Ultrasonic Wind Sensors

Tender description

The Met Office collects meteorological data for climate research and forecasting from land stations and marine stations around the UK. Observations from the network, particularly from the moored buoys to the west of the British Isles, provide early warning of severe weather conditions. Each system reports air pressure, air and sea temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, significant wave height and average wave period every hour. The meteorological data gathered from these buoys goes to support calibration and verification of our forecast models. In addition, these data are made available under contract to a number of external customers/users. Moored buoys are generally regarded as providing the highest quality observations of a wide range of marine meteorological variables and the data are also used to provide information on the climatology of oceanic areas, ‘ground truth’ reference data for satellite calibration/validation and estimates of surface fluxes. Our marine and mountain sites are exposed to the most extreme conditions of any sites in our network. Strong winds, driving rain, salt water, ice, vibration and shock are part and parcel of their operational lives. With this in mind, the Met Office wishes to replace its current network of wind sensors, predominantly for the marine environment however we have a small sub-set of mountain sites which also require a rugged wind sensor solution. We are looking for a new combined wind speed and direction sensor to provide accurate and reliable measurements at these sites. Keywords: Acoustic, Marine, Mountain, Anemometers, Wind sensors, Ultrasonic