Weather Stations with Sensors [Farmer]

Introduction

Climate smart agriculture is one of the techniques that maximizes agricultural outputs, through proper management of inputs based on climatological conditions. Real time weather monitoring system is an important tool to monitor the climatic conditions of a farm, because many of the farms related problems can be solved by better understanding of the surrounding weather conditions.^[1]

Weather stations are really important because, many of the traditional sources of weather information are not sufficient for agricultural applications because of the long distances between weather stations. Also, they are not always timely, which can make the data inaccurate or irrelevant.

Figure 1: Weather station with sensors (thermohydrometer, rain gauge, wind speed, solar radiation)^[2]

The basic elements of agricultural weather forecasts are:

Amount and type of cloud cover
Rainfall and snow
Maximum, minimum and dew point temperatures
Relative humidity
Wind speed and direction
Extreme events, such as heatwaves and cold waves, fog, frost, hail, thunderstorms, wind squalls and gales, low-pressure areas, different intensities of depressions, cyclones, and tornadoes

Advantages of using weather stations in agriculture are:

Accurate measurement of current weather conditions for a particular location and surroundings
Possibility to view historical data and make long-term statistical analyses and also graphs data up to 10 years back, including calculations of minimum and maximum values
No additional costs or fees associated with operating the station or publishing data on the internet
Accurate disease and pest modelling from local and live data
Effective timing of pest and weed control with real‐time weather information and accurate forecast information
More effective and timely soil fertility applications by monitoring weather and soil moisture conditions
Assess conditions for seeding
Efficient irrigation operations through improved soil moisture monitoring and irrigation scheduling
Avoidance of significant loss of income and production due to extreme weather conditions.^[3]

Weather forecasts for agriculture are an essential requirement parameter for farmers so they can forecast the effect of hazardous weather phenomena, pests and diseases. Dissemination of weather forecasts to agricultural users should be quick, with the minimum possible time lag following their formulation. Pre-season forecasts must have a validity period of at least 10 days and not less than a week.

An Automated Weather Station (AWS) is equipped with the following:

Communication link: AWSs report observations by a variety of formats, including telephone lines, radio modems, mobile phone networks and satellite networks
Software: A powerful a simple software, which is used to support direct communications (not remote) between datalogger and the PC
Sensors: Relative humidity and temperature sensor, wind direction and speed, rain gauge and pyranometer sensor, ambient and surface temperature, atmospheric pressure, soil moisture, fruit diameter, trunk diameter, leaf wetness.