Weather station installation helps UMB, other departments, prepare for extreme weather events

UMB’s Office of Sustainability partnered with Operations and Maintenance to install a small weather station on the sixth floor green roof of the Health Sciences Research Facility III (HSRF III). The weather station will measure parameters such as temperature, humidity, solar radiation, ultraviolet radiation, wind direction and speed.
The Office of Sustainability first explored the idea of ​​an on-campus weather station after creating the Tree Equity History Map, which highlighted the inequalities that exist in tree canopy distribution in Baltimore. This disparity leads to the urban heat island effect, which means that areas with fewer trees absorb more heat and therefore appear hotter than areas with more trees.
When searching for weather in a specific city, the data displayed is usually the nearest weather station at the airport. In Baltimore, these readings were taken at Baltimore-Washington International (BWI) Thurgood Marshall Airport, which is nearly 10 miles from the UMB campus. Installing a weather station on campus will allow UMB to obtain more local temperature data and help illustrate the impact of the urban heat island effect on the downtown campus.
Readings from the weather stations will also assist other UMB departments, including the Office of Emergency Management (OEM) and the Office of Environmental Services (EVS), in responding to extreme weather events. The cameras will display weather conditions on the UMB campus in real time and provide an additional vantage point for UMB police and public safety surveillance efforts.
“People at UMB have looked at weather stations before, but I’m thrilled that we can make this dream a reality,” said Angela Ober, senior associate in the Office of Sustainability. “This data will benefit not only our office, but also groups on campus such as emergency management, environmental services, operations and maintenance, public and occupational health, public safety, etc. It would be interesting to compare the data collected with other nearby objects. find a second location on campus to compare microclimates within the university campus.”