Ten 10-m ATMOS surface weather stations were deployed during the 2015 Pan Am and Parapan Am Games as the foundation of the high-resolution atmospheric monitoring network, the Mesonet, built by Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) in support of the Games.
The ATMOS stations collected 1.5-m temperature and humidity, pressure, 10-m wind speed and direction, insolation, black globe temperature, precipitation, and the difference in temperature between the top and bottom of the tower (local stability). Samples were made every 5 seconds and these were used to generate 1-min averages. Data then underwent thorough quality control.
These stations were sited in a variety of environments chosen to represent the larger area around the station and included cropped fields, pasture, dirt/gravel and non-agricultural grassy areas. One ATMOS station (A6T – North York) was deployed on a flat, gravel rooftop and had a considerably shorter mast for wind measurements. Temperature difference was not recorded at this station. Exposure was typically good with obstructions 50 m or more away on all sides.
At two stations, (A3T – Claremont and A6T – North York), a WXT520 compact station was included as part of the instrumentation in order to facilitate comparisons with standard ATMOS data. The WXT520 data are not included in the Legacy Archive dataset.