A lot of radio amateurs are interested in meteorology, not only whether it will be sunny or rain today, but also whether the atmospheric conditions will enhance or degrade radio communications. This also leads onto space weather and how that can effect on global communications. This page is about the measurement of met conditions associated with our local environment, and how the data can be used for historical reference, used on the Web, and how it can be shared via amateur radio.

Weather stations generally capture temperature and atmospheric pressure at the very least. Those with sensors that are outdoors also capture temperature and pressure, but might also capture wind speed and direction,rainfall, and humidity. With that data calculations can be made to determine the dew point, wind chill, and heat index.

It's also possible to add sensors for air quality, snow depth, sunlight, cloud cover, cloud height, and much more.

Whilst buying a commercial weather station is an easy way into data collection it is also possible to build one from a kit or using small computers such as the raspberry-pi which can have senors added.

• Aercus Weather Ranger - Leigh GW5JHE - Station website
• Bresser 5-in-1 Complete Weather Station - Francis M0UKF - APRS
• TBC - Dan M1DJR APRS
• Watson W-8681-MKII - Havoc MB7RMS
• Fine Offset WH1080 - Charlotte G8CAP - Station website - APRS

Raspberry Pi weather station

The UK's DEFRA has a public facing website that shows automatic air quality monitoring stations measuring oxides of nitrogen (NOx), sulphur dioxide (SO2), ozone (O3) and particles (PM10 and PM2.5). Purple Air provide an interactive map of their network of citizen monitoring stations, and they also sell monitors.

The following links provide useful tools for AQM: Meteorological Data Download - MetaDataDashboard - Openair - Python port of Openair