Press Releases

Armenia’s Cosmic Ray Division Fills Gap in International Weather Data

by Anahid Yeremian
June 26, 2011

A Davis Instruments Vantage Pro 2 weather station is now installed at the Cosmic Ray Division’s Aragats research station at 3200m (10,500 ft) altitude. It measures and sends to CRD’s database (and to Davis Instrument’s web site) the barometric pressure, temperature, humidity, rainfall, wind speed and direction, as well as the levels of solar and ultraviolet radiation. Meteorological information is necessary to correlate weather conditions with the generation of high energy radiation within the earth’s atmosphere, a process called Thunderstorm Ground Enhancement (TGE). Weather data and prediction will be helpful in scheduling the winter shift changes at CRD's high altitude research center where winter weather conditions are often treacherous. Weather predictions are also crucial to allow visiting scientists to visit and perform research at CRD’s Aragats research station.

NASA, is also very interested in this research as accurate predication and understanding of thunderstorm conditions is very important for space launches. Airlines, farmers, the shipping industry all will benefit from this new research direction at the CRD. Prof. Ashot Chilingarian, head of the Cosmic Ray Division and Director of the Artem Alikhanyan National Laboratory will make a presentation about this new research at NASA’s Alabama headquarters, at University of Notre Dame, and at University of Virginia in July.

The WeatherLink Network of Davis Instruments is a collection of websites containing customer weather information that is stored on a server owned by Davis Instruments. Being part of the WeatherLink Network and having a site on WeatherLink.com means that the CRD and Armenia will be a part of a community of weather researchers who use the WeatherLink Network to view their own weather data and easily share this data with colleagues across the world. Armenia fills a vital gap in available weather data. Armenia’s Mt. Aragats weather station is the only source of meteorological data within a radius of 1,000 km (625 miles).

The WeatherLink’s web site is at www.weatherlink.com. Visitors can click on “WeatherLink Station Map” and then type “Armenia” to locate Armenia’s weather station.