Project Report: Kundasale Weather Report: June 2017

A summary of the project conducted on weather conditions, historical review and analysis of weather in Kundasale Divisional Secretariat

Automatic weather station in Kundasale DS Division Kundasale

Summary
The initial study on the Kundasale weather history was to familiarize our self with the historical weather conditions of Kundasale. Through this report we were able to study, understand, predict future weather conditions and map the temperature, rainfall and humidity variation is the Kundasale and Digana area.
An automatic weather station is fictional in Digana from June 2017, from which weather data updates every 15 minutes.

Target - This data is made freely available to the public through a website (http://www.tropicalclimate.org/digana_weather/index.htm). We also share our data and information to the Mahaweli Authority Sri Lanka.

Weather of Kundasale
Weather has such a pervasive influence on people's lives and the functioning of society that observed and forecast weather information is sought eagerly by nearly everyone. Accurate weather predictions are important for planning our day-to-day activities. Farmers need information to help them plan for the planting and harvesting of their crops. Airlines need to know about local weather. Weather forecasting and current state of weather helps us to make more informed daily decisions, and may even help keep us out of danger. Our organization monitors weather all across the island as the weather affects the locality of Kundasale in several ways such as the winds from other directions as well as cloud cover. We study the major scene in an attempt to predict and forecast to the Kundasale region specifically.
Weather monitoring
Modern weather state monitoring involves a combination of computer models, observation, and knowledge of trends and patterns. Using these methods, reasonably accurate weather reports can be obtained.
Basically weather information is important to,

  • Agriculture
  • Irrigation scheduling
  • Drought analysis
  • Pests and diseases like Dengue and Malaria
  • Flood watches and warnings
  • Educational and scientific researches.

The Kundasale weather station of Tropical Climate is providing very reliable, remote automated Weather Reports, also run 24 hours a day and it reports basic weather conditions such as,

  • Temperature
  • Dew point
  • Humidity
  • Rainfall
  • Wind Velocity
  • Gust Velocity
  • Wind chill
  • Absolute Pressure
  • Relative Pressure

Figure 1 A picture of a ‘Ambient Weather Wireless Home Weather Station Sensor Array for WS-2080’ installed to deliver concise weather updates.

Figure 2 As shown above the Weather Instrument Software details data on air pressure, wind speed and direction, outdoor and indoor temperature, dew point and windchill gathered enables evaluation, reporting and forecasting.

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Satellite Rainfall in Digana

Rainfall is defined as a fall or shower of rain, the amount of water falling in rain, snow, etc., within a given time and area, usually expressed as a hypothetical depth of coverage: a rainfall of 70 inches a year. Below we see the figures when calculated from 2002 the year 2002 till date with spikes in 2015, 2016 on selected months. The Dekadel or (1/3 of the month) precipitation is used against the time line.

Dekadal-Precipitation

In the following figure we see a multiyear comparison of precipitation chart of the region. The black coloured wave representing the figures for the year 2017. It denotes several variances over different months.

Satellite rainfall comparison for the past six years.

Figure 8 Satellite rainfall comparison for the past six years

RFE (or rainfall estimate) is calculated as cumulative in precipitation in the following graph from 2017 -2018.