County Derry weather stations giving 'better indication of the climate locally'

Weather stations are essential for predicting weather patterns and understanding the impact that it has on our daily lives.
Since 2020, the Binevenagh and Coastal Lowlands Landscape Partnership Scheme has provided public access to data from two of its own weather stations.
The two locations of the weather stations were precisely chosen to better understand the atmospheric forces at play at the Binevenagh and Coastal Lowlands Landscape Partnership Scheme.
One of the weather stations is located at the Roe Estuary near Aghanloo and the other one is in Altikeeragh bog, close to Castlerock.
“We wanted to have a coastal location and then also an upland location,” said Andrew Bratton, Project Manager for the Binevenagh & Coastal Lowlands Landscape Partnership Scheme.
During the recent Storm Isha, the weather stations down at the Roe Estuary recorded a maximum wind speed of 50mph with the strongest gust recorded at 72mph.
The pressure reached a low of 967mb at 8pm before increasing throughout the evening. The wind speeds fell rapidly after 11pm.
First put in place in late 2020, the stations measure the wind speed, rainfall, temperature, humidity and solar energy (during summertime only).
“They'll give you a measure of how much energy is actually reaching the surface from the sun,” said Andrew.
The main goal of these two stations is to help collect data for the wetland restoration project.
“The purpose of the one in particular up in the bog was to monitor the weather conditions to try and inform the peatland restoration,” he continued.
“The weather station up there was primarily to look at rainfall, temperature and pressure.”
On the local scale, the weather stations are used for environmental purposes, allowing them to measure the amount of rainfalls and the amount of water in Altikeeragh bog.
“It gives us a much better indication of the climate locally. We can obviously get a really good picture of what the rainfall amounts are over the year or even longer timescales and also the temperature fluctuation.
“For example, if we're doing conservation grazing where we would have cattle on a coastal site, it just gives us a better idea of the conditions.
“Some of our sites can get quite wet for example, it depends on weather conditions,” said Andrew.
On a more worldwide scale, about a year and a half ago, the weather station on the top of Altikeeragh bog picked up a tectonic plate wave from Indonesia.
“There was a huge volcanic eruption in Indonesia about a year and a half ago and it actually picked up the pressure that went around the Earth. We followed it here, we can see the peak in the pressure.
“We think we can recall it twice with the pressure wave that went around the world once and then went around a second time and we picked up both of them.”
This weather event was able to be picked up by the weather station due to its explosive nature.
The latest eruption in Iceland and earthquake in Japan could not be read on the data on the weather stations.
“Because the eruption in Iceland is [mainly] lava, there wasn't really an explosion. It is just a light pouring out onto the surface.
“Then the earthquake in Japan wasn't an explosive event either. There was no air pressure. Neither of those two events were picked up.”
The other reason for installing these weather stations was to provide open weather data for local groups such as local schools, geography students and biology students amongst others.
“Our data is free of charge. For example, The Met Office and the BBC have weather reports but you don’t get access to the raw information,” said Andrew.
The two weather stations use a sustainable energy source to continuously gather data.
They are powered by solar panels.
According to Andrew, the Binevenagh and Coastal Lowlands Landscape Partnership Scheme partnered with Queen's University Belfast and in particular the Geography department to recommend the kit and install both of the weather stations.
“It's very precise and instrumentation, it's scientific grant data that we're getting from the weather stations.”
Even if the two locations of the weather stations are not far from each other, the data shows a massive rainfall difference.
“It's quite interesting because it shows you a huge difference. We don't have massive extremes of elevation in our part of the world. But even despite that, there's still a significant difference.
“For example, [there are differences] in temperatures and rainfall between the two locations over the course of a year.
“In theory, if you go to this part of the world and Ireland, if you increase elevation by 200 metres, you should get a drop in temperature of one degree Celsius, just purely because of air pressure.
“It's quite interesting that we do pick up those differences between the two locations and certainly the site up at Altikeeragh bog is wetter over the course of the year than the Roe Estuary would be even though they're not geographically that far apart.”
For example, according to Andrew, in November 2023, two inches of rainfall was recorded by the weather station at the Roe Estuary against 4.2 inches up in Altikeeragh bog.

In December 2023, “our weather station on the Roe Estuary recorded 2.2 inches of rain and the one of the bog recorded 5.7 inches. That’s almost twice as much rainfall,” said Andrew.
“It seems there is twice as much rainfall up on the mountain as there would be at sea level.”
According to Andrew this difference in rainfall data comes from the elevation of the two weather stations as one of them is at sea level and the other is in the mountain.