Cutting-edge weather sensors to be deployed across Greece

Biral has announced that will be installing 80 of their SWS-250 weather sensors across Greece having won a major project with the Hellenic National Meteorological Service, who are the government agency responsible for the nation’s weather forecasts and observations.

Biral will work with their long-standing partners Microstep to provide detailed meteorological information to important productive and developmental sectors, such as public bodies and educational and research institutions, over the coming two years. 

Another part of this project is the expansion of Greece’s existing network of Automated Weather Stations (AWS), which are to be installed in selected locations for measuring, recording and processing meteorological data on a 24-hour basis. 

Biral and MicroSep will also improve the current network of upper atmosphere stations with the installation of state-of-the-art Automated Radiosonde Systems (ARS) to obtain precise meteorological data of the upper atmosphere. Some of the Automatic Weather Stations and their sensors will be installed near the sea, so technology was needed that could operate in extremely harsh environments.

Along with the variety of new installations, the project will also consist of developing  a web portal to enable meteorological information to be quickly, easily and widely circulated.

Biral developed their SWS-250 weather sensor for use in aviation applications where both visibility and comprehensive present and past weather information is needed. Thanks to its unsurpassed visibility capability, the visual range can reach as far as 99.99km, making it ideal for use in meteorological observation networks and research applications, such as this project.

The SWS-250 includes a back scatter receiver to make up a visibility and present weather sensor. The sensor was designed with runway use and ‘met gardens’ in mind, so it has a visibility performance reaching up to 75km and reports 39 WMO 4680 codes. The SWS-250 measures visibility, fog, drizzle, haze, snow, hail and other non-frozen precipitation according to WMO-4680. 

This device was built in powder coated aluminium to ensure long and dependable service, the sensor can also be combined with an ambient light sensor for aviation applications where both RVR and METAR data are required.  An optional calibration kit is enables calibration in the field to be performed quickly and easily.