BIWS

Baltimore Intercomparison of Weather Stations

1 December 2024 - 30 November 2025

Lead Scientist: Darryn Waugh

Observatory: AMF (ARM Mobile Facility 1) - CRG

Quantifying the variation of surface weather in cites is important for understanding urban heat, flooding, air quality, and their impacts on health. Several networks of weather stations have been set up in different cities, as part of U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)-funded Urban Integrated Field Laboratories (IFLs) and other projects. However, the instruments used differ among the networks, with instruments ranging from those developed for citizen scientists to research-grade instruments. The goal of the campaign is to assess the accuracy of the surface weather stations used in these networks. Four different weather stations will be installed at the ARM Coast-Urban-Rural Atmospheric Gradient Experiment (CoURAGE) main site, for the duration of CoURAGE (December 2024 to November 2025). Comparisons of measurements from these and three ARM weather stations will be performed to quantify the biases among instruments and any dependence of this on other meteorological conditions (e.g. dependence of temperature bias on amount of solar radiation), synoptic conditions, or season. This detailed quantification of biases between instruments will quantify the accuracy of the surface weather stations used by the ARM CoURAGE campaign and the DOE-funded urban integrated field laboratories.