|
History
A dual MetService New Zealand AWS system 91961 & 91962 was
commissioned on Pitcairn Island on 20 July 1999. There was to be a 5 year
overlapping period of data with the manual GSN observing station 91960
before this was closed.
Because of the remoteness of Pitcairn Islands, dual AWS systems were
recommended to be used as on New Zealand Sub-Antarctic stations and other
New Zealand remote sites which are only serviced and recalibrated
annually. By doubling up on all sensors and hardware the chance of a
complete system failure in between annual servicing is lessened.
The exposure for the dual AWS instrumentation is the same and located in
the same instrument enclosure as the manual station but the temperature
sensors are in a separate Stevenson's screen. The performance of the
system is monitored 3 hourly by the New Zealand Instrument Centre from
the engineering data that is sent back via GOES West DCP appended to the
synoptic reports.
The Pitcairn dual AWS has been serviced by MetService New Zealand on an
annual basis and sensors exchanged with newly calibrated units.
In the January 2005 GSN Station Update the Pitcairn Islands GSN station
was changed from the manual observing station 91960 to the automatic
station 91964. The data from 91961 and 91962 is collected 3 hourly and
the data from 91961 is transmitted on the GTS in SYNOP format under
station number 91964. In the event of missing data or sensor failure in
the 91961 data then the 91964 report is completed with data from the
backup 91962 automatic station.
(submitted by Garry Clarke) |
Data
Note:
- The Pitcairn spreadsheets follow the format of the New Zealand Met
301 form used for recording climatological observations
- The Pit301_0205.xls file (February 2005) is missing |
