Parts of a Rain Gauge
Anybody who owns a garden probably uses a rain gauge or has heard of one. A rain gauge basically just estimates the amount of rainfall for an area. A home-made rain gauge can be made with simple parts that are not much different than the first rain gauges which appeared hundreds of years ago. Although a rain gauge greatly assists in describing weather patterns, the parts of a rain gauge are prone to errors from natural causes. Does this Spark an idea?
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History
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The first recorded use of a rain gauge only goes back a few hundred years, but historians believe it is likely that precipitation measurement goes back to the earliest agrarian societies. Aristotle wrote about basic meteorology such as clouds and rain, yet he did not mention measuring rain during his time. However, history accepts Korean King Sejong as the first to record evidence of the use of a rain gauge in the early 15th century.
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Container
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What type of container and how it is used depends on the variety of the rain gauge. A standard rain gauge captures rain in a funnel with a small tube at the end, according to The Rain Gauge Store. The smaller tube contains one-tenth the area of the funnel. The tipping bucket method uses two specially calibrated buckets attached to an axle.
Measuring
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Measurement tools for a rain gauge vary from a simple ruler to electronic recording. In a standard rain gauge the smaller tube extrapolates the rain depth so that one inch of rain depth equals one-tenth inch of actual rain, according to The Rain Gauge Store. You need notches or a ruler to measure rainfall. For the bucket system, you need an electronic device. Once the bucket catches a set amount of rain, usually .01 inches, it tips over and an electronic sensor counts the revolutions. To calculate rainfall you simply multiply the amount of revolutions by the calibrated amount each bucket collects before tipping, according to Washington's Weather Service Forecast Office.
Significance
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No matter what type of rain gauge you use they all serve the same general purposes. One of earliest and still important uses of any rain gauge is to predict future weather conditions, according to Encyclopedia.com. People want to plan vacations and their day based on a weather forecast. Predicting future weather conditions is also important to those in agriculture who need to know if inclement weather might destroy crops.
Considerations
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Rain gauges certainly increase the accuracy of rainfall records, but they are not infallible. According to Fundamentals of Hydrology, rain gauges often suffer from a "splash back" effect. Rain can bounce off the surrounding ground and give an inflated reading. To counteract the effect some people try to put a rain gauge above ground level. However, a raised rain gauge can block wind and interfere with a catch, sometimes causing errors up to 40 percent in extreme conditions.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit "Eclairs" is Copyrighted by Flickr user: ComputerHotline (Thomas Bresson) under the Creative Commons Attribution license.
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Comments
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that's how its done.
