About UMD Mesoterps

Mesoterps is a student-led project in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (AOSC) at UMD. Our goal is the installation of a micronet of 10 weather stations around the University of Maryland’s College Park campus. The purpose of Mesoterps is many-faceted; we aim to monitor environmental data such as temperature and particulate matter in order to assess the impacts of the urban heat and pollution on the student body, as well as provide UMD students and faculty the ability to monitor current weather conditions right on campus. Mesoterps gives UMD undergraduate students the opportunity to work hands on, be it setting up and mounting weather stations or creating interactive displays of the data we collect.

Goals

The process that goes into getting approval, calibrating sensors, and mounting a weather station is long. Mesoterps aims to have six stations up and running by the end of the Spring 2025 semester! We also plan to incorporate particulate matter and CO2 into our station sensor suite.

Progress

So far, we’ve deployed stations at five locations: the Atlantic Building, the UMD Golf Course, the A.V. Williams Building, the Chemistry Building, and Van Munching Hall. We also have a CO2 sensor on the Atlantic Building. You can view the data from all our currently running stations here.

Members

Katie Lehman – Student Project Lead

Greenhouse Gas Sensor Development Team

Jack Bowe

Olivia Griffith

Bennett Vitek

Pantea Vafaei

Data Visualization Team

Malcolm Mass

Alexander Wang

Ava Puschnigg

Jason Youm

Jake Kaufman

Jack Cahill

The interactive station map and weather station webpages were developed by Malcolm Maas. The widget for NOAA weather alerts was developed by Jason Youm and Malcom Maas. All weather stations consist of Davis Vantage Pro2 weather stations and Raspberry PIs running Weewx, an open source software for weather-data collection.

Funding

We’d like to thank the following organizations for providing funding for the project:

  • The MADE CLEAR Partnership
  • Brammer Technology
  • The University of Maryland Department of Atmospheric Science

Contact Information

If you are interested in learning more about UMD Mesoterps, please contact us at mesoterps@gmail.com.