2013-06-21 12 55 57 Citizen Weather Observer Program station EW0093 in Elko Nevada

The Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP) is a network of privately owned electronic

weather station A weather station is a facility, either on land or sea, with instruments and equipment for measuring atmospheric conditions to provide information for weather forecasts and to study the weather and climate. The measurements taken include tempera ...

s concentrated in the United States but also located in over 150 countries. Network participation allows volunteers with computerized weather stations to send automated surface weather observations to the

National Weather Service The National Weather Service (NWS) is an Government agency, agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that is tasked with providing weather forecasts, warnings of hazardous weather, and other weathe ...

(NWS) by way of the Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System (MADIS). This data is then used by the

Rapid Refresh The Rapid Refresh (RR or RAP) is a numerical weather prediction (NWP) model. The model is designed to provide short-range hourly Weather forecasting, weather forecasts for North America. The Rapid Refresh was officially made operational on 1 May 2 ...

(RAP) forecast model to produce short term forecasts (3 to 12 hours into the future) of conditions across the

contiguous United States The contiguous United States (officially the conterminous United States) consists of the 48 adjoining U.S. states and the Federal District of the United States of America. The term excludes the only two non-contiguous states, Alaska and Hawaii ...

. Observations are also redistributed to the public.

Origin

The CWOP was originally set up by

amateur radio Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, is the use of the radio frequency spectrum for purposes of non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, private recreation, radiosport, contesting, and emergency communic ...

operators experimenting with

packet radio In digital radio, packet radio is the application of packet switching techniques to digital radio communications. Packet radio uses a packet switching protocol as opposed to circuit switching or message switching protocols to transmit digital dat ...

, but now includes Internet-only connected stations, as well as amateur radio

Automatic Packet Reporting System Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS) is an amateur radio-based system for real time digital communications of information of immediate value in the local area. Data can include object Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates, weather st ...

(APRS) stations. , more than 13,000 stations worldwide report regularly to the network.

Description

The Citizen Weather Observer Program is a program to collect

surface weather observation Surface weather observations are the fundamental data used for safety as well as climatological reasons to forecast weather and issue warnings worldwide. They can be taken manually, by a weather observer, by computer through the use of automate ...

s from thousands of privately operated weather stations, into th
FindU
database, and forward it to the Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System
MADIS
, operated by the

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (abbreviated as NOAA ) is an United States scientific and regulatory agency within the United States Department of Commerce that forecasts weather, monitors oceanic and atmospheric conditio ...

(NOAA).David Helms
Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP) Information.
Retrieved on 2008-01-12.

FindU

The FindU database is a set of privately operated Internet servers, run by Steve Dimse, (amateur radio callsign K4HG). Numerous IGates (Internet Gateways) receive broadcast amateur radio

(APRS) packets containing position and short messages (including telemetry such weather observations), and forward the data to the FindU servers vi
APRS-IS
on the Internet. Weather observations may be polled directly from FindU, and the data is forwarded to MADIS for ingest. APRS messages may also originate directly from computers on the Internet without being broadcast on the radio waves.

MADIS

The Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System
MADIS
integrates weather observations from numerous different sources, including CWOP via FindU, and drives a number of different

weather forecasting Weather forecasting is the application of science and technology forecasting, to predict the conditions of the Earth's atmosphere, atmosphere for a given location and time. People have attempted to predict the weather informally for millennia a ...

products. Incoming data are subjected to temporal and spatial consistency checks, and quality flags are stored with the data, to enable users to access the most trustworthy data possible. From MADIS, CWOP data is also re-distributed to other users such as Mesowest.

Ease of sending data

The amateur radio connection makes it inexpensive and simple for an individual to install consumer-level weather sensors at a point of interest, connect them to a radio transmitter via a simple APRS modem, and start sharing weather reports with forecasters worldwide. Solar power and radio transmission makes it possible to drop completely self-contained weather sensors on unattended and wireless sites, allowing for a dense set of sample measurements to be collected.

References

External links

Citizen Weather Observer Program

links and information, after Bob Bruninga, WB4APR

Information page about APRS weather reporting by Steve Dimse * CWO

description by Russ Chadwick * CWO
wiki
by Russ Chadwick * Sample FindU weather report, fro
W0CHP-13
in Plainview, Minnesota {{Earth-based meteorological observation Crowdsourcing Meteorological data and networks