Gathering of amateur and professional weather fans shows Dublin City of Science 2012 at its best

Today I spent a really fun day attending a conference entitled "The Science of Weather Forecasting" which was organised by the Irish Met Society. The talks were very interesting and educational, but what was really enjoyable was that during the breaks I got to chat with several enthusiastic amateur weather fans. It was an added bonus that the event was held in the beautiful Botanic Gardens and the day was one of the few Irish days with unbroken sunshine.

I suppose that all Irish people are interested in collecting weather data. The most common conversation opener for phone conversations in Ireland is "what is the weather like where you are?". Now that professional quality weather monitoring equipment has become available and affordable, we can now turn these informal weather observations into proper scientific measurements which can be used to improve forecasting. I met several people who had their own weather stations in their back gardens like me. I also found out that there is even a site dedicated to collecting this data from Irish amateur weather monitoring stations. I plan to connect my existing monitoring station to this site within the next few days.

This is an excellent example of the type of event which is being organised as part of Dublin City of Science 2012. It encouraged my existing interest in meteorology and I promptly joined the Irish Met Society and I have every intention of being an active member.