Quality of Mobile Air Temperature and Atmospheric Pressure Observations from the 2010 Development Test Environment Experiment

Abstract

he 2010 Development Test Environment Experiment (DTE10) took place from 28 January to 29 March 2010 in the Detroit, Michigan, metropolitan area for the purposes of collecting and evaluating mobile data from vehicles. To examine the quality of these data, over 239 000 air temperature and atmospheric pressure observations were obtained from nine vehicles and were compared with a weather station set up at the testing site. The observations from the vehicles were first run through the NCAR Vehicle Data Translator (VDT). As part of the VDT, quality-checking (QCh) tests were applied; pass rates from these tests were examined and were stratified by meteorological and nonmeteorological factors. Statistics were then calculated for air temperature and atmospheric pressure in comparison with the weather station, and the effects of different meteorological and nonmeteorological factors on the statistics were examined. Overall, temperature measurements showed consistent agreement with the weather station, and there was little impact from the QCh process or stratifications?a result that demonstrated the feasibility of collecting mobile temperature observations from vehicles. Atmospheric pressure observations were less well matched with surface validation, the degree of which varied with the make and model of vehicle. Therefore, more work must be done to improve the quality of these observations if atmospheric pressure from vehicles is to be useful.