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The Stevenson Screen

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Unathi Gamanya
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226 views6 pages

The Stevenson Screen

Uploaded by

Unathi Gamanya
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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THE STEVENSON SCREEN

Group 4
WHAT IS A STEVENSON SCREEN?

• The Stevenson Screen is a wooden box that is housed in a


weather station whose sole purpose is to house weather
instruments to make sure they give correct weather readings.
• Stevenson Screen’s usually house the following instruments:
1. Maximum & Minimum thermometers
2. Wet-and-dry bulb thermometers
3. Barometers e.g. Mercury barometer & Aneroid
barometer
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE
STEVENSON SCREEN

1. The box is raised on 121cm legs in order to avoid heat radiated from the
ground and to have the thermometer bulbs at the standardized height of
125cm.
2. Roof of the wooden box is made of a double layer of wood with an airspace
to ensure insulation between them as wood and air are bad conductors of
heat.
3. The wooden box has a slanted roof to shed rain.
4. The wooden screen is painted white to reflect the sun’s rays.
5. The wooden box has slatted sides called louvres to allow the free flow of air
into and out of the screen which is essential for measurement of the
outside air temperature and to allow evaporation from the wet bulb
thermometer
LOCATION OF THE STEVENSON
SCREEN

• The Screen should be sited on grass that is kept short- to


standardize the influence of the ground surface and record
what is considered to be real air temperature.
• If the Screen is sited on concrete for example, it will have to
placed much higher because concrete heats up and radiates
the heat, as well as reflecting some of the Sun’s rays upwards.
• The Screen has to be positioned so that the door opens away
from the sun, facing north in the northern hemisphere and
south in the southern hemisphere.
• It is sited in an open space.
• Away from the trees and buildings to avoid any obstacles
affecting the readings.
• In the northern hemisphere, the door of the screen always
faces to north so as to prevent direct sunlight on the
thermometers.
• In Polar regions with twenty-four hour sunlight, the observer
must take care to shield the thermometers from the sun and at
the same time avoiding a rise in temperature being caused by
the observer's body heat
• Air temperatures have to be measured in the shade out of
direct sunlight and at the same height above the ground at all
weather stations, so that data is standardized and can be
compared.

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