The Forni Automatic Weather Station has been installed on Forni Glacier on September 26, 2005 at 2669 m asl. This station represents the first Italian permanent above glacial AWS, that supply a big number of information about micro-meteorological conditions on surface of an Italian Alpine glacier.
In particular, this station is located in the Glacial Ablation area and permits to measure both the winter accumulation and the thermal conditions and in-coming/out-coming energetic fluxes that rules the losses of glacial masses during the summer period.
Geographical coordinates:
- Latitude: 46° 23’ 56.0” N
- Longitude: 10° 35’ 25.2” E
The Forni station records every 30 and 60 minutes several meteorological parameters:
- air temperature (°C)
- relative humidity (%)
- wind speed (m/s)
- wind direction (degree°)
- atmospheric pressure (hPa)
- incoming and reflected solar radiation (W/m2)
- total precipitation (mm)
- snow depth (m)
The automatic weather stations (AWS) for monitor meteorological conditions are currently included in the SHARE network.
An automatic weather station (AWS) is defined as a “meteorological station at which observations are made and transmitted automatically” (WMO, 1992a).
In particular, in the framework of the SHARE project for all parameters, the data has been visually checked, looking for extremely and unusual low/high values and/or periods with constant values.
The AWS on Forni Glacier is a reference site in CEOP (Coordinated Energy and water Cycle Observation Project) under the WMO's initiative World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) - Global Energy and Water cycles Experiment (GEWEX).