The Traditional or the Modern? A Vision of the Information from the Brazilian Weather Stations Network

Abstract

A comparative analysis is presented based, on one side, mean monthly accumulated precipitation and, on the other, maximum and minimum monthly mean temperatures, recorded during the period 2000-2019 by conventional and automatic weather stations existing in Brazil. The accuracy of the location of the stations (geographic coordinates) provided by the National Institute of Meteorology (INMET) was evaluated, comparing graphically and statistically the information provided by homonymous stations, this information was correlated with independent variables (elevation and latitude in the case of temperatures, and satellite information from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission -TRMM 3B43-, in the case of precipitation), and evaluate the consistency of the information provided by the stations compared with data from the five stations geographically closest through spatial interpolations based on inverse-distance weighted under a Jaccknife scheme. Although the information provided by both types of stations may have good agreement in many cases, there are incongruities that in some cases can be very marked. Such differences can be attributed to both systematic and random errors, of indeterminate origin. Both data sets have problems, but the evidence evaluated suggests that conventional stations provide slightly more reliable precipitation data, while automatic ones are more consistent with regards to temperature information.

Keywords
weather stations; climate; meteorological parameters; Brazil