Hi everyone,
I'm very pleased to have the opportunity to present our non-profit association to the DRIHM community in order to describe some of the main projects we have been developing since 2002, when Meteonetwork was founded.
Here is a short history of the association along with an hopefully meaningful description of the values we share; subsequently there is a very neat presentation of some of the main projects and activities we've been working on in the last few years.
I tried to be really concise so if you want to ask questions or need further information don't hesitate to contact me.
"STRUCTURE FORM: the non-profit organization Meteonetwork ( HYPERLINK "
www.meteonetowrk.it"
www.meteonetowrk.it) was founded in 2002 in Lombardia, with the aim of raising public awareness about meteorological and climatological issues. Throughout the years the organization, besides the continuous holding of events such as meeting, conferences and talks, has been standing out because of its forum and its wide network of weather stations. Meteonetwork’s forum is, in this field, the most read and followed in the country and with its 7431 members and over 3,670,000 posts (data updated to October, 25th 2011) turns out to be the 17th forum over the entire country . Meteonetwork also cooperates with several public and private bodies, among which Centro Epson Meteo in Milan stands out. Since 2008 it has been officially recognised as a non-profit organization by the Province of Milan and at the same time the first regional branches developed with the aim of spreading even further the founding values.
The justified desire to make the public aware of meteorology and climatology arises from the realization that such issues have only been treated marginally and superficially. From here comes the main goal of the association, that of putting together the, so called, “amateur meteorology” in order to bring forward a plain but accurate overview of what meteorology is and what it deals with. It’s a way to bring people closer to such a fascinating science but also a way to disprove clichés and stereotypes, still deep-rooted in the society.
Although there is still a long way to go over these 10 years we were proudly given merit awards for pursuing such an ambitious and innovative project.
WEATHER STATION NETWORK: operated by Meteonetwork and Centro Epson Meteo it collects amateur semi-professional stations distributed all over the national territory, providing real-time and daily data it consists of 706 stations, among which more than 300 regularly updated.
MAIN COLLABORATIONS: Centro Epson Meteo di Milano; De Agostini Editore; Arpa Veneto, Arpa Emilia-Romagna, Arpa Lombardia, Arpa Friuli – Venezia Giulia; Servizio Glaciologico Lombardo; C. N. R. – C. I. S. A. ; C. E. S. I. - ENEL ; Alpha Test Editore; Consorzio di Difesa Produzioni Intensive di Mantova (CO. DI. MA.. ), Università di Pisa, Università di Milano, University of Aberdeen, Protezione Civile della Regione Lombardia, Protezione Civile della Regione Piemonte.
METEONETWORK and DRIHM: Over these 10 years of intense work we have reached many relevant goals in the light of our fundamental values but what has made Meteonetwork a nationally recognised meteorological body is the never ending will to face with new challenges, to expand and improve our scientific content.
Being part of DRIHM would represent an outstanding opportunity of growth for our organization, an exciting new challenge and an incredibly important chance to give our contribute to an international research project.
Our weather stations' network consists of more than 700 stations; among these more than 400 provide real-time data.This is the result of many years of hard work aimed at improving the efficiency of the network and ensuring the scientific reliability of the data: in order to do so many volunteers constantly validate them and offer an help desk for owners to solve any kind of issues regarding their stations.
The obtained data set represents a relevant scientific resource for further internal developments and collaborations with universities and research institutes as confirmed by several projects that have been developed within Meteonetwork in the last few years, most of which are strictly related to our stations network:
1) With the data collected Meteonetwork is able to produce real time and daily maps focused on different atmospheric parameters (surface temperature, dew point, atmospheric pressure, wind intensity and direction and precipitation) across the whole country either plotted as data points on google maps or colored contours maps. A very good resolution is obtained in area with a greater density and uniform distribution of weather stations, particularly in Northern Italy.
www.meteonetwork.it/rete/livemap/
www.meteonetwork.it/rete/dati/
2) In April 2011 Meteonetwork and the University of Milan started a new project called "Weatherness": we provide the university with our data with the goal of improving the knowledge of the effects that weather has on human health, focusing on Heat Index (during spring/summer), New Wind Chill Index (during autumn/winter) and the Thermohygrometric Index. Additional plotting for these indices are available on the google maps link on the top right menu.
Here is a more detailed description of the cooperation along with a summary of its main purposes.
www.meteonetwork.it/associazione/weather...3%A0-degli-studi-di-
3) Since July 2011, after a few months of trial, meteorological data collected by our network have been used to initialize, along with GFS 0.5° NCEP data, our WRF model thanks to the 3DVAR. As a result a significant enhancement in the resolution of many parameters defining the initial state of the atmosphere was observed, bringing a great contribution in the overall improvement of the model's performance.
www.meteonetwork.it/associazione/dati-de...-dal-modello-wrf-mnw
Many other projects and cooperations are underway, motivating us even more to keep on working and facing new challenges."
Best Wishes.
Edoardo Mazza
