Weather Stations in Longyearbyen

Longyeardalen – Central

Full-scale Weather Station
In collaboration with several other institutions, UNIS and the PermaMeteoCommunity project have established a full-scale weather stations centrally located in Longyearbyen. The station measures many different parameters and the most important ones are indicated in the picture of the station to the right. Data from the weather station are available through MET Norway’s Seklima service.

The Longyeardalen Central, full-scale weather station. The Longyearbyen school is seen to the left in the picture.

Weather station next to a permafrost borehole, close to the Longyearbyen Cemetery.

Small-scale Weather Stations
As part of the PermaMeteoCommunity project, we have installed three small-scale weather stations on slopes in Longyeardalen.
These weather stations consist of masts with a set of sensors on them. On top of the masts we find so-called “all-in-one” MetSens600 compact weather stations that measure measure wind speed and direction, air temperature, relative humidity, barometric pressure and rainfall. Further down on the the mast is an infrared radiometer that measures the surface temperature.

All three of these small-scale weather stations are installed near permafrost boreholes. Their purpose is to directly link weather conditions to the ground conditions. Data from the weather stations are available through MET Norway’s Seklima service.

Private Weather Stations
To increase the amount of weather observations in Longyearbyen, small private weather stations from local residents are included in the meteorological monitoring system of LongyearObs. They are mounted on lamp posts around the city and use the WiFi of private homes for distributing the data. If you are interested in hosting a private weather station, click here for more information.