Weather Data at Berkeley Lab

Learn how to access Berkeley Lab's weather station data using both internal and external resources with the instructions below. This page also contains a description of the parameters measured on the 26-meter tower located near the Advanced Light Source.

ACCESSING CURRENT DATA

Real-time and recent data are available from internal and external sources by clicking on the source's bold title or associated image. These data sources present "as is" data obtained from the weather station's data logger. While the data may have been screened by computer algorithms to look for outliers, they may not have been reviewed by humans for quality assurance purposes.

EXTERNAL SOURCES

Konect GDS (hosted by Campbell Scientific) — Brief Description: A safe and secure cloud-based service used by the Environmental Services Group to collect, archive, present and relay the Lab's meteorological data in a variety of ways. One of those ways is through creative dashboards.

Click on the image below to see a view of a variety of current and recent weather conditions at the weather tower.

Click on the image below to see line charts of the past 31-Day weather conditions at the weather tower.

MesoWest (hosted by University of Utah) — Brief Description: Displays current conditions along with recent maximum and minimum values, followed by a table of the fifteen minute interval data for the past day. The navigation panel on the left allows access to other features, such as:

"Change to Graphical Display" of the same data.
"Change to Weather Map" provides access to thousands of weather sites around North and Central America.
"Download Data" limited to downloading a single day of data. A free MesoWest account allows up to a year of data in one request.

National Weather Service — Brief Description: The local NWS observation page begins with a map of all available stations. Zoom in to Berkeley area to select the LBNL1 station (in the University of California Berkeley area of the map). Clicking on the station will do two things:

Pop up a window showing current conditions in tabular format.
Select either "3 Day" or "7 Day" under Historical Observations to display the corresponding graph with the tabular data (below the graph).

Data from the NWS site cannot be downloaded in standard formats (e.g., text, spreadsheet). Data posted at this site is accessed thru MesoWest.

INTERNAL SOURCES (LDAP may be required)

RPix — Brief Description: A static image listing most recent data in the upper portion and a graphic of the latest 96 hours of data below. Accessing this page offsite or using guest Wi-Fi privileges at the main site, LDAP credentials are needed.

An interactive version of RPix is available for installation on a Windows-based computer. For assistance, contact weather@lists.lbl.gov.

Telemetry Database — Brief Description: View graphical data or view or download tabular data. User must first choose either "Charts" or "Reports" from the menu, followed by "Weather" from the Group selection. Follow instructions on the screen for selecting one or more parameters and the time period of interest. Depending on browser used, agreeing to load scripts from an unauthenticated site may be needed before data is displayed. Accessing telemetry from offsite or using guest wifi privileges at the main site, LDAP credentials are needed.

REQUESTING HISTORICAL DATA

Parties associated with Berkeley Lab may send a request to weather@lbl.gov.

External parties should attempt to download historical data from the MesoWest site first where data going back to October 2011 are available. As noted above, a free MesoWest account allows for up to one year of data per download.

OVERVIEW OF STATION

Berkeley Lab's weather station consists of a 26-meter tall tower, centrally located at the main site north of the Advanced Light Source (Building 6), instrumented with the following sensors.

Two-meter level

- Barometric pressure (millibars)
- Temperature (Fahrenheit)
- Relative humidity (percent)
- Precipitation (millimeters)

Ten meter level

- Temperature (Fahrenheit)

Twenty-six meter level

- Wind speed (miles per hour)
- Wind direction (degrees)
- Solar radiation (watts per square meter)

A datalogger collects readings from each sensor at rates as fast as once each second. Readings are processed into 15-minute and hourly summaries. Additional parameters are calculated from certain sensor data (e.g., dew point temperature from temperature and relative humidity values).

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