[Bldg-sim] A digital tour of the Internet for weather data in a remote location in the Andes

[Joe Huang]

One of the pleasures of my work is that it provides a meaningful reason to hunt for 
weather data in unusual places.  I got a request several days ago from someone who's 
involved in a sustainable building project for a ski area in the Chilean Andes and thus 
asked if I had any weather data for Farellones outside of Santiago Chile two-thirds of the 
way up the Andes (see below)


This request sent me searching through my primary data sources - NOAA's Integrated Surface 
Hourly Database (ISD) and the WeatherUnderground web site.
When I looked in my map of ISD stations, I found a scattering of stations along the coast 
and around the capital of Santiago, but nothing in the mountainous areas.

When I went to the WeatherUnderground web site (www.wunderground.com) I was pleasantly 
surprised to find that Chile has a grid of Personal Weather Stations (PWS)
comparable to what I've seen for North American locations, with one station at Lo 
Barnachea apparently right at the Ski Lodge (Blue arrow below).

However, before declaring victory, I took a look at the data quality at this station, and 
was a little disappointed. The station (ILOBARNE16) had data for just barely a year,
plus the wind anemometer seems not to be working:

But never say die...  Since there are many stations nearby, I kept checking and finally 
found one 10 miles to the west (ISANTIAG104, red arrow on WU map above)
that had wind speed and direction:

Piecing things together, I told the client that I can create a single-year file for the 
ski area combining the temperature and humidity from the lodge (ILOBARNE16) with the wind 
data from ISANTIAG104 10 miles to the west, along with the cloud cover data  from the 
nearest ISD station CHL_SANTIAGO-EULOGIO-SA_855800  further away to estimate the solar 
radiation. Unfortunately, Chile is about the only piece of the Western Hemisphere for 
which public satellite-derived solar radiation is unavailable (I'll post something about 
this shortly later).

Although this weather file is not ideal, I'm pleased that I was able to take the journey 
this far and provide something that's quite usable. Besides, I didn't know until now that 
Santiago has ski areas so close!

Joe-

Joe Huang
White Box Technologies, Inc.
346 Rheem Blvd., Suite 205A
Moraga CA 94556
yjhuang at whiteboxtechnologies.com
http://weather.whiteboxtechnologies.com for simulation-ready weather data
(o) (925)388-0265
(c) (510)928-2683
"building energy simulations at your fingertips"

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