Historic: New Plymouth rainfalls 1862-1993

[ATO2]

I agree that overforecasting is safer than the opposite but then the problem can be that metservice is then seen as "crying wolf" and a timely warning is ignored.
I would rather see something along the lines of : "there is a fifty/fifty chance of damaging winds" or there is a strong chance of winds gusting to over 120 km/hr" .
Or, " if the winds shift to the NW, from late morning expect winds of up to 90 km/hr".
Places the most likely scenario out in the public domain and fairly advises people of the possibilities and leaves the decision up to the individual.
What do you reckon?

[scobb]

Originally Posted by RWood

Not very sure. But if you send an initial query to David Wratt (in charge of the database) [d.wratt@niwa.co.nz] he'll probably know the score. The Met. Service of old relied quite heavily on private/amateur observers, don't know how much time they allocate to site inspections these days.

Rupert, I did email David Wratt (Chief Climate Scientist at NIWA, no less). He passed it along to one of his colleagues, Andrew Harper, who replied thus:

Hi Simon

Many thanks for your very kind offer. It sounds like you have a very good setup.

At this stage, and without wanting to burn any bridges, I will turn down your offer for now.

The main reasons behind this are with the focus on climate change and freeing up of access to the climate database to anybody, any climate data are increasingly coming under scrutiny and we therefore need to be more certain of what data are being archived and made available for general use.

As you will be well aware, there are many brands of weather station on the market and in use now. Some are very good and others not so and all respond slightly differently, especially with regard to extremes. For the time being the decision has been made to stay with known instrumentation as typically used in national networks to limit any possible variations as much as possible as we aren't yet able to easily segregate data types from various brands of weather station. I am hoping that with some changes at our end within the climate database at a future date I will be able to say yes please so greater use can be made of the large network of "weather enthusiast" stations.

There have been some huge advances in recent years for weather monitoring as well in the field of weather modelling. There some terrific weather models and I certainly see a place for stations such as yours to provide verification of the derived data which is why I am very keen to keep enthusiasts such as yourself in mind as capability increases.

Thanks again for your kind offer and interest in the climate network and database.

Best wishes
Andrew

[TokWW]

Thanks for sharing Simon, I do wonder sometimes what breeds of equipment they do use and some are non integrated types but linked together with a Campbell Scientific PLC or similar to post via a radio to a networked based PC somewhere else.

I do see some integrated units as well, eg beside the desert road on the Taupo side - long downhill straight section and i believe they are NIWA devices. Metservice has their own, as do regional environmental Councils, but not all are linked. I know the Vaisala VTX500? is popular in out of the way places with some councils especially in McKenzie Basin and surrounding area.

Interesting...

[RWood]

Originally Posted by ATO2

I agree that overforecasting is safer than the opposite but then the problem can be that metservice is then seen as "crying wolf" and a timely warning is ignored.
I would rather see something along the lines of : "there is a fifty/fifty chance of damaging winds" or there is a strong chance of winds gusting to over 120 km/hr" .
Or, " if the winds shift to the NW, from late morning expect winds of up to 90 km/hr".
Places the most likely scenario out in the public domain and fairly advises people of the possibilities and leaves the decision up to the individual.
What do you reckon?

Sounds good to me!

[RWood]

Originally Posted by TokWW

Thanks for sharing Simon, I do wonder sometimes what breeds of equipment they do use and some are non integrated types but linked together with a Campbell Scientific PLC or similar to post via a radio to a networked based PC somewhere else.

I do see some integrated units as well, eg beside the desert road on the Taupo side - long downhill straight section and i believe they are NIWA devices. Metservice has their own, as do regional environmental Councils, but not all are linked. I know the Vaisala VTX500? is popular in out of the way places with some councils especially in McKenzie Basin and surrounding area.

Interesting...

I can understand NIWA's cautious attitude, given that some of the so-called climate sceptics have been busy trying to discredit the observing networks supported by national climate agencies. Basically they don't like the numbers so the latest attacking ploy is to undermine confidence in the data. But I don't want to get into that stuff here, having seen too much of it in other places. Let's hope that all contributors can be fitted into the picture in due course.