Category Archives: Meteorology

New normal values

In 2021 the Dutch Meteorlogical Institute (which has the predicate royal, koninklijk in Dutch, hence KNMI) started using new normal values. Something they do every 10 years shifting the normal to the most recent three decades.

So from the first of january the normal values are calculated from the years 1990 until 2020 (included). However, the KNMI only publishes the normal values for their official numbers i.e. De Bilt where their office and main weather station is.

So how do I follow? How do I get my normal values for Wagenborgen which is some 175 km north east of De Bilt as the crow flies. The nearest official KNMI stations are Nieuw Beerta and the Airport Eelde. Usually I use Nieuw Beerta for my temperature and humidity calibrations but unfortunately, Nieuw Beerta does not measure rain.

As Airport Eelde is more land inwards, the temperature will likely deviate from Nieuw Beerta so I made the choice to create the normal temperatures from Nieuw Beerta and the normal rain values from Eelde.

I took the values from the daily KNMI measurements page: rain for Eelde and Temperature for Nieuw Beerta. Then I wrote a short program to read the output and calculate the resulting normal values for monthly temperatures and monthly rain. The resulting values I filled in in the CumulusMX settings for the NOAA reports from where they are fetched to be used in the CumulusUtils reporting style you see on the website.

The new normal values used for my Wagenborgen weather station for the period of 1990 – 2020 are shown in the following table:

January:
February:
March:
April:
May:
June:
July:
August:
September:
October:
November:
December:

Temperature

2,5
2,8
5,3
8,9
12,4
15,2
17,5
17,5
14,4
10,2
6,2
3,3

Rain

72.7
54.7
54.1
41.3
57.9
65.0
85.0
77.8
75.4
71.4
70.0
79.4

About pwsFWI

pwsFWI is now a bit more than a year old and has proven its value : it relates very well to the existing indices and the EFFIS Current Situation viewer. This means that the note : Behavioural testing still under way! will be removed from the pwsFWI page at the end of the European fire season (21 September).

Having said that, I have noticed that some users have reverted to the FWI calculations and graphs as shown by FWIcalc  as if that one is better than pwsFWI.

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Impact of anthropogenic climate change on wildfire

I designed and developed my Fire Weather Index (FWI) for Personal Weather stations (PWSs) starting with basic logic reasoning (wet wood does not burn), with scientific background and made it usable in the context of PWSs. I found a very interesting and confirming article from October 2016: Impact of anthropogenic climate change on wildfire across western US forests [1].

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Analysis of pwsFWI prediction

Introduction

In my previous blog I described why and how the predictions on pwsFWI were implemented. Also I promised a short analysis:

We’re now in version 1.8.3 and it seems all to be working OK. The testing is back on the meteorological level, trying to find out how much a two day ahead prediction will differ from the actual calculation when the day has past.

In this blog I will show the results and try to interpret them.
Please note that this is not a scientific or even a full analysis as I am lacking the resources and the data for that.

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Behaviour of pwsFWI with first rain

One of the goals of the current implementation of pwsFWI is to see its behaviour under all conditions. It is therefore very interesting to see that behaviour in the two stations in semi-arid zones (in Australia and in Spain) where long dry periods may suddenly alternate with rain after which the drought returns. Continue reading

Evaluating FWI for Personal Weather Station

In An effort for a Simpler Fire Weather Index I described my new FWI and the theory behind it. In short, this pwsFWI (as I have baptised it) is meant to be a generic FWI, valid everywhere and independent of geology and vegetation.

The pwsFWI is a (not too) complex measure of local meteorology, an indicator composed of humidity, wind speed and temperature. It fluctuates under ‘normal’ conditions and if it becomes dryer (a longer period without rain, the number becomes higher. As soon as it starts raining, the value starts dropping.

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An effort for a simpler fire weather index

In this blog I will propose a fire weather index for PWSs. The goal is to get fuel parameters out of the equation. This means that species, litter type or geography, will not play a role as they do in the Canadian FWI. As such, it connects with a recent new development described by Goodrick et.al. 2 .

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The Canadian FWI

Introduction

I will describe the Canadian FWI as it appears in (scientific) literature. The basic reason for describing this complex fire-weather index is, that it is heavily used in some big countries, notably Canada, France, Australia and New Zealand and that the description of the method of calculation is not readily available.

The FWI also has been introduced in 2007 [1] as the method to assess the fire danger level in a harmonized way throughout Europe.  

Some extensive studies have been made, to measure its performance and its relevance. FWI also contains most parameters relevant to estimating the danger level of the weather in relation to nature fires. In short: the FWI is an important tool for estimating and studying fire weather and fire spreading, with a huge knowledge base spanning almost 100 years. Continue reading

PWS – Calibrations: UT330C

For amateur meteorologists it is not always easy to calibrate their equipment, unless you yourself are working at a meteorological service or know people who do, it can be difficult to get the readouts correct within the limits of error of the weather station. I described this already a short time ago.

The UT330C

So now I have this new UT330C. I bought it in China and it arrived pretty fast (11 days). It measures temperature, humidity and pressure within reasonable error limits: Continue reading