METFiDAS - Meteorology Field Data Archive System

The METFiDAS system, consists of the following elements; METDAS - Data Acquisition System and METDAVS - Data Archive & Visualisation System.

The METFiDAS system has been developed in house and records, archives and displays surface meteorological quantities on our Atmospheric Observatory at Reading. The system has been specially designed to accommodate the wide variety of new and existing instruments currently installed and under development on our Atmospheric Observatory on the Reading campus as well as providing a standard logging platform for current and future teaching and research requirements.

On the Observatory itself there are numerous radiation instruments, temperature sensors for air and ground temperature measurements, wind speed and direction sensors and atmospheric electricity sensors.

The various sensors have different responses to the parameter they measure, so signal-conditioning electronics for various instruments have been developed. The conditioned output voltages are logged once every second and averaged at the end of a five-minute period by a Windows PC located in the teaching laboratory on the Observatory. The raw data at 1Hz is also stored there. The data is transmitted over a standard Ethernet link back to the department and the department network. The data is available on the network as scaled daily files containing five-minute averages, with comma separated values.