Netatmo PWS rain sensor vs professional rain gauges
1. Climate challenges, mitigation and adaptation1 Trelleborgs Kommun, Kretslopp & Vatten, Sweden
Abstract text
Cooperation SPARC project (KaU, SMHI, LTH) Göteborg Kretslopp o Vatten (GKOV) and Trelleborgs Kommun Kretslopp & Vatten
SPARC and GKOV have in common an interest in using private (personal) weather stations, PWS, for rain observations. The idea is that PWS can increase the spatial density of rain stations at a low cost. In order to implement the use of such data, some issues have to be resolved. Questions which need answers concern:
- What is the accuracy of PWS rain data?
- Which factors affect the accuracy and how can the accuracy be improved?
- How can data be shared? Platform needs to be efficient and open.
- How does the performance of a network of rain stations improve by including PWS?
- How can the PWS data be used in connection with modelling?
- Which practical problems occur re installation, operation and management of the PWS?
- Are there any legal or financial issues affecting the relationship between the public organization (in this case a university or water utility) on one side and the PWS on the other?
As a part of WP1 of SPARC project was my task to buy, install and test the "hardware" - Netatmo rain sensor - and its functionality in detail and compare it to data from the professional rain gauge meters beside. Questions 1,2 and 6 should be answered in this task.
I bought and installed one Netatmo weather station with rain sensor myself and one with the support of LTH.
Several tests has been completed during the summer and the report is already written including:
Technical information about Netatmo weather station and the rain sensor, connectivity, data transfer, data format, calibration, webservice etc.
Comparison of daily summaries from Netatmo rain gauge and:
-other nearby Netatmo rain gauges
-municipal/professional rain gauge Lambrecht/Adcon
-SMHI's rain gauge
-an older professional rain gauge
I hope you´ll find this topic intresting and I can get a chance to share my observations with the visitors of Nordiwa 2023!
Sincerely
Tomas Wolf
Selected references
Bárdossy A., Seidel, J., et El Hachem, A., 2021: The use of personal weather station observations to
improve precipitation estimation and interpolation, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 25, 583–601,
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-583-2021
Chen, A. B., Behl, M., & Goodall, J. L. (2021). Assessing the Trustworthiness of Crowdsourced
Rainfall Networks: A Reputation System Approach. Water Resources Research, 57(12), e2021WR029721.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2021WR029721
de Vos, L. W., Leijnse, H., Overeem, A., & Uijlenhoet, R. (2019). Quality control for crowdsourced
personal weather stations to enable operational rainfall monitoring. Geophysical Research
Letters, 46(15), 8820-8829. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019GL083731
De Vos, L., Leijnse, H., Overeem, A., & Uijlenhoet, R. (2017). The potential of urban rainfall
monitoring with crowdsourced automatic weather stations in Amsterdam. Hydrology and Earth System
Sciences, 21(2), 765-777. https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/21/765/2017/
De Vos, L. W., Droste, A. M., Zander, M. J., Overeem, A., Leijnse, H., Heusinkveld, B. G., ... &
Uijlenhoet, R. (2020). Hydrometeorological monitoring using opportunistic sensing networks in
the Amsterdam metropolitan area. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 101(2), E167-E185.
Bedrina, T., Parodi, A., Quarati, A., and Clematis, A.: ICT approaches to integrating institutional and
non-institutional data services for better understanding of hydro-meteorological phenomena, Nat.
Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 12, 1961–1968, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-12-1961-2012, 2012.
Mapiam, P. P., Methaprayun, M., Bogaard, T., Schoups, G., & Ten Veldhuis, M. C. (2022). Citizen rain
gauges improve hourly radar rainfall bias correction using a two-step Kalman filter. Hydrology and
Earth System Sciences, 26(3), 775-794
