What I do for work.....A Day at Perth Meteorological Office

Ive had numerous requests (and complaints) from some members wanting me to do a thread on what I do for work. So, Ive finally got my act together, taken a few photos and can now show you exactly what I do for a living. (STAY TUNED FOR WEATHER BALLOON LAUNCH VIDEO LATER ON IN THREAD)

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View of office

I work for the Bureau of Meteorology in Australia, specifically at our Perth Met office, located at Perth Airport. We have a number of tasks here, but summing it up in a nut shell, we are responsible for putting out aviation reports every half hour, undertaking 3 hourly synopyic observations, and launching weather balloons and interpolating the data sent back from them.

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View overlooking airport

First off is a layout of the instruments we have

Class A Evaporation Pan

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One of the things we measure is evaporation. Evaporation is affected by several factors, including, climate, temperature, wind, humidity and solar radiation. Its read daily at 9am.

The pan rests on a carefully leveled, wooden base and is often enclosed by a chain linkbird guard to prevent animals drinking from it. Evaporation is measured daily as the depth of water (in inches) evaporates from the pan. The measurement day begins with the pan filled to exactly two inches (5 cm) from the pan top. At the end of 24 hours, the amount of water to refill the pan to exactly two inches from its top is measured.

Soil Thermometers

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These measure the temperature of the soil at various depths. Here we have automated and manually read soil thermometers. The manual ones are read at 9am and 3pm, while the manual ones output data every 3 hours.

203mm Rain Gauge

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I guess its pretty obvious what the role is for the rain gauge. Its a 20mm plastic cyclinder that sits inside a steel bucket. The bucket sits inside a metal cyclinder. We read this at 9am every day.

Thats it for now

More to come soon

What? No orgone crystals?

reply to post by OzWeatherman


Looks really interesting, hope you share some more with us!

You are truly brave to "disclose" you work station. But I like a scientific mind. It turns me on. From the photos showing what appears to be a rather nice weather front, I don't think the Oz meister needs orgone crystals.

You think i'm an idiot? It's clear you work for HAARP!

Campbell Stokes Sunshine Recorder

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Very simple piece of equipment we use to measure sunshine hours. Its done by simply inserting a card witt hourly increments, and designed to burn easy in the appropriate seasonal slot (winter slot in the pic, moved down for the equinox's and for summer sunshine). The glass ball concentrates the sunshine to a central point, and as the sun crosses the sky, the position of the burn moves too. The card is changed every day at sundown

Stevenson Screen

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The Stevenson screen houses our thermometers. Inside we have a our wetbulb and dry bulb thermometer, our max and min thermometers, and at the back is our automated wet and dry bulb thermometers. We read the wet and dry bulb at 9am and 3pm,. and the max and min at 3pm daily. The automated ones constantly pump out data into our automatic weather station.

The reason the thermometers are housed in a wooden screen is so that the air temperature is accurately measured. Wind chill and sunshine both affect th actual air temperature.

Barograph

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The barograph is a primitive piece of equipment we no longer use, now that automated barometers are used. Basically I though Id include it because its an extraodinarily accurate measuring tool. It simply has a pen attached to a lever, which is attached to a barometric cell. The cell contracts and expands with air pressure changes. There is a chart attached to a drum on a mechanical timer which runs for a week. So on one piece of paper we get a whole weeks worth of air pressure showing the rising and falling as fronts and pressure systems move across the area.

More soon

Originally posted by Chadwickus
What? No orgone crystals?

We ran out already while causing all those floods in Sydney

Nice thread OZ but that barograph looks older than me..

Originally posted by backinblack
Nice thread OZ but that barograph looks older than me..

It probably is....its older than me and Im 29. Its not our official recording or air pressure, and Im led to believe there's a whole room of used charts in a store room somewhere, that goes back some 40 years, lol.

Originally posted by backinblack
Nice thread OZ but that barograph looks older than me..

Was actually thinking that about a lot of the equipment.
I though everything was digital nowdays and those glass balls for reading sunlight (Campbell Stokes Sunshine Recorder ) werent used anymore, neither with the old glass measuring cylinder for rainfall.
Manually read thermometers? wow.

We also have automated Equipment.

Visibility Meter

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Measures one cubic meter of air and outputs a visibility value

Tipping Bucket Rain Gauge

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Inside the TBRG sits a gold plated lever which tips for every 2mm of rain that falls. The total rainfall resets automatically at 9am every day.

Ceilometer

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The ceilometer has a powerful invisible laser which is shot up into the air constantly, and bounces of cloud bases, to give an automated height in feet.

Still more to come

I really am impressed by the complexity that your job seems to involve, very cool stuff!

Thanks for the tour OZ

Now tell me (remembering I'm in Melbourne) with all that equipment and fulltime staff,
why the hell can they rarely get the forecast right??

Originally posted by backinblack
Thanks for the tour OZ

Now tell me (remembering I'm in Melbourne) with all that equipment and fulltime staff,
why the hell can they rarely get the forecast right??

We dont do forecasting at our office. That jobs reserved for the morons in the forecasting centre....so to answer your question....theyre just idiots

To be honest, its not easy to forecast in a city like Melbourne

Originally posted by backinblack
Now tell me (remembering I'm in Melbourne) with all that equipment and fulltime staff,
why the hell can they rarely get the forecast right??

I live in Melbourne and I have to say that in recent years the forecasts are actually quite good.
I think the timing is a difficult problem for them though... if a cold front moves through a little earlier or later it severely affects the high temp for that day - and is hard to predict a few days out.

I've always felt Melbourne's problem is that a small change in wind direction (NW from the desert, SW from antarctica) has a huge effect and is possibly hard to get right as well.

So why is the weather so good in the world, all the people who complain need to know.

I am in cairns so I can never complain

Yet it seems there are people who are less fortunate.

Thanks for posting your credentials and proof of who you are/

It is sort of like a disclosure event of monumental proportion.

They know where you are so you are brave.

I am less fortunate, I could never disclose who I really am on this forum. It would cause way to many issues.

Thanks again for your post.

reply to post by alfa1


Well I was driving right past fox radio in StKilda Rd one day while the weather was on..
They said it was fine and sunny all day..
Not 100 meters away, I had my wipers on full speed so I could see the road..

I just wondered if they had a window in the announcers studio..

reply to post by Chadwickus

What? No orgone crystals?

Hold it, Mister! This is a thread about OzWeatherman's outdated equipment at work....not illicit street drugs! Go somewhere else to score your crystals, man!

Another one of our major tasks is to launch weather balloons. Every balloon in every station in the world is released at the same time. We launch two balloons that have radiosondes attached at the bottom, one at 23z and one at 11z (zulu time is GMT time). At 05z and 16z, we launch two smaller balloons which are used simply to measure wind speed and direction.

Two uninflated weather balloons. The left one is used to launch radio sondes, the right one is a smaller balloon only used for wind flights.

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Radiosonde

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Radisondes measure wind speed and direction, but also humidity and temperature two. They also contain a barometric cell inside, which allows us to know when the balloon has burst. When the pressue increases, we stop recording data, as the balloon falls back to Earth.

Once we have prepared the sonde and balloon, we take it out to our RBL, (Remote Balloon Launcher). We attach the target and balloon to the table and fill it with Hydrogen

Tray inside RBL

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Hydrogen man packs where gas comes from

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Balloon Control Panel where we control the fill time and gas flow into the balloon

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More to come

reply to post by guessing

I am less fortunate, I could never disclose who I really am on this forum. It would cause way to many issues.

Oh, no you don't! You can't come in here and say that kind of thing and expect us not to make something of it. Spill the beans! Waterboarding isn't just a tool that was used by the Bush Administration, you know! You think these pics of OzWeatherman's are just gadgets he uses as a meteorologist? They can, and will, be used to make people talk!