vs. STEVENSON

While many Met offices still cling to the old style Stevenson screen shelters for their reference measurements, a new era of precision atmospheric measurement may be upon us. While Stevenson created his shelter to perfection with the technologies at hand, new technologies of the 21st century allowed Jan Barani, educated at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in aeronautical engineering, to create something not only more precise but arguably beautiful. Fan ventilation upgrades to the Stevenson screen design kept pace with modern fan-ventilated solar shields and screens until the introduction of the helical radiation shield design by BARANI DESIGN Technologies.

MeteoShield® Pro - the new standard of atmospheric temperature measurement

Quoting the results of the Royal Belgian Meteorological Institute study, the standard deviation error of the patented helical shield design of MeteoShield® Professional is 1/2 of their fan-ventilated shield which in layman’s terms means the helical MeteoShield® Pro is twice as accurate. Whats more, the standard deviation of the MeteoShield® Pro is 18 % lower than their fan-aspirated Stevenson screen. Once again in layman’s terms we can say that the helical MeteoShield® Pro is 18 % more accurate than a fan aspirated Stevenson screen. If that was not enough, the helical MeteoShield®’s precision in rainy conditions is almost twice as good as that of the fan-aspirated Stevenson screen reference and almost four times better than the RMI fan-ventilated shield.

Stable platform for climatological measurement

Climatology has a special set of requirements for monitoring global warming. Temperature minimums and maximums are not the most relevant values, actually they are only good for publicity. Average yearly temperatures are also only part of the picture. A detailed statistical analysis encompassing such terms as Standard Deviation, Skewness, Kurtosis, 1st Quartile, Median and 3rd Quartile in addition to the Minimums and Maximums need to be considered together. Effects of rain and snow, snow on the ground and the effects of ground color and ground type around the radiation shield or Stevenson screen are also important to consider. Taking all these variables and statistical terms into consideration, “MeteoShield® Professional is really the only measurement platform that comes even close to fulfilling all the requirements. It is not perfect, but comes closest to finally being able quantify with confidence, the very slow (0.7 °C per 100 years) climatic changes, which up till now, were stuck in measurement noise.

Is BARANI better than Stevenson?

• “The BARANI's shelters have shown excellent results with a very limited heating under strong radiation. The mean overheating is as low as 0.2 °C for medium global solar radiation and low wind speed (<1 m/s). It is unclear why the overheating is lower for higher global solar radiation.”

• “Despite the fact that the BARANI shelters are not articially ventilated, their performances are better than our articially ventilated compact shelter.”

Quoted from the Intercomparison of Shelters in the RMI AWS Network, Luis Gonzaalez Sotelino, Nicolas De Coster, Peter Beirinckx, Pieter Peeters, Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium, 3 avenue Circulaire 1180 Uccle, Belgium.

BARANI DESIGN TECHNOLOGIES IS A MANUFACTURER OF PROFESSIONAL WEATHER STATIONS AND METEOHELIX PERSONAL WEATHER STATIONS