Attachment 2
The Third International Conference on Experiences with AWSs
Torremolinos, Spain, 19-21 February 2003
Neil Plummer, Bureau of Meteorology, Australia
The Third International Conference on Experiences with AWSs (ICEAWS III) was organised by the Instituto Nacional de Meteorologia. The ICEAWS series offers an ideal opportunity for European (and other) countries to compare experiences with their automatic weather stations (AWSs). Several manufacturers occupied display stands at the conference.
I presented the opening paper “Progress of AWSs in meeting the needs of climate”, which was co-authored by 13 climatologists from seven different countries. Many of the authors are members of Commission for Climatology Expert Teams. Dr Ernest Rudel was perhaps the only other presentation at ICEAWS III which was focused directly on climate needs.
There were fewer climate-focused talks at ICEAWS III than ICEAWS II (Vienna, 1999) so our talk was even more important in ensuring that climate needs were explicitly identified. However, the Europeans give much attention to data quality, including homogeneity, and are keen to learn from each other. The presentation led to several follow-up discussions with observation system managers in SwissMet and the UKMO who are introducing a new generation of AWSs into their networks. I have been asked by the latter to informally review the climate requirements of the UKMO AWS network. (Personally, this exercise reinforced the usefulness of NMHSs explicitly identifying the various user requirements of observations and keeping these current – the UKMO have done this). The SwissMet will replace their network with ALMOS systems. They installed their first network in 1976 and this has delivered an impressive 99.8% data collection rate. They have widely consulted all data users in developing their next generation systems and will have three AWS types ranked on cost where the high cost system is more complex, and unlikely to require frequent modification, and a low cost system which can be changed more frequently.
Interesting talks on quality management were given by representatives from Poland and Slovenia. The latter have developed a Quality Policy under the administration of a Quality Board for the organization (Environmental Agency of the Republic of Slovenia, EARS). They have ISO 9001 accreditation across the entire organization and have developed a Quality Assurance guide for their monitoring networks. (The Chair, Dr Helford from U.S. NCDC noted that this trend was increasing). A number of talks on data quality suggested that much could be gained from improved WMO guidance on QA/QC and this is perhaps something that the CCl and CBS could collaborate more closely on
Several talks dealt with the problems of icing on sensors, which is a problem in many European countries. While much work is being done, one presenter admitted that there was much to be learnt about the impacts of icing. One instrument designed to get around this problems is an anemometer based on a position sensing detector. This Norwegian instrument, which is based on recent advances in electronics, optics and material technology, is claimed to have an accuracy in wind speed and direction of ±1% and ±2%, respectively.
A number of European countries are developing their databases (e.g. SHMI, Czech Republic) and/or data processing systems (e.g. ZAMG, Austria; DWD Germany) in collaboration with private companies. Some impressive quality monitoring systems have been developed.
I would recommend that the CCl aims to send someone to ICEAWS IV, probably in Portugal in 2007.
The Conference booklet with short abstracts and CD with extended abstracts have both been provided to the Bureau of Meteorology Library.