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| Overview and Location |
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The Meteorology Weather Station is located on the fifth floor and the roof of the James J. Love; Math and Meteorology Building. The Love Building also houses the Department of Computer Science. A new addition has been added to the Love Building, and was completed in January 2002. This new addition will provide extra classroom space for the Computer Science and Meteorology Departments. Also, the National Weather Service Office in Tallahassee will co-locate with us and occupy the 4th and 5th floors of the new building. This is where they will disseminate their forecast products, take upper air observations, and conduct research with members of the FSU Department of Meteorology. |
| Weather Station Staff |
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Bill Cottrill Weather Station Manager Ray Hawthorne Undergraduate/Senior Brian Richardson Undergraduate/Senior |
| Weather Station Duties |
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The duties of the weather station are numerous. We are responsible for daily observations that are used for climate research. The
parameters we record are sky cover, temperature data from the Stevenson Shelter, wind speed and direction from our tower, barometric
pressure, dewpoint and relative humidity, and any other notable phenomena.
We also take a daily ozone measurement using the Dobson Spectrophotometer. This ozone measurement is entered into the ozone data sets to help understand how stratospheric ozone depletes and replenishes during a seasonal change and the transport of this ozone across the equator. We make sure that the instrumentation in the department is available for any classes to instruct students in the physics and methods for making atmospheric observations. Our staff is also in-charge of DIFAX charts which allow meteorologists to see the observations at a given time across the U.S. or the entire northern hemisphere as well as the graphical model output of forecasts. These forecast should be used as a guide for a trained meteorologist to make educated decisions of the outcome of the forecast. Most of our DIFAX analysis charts are also archived for research purposes, and can be requested by students and faculty within the department. Our map room also serves as a classroom for Weathercasting and Current Weather Discussion. This makes it very convenient for students to analyze the latest DIFAX charts in the same room as they are having class. A mobile computer cart is also frequently in the map room, so that the Current Weather class can use software such as GARP and Gempak to visualize observations and model data in different formats. |
| Pictures and Activities (Click on picture for larger image) | |||||
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| Looking West | DIFAX Charts | More Charts | Barograph and Hyetograph |
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