The Weather Observer's Handbook
Reviews and endorsements of the second edition
The first edition of The Weather Observer’s Handbook was published by Cambridge University Press in 2012, and set out to be a comprehensive, practical and independent guide to all aspects of setting up a weather station and making weather observations.
The new 2024 second edition has been fully updated throughout with new material, new instruments and technologies, and builds upon the latest reference and research materials. Traditional and modern weather instruments are covered, including how best to choose and to site a weather station, how to get the best out of your equipment, how to store and analyse your records and how to share observations.
The book’s emphasis throughout is on modern electronic instruments and automatic weather stations. It provides advice on replacing ‘traditional’ mercury-based thermometers and barometers with modern digital sensors, following implementation of the UN Minamata Convention outlawing mercury in the environment.
The Weather Observer’s Handbook will again prove to be an invaluable, independent and fully up-to-date resource for both amateur observers choosing their first weather instruments and professional observers looking for a comprehensive and up-to-date guide.
This site provides an online resource for the new edition, and includes numerous product reviews, example files (including customisable barometer correction tables and the like) and colour illustrations relating to materials and topics covered in the book. All of these materials can be freely downloaded from the ‘Downloads’ and ‘Product reviews’ tabs on this website. (If you use them in publications, please cite the source.) More material and reviews will be added over time.
Other pages on this website include PDF copies of the author’s Open Access publications, together with downloadable files containing regularly updated daily and monthly/annual datasets from the long-term climatological records at the Oxford/Radcliffe Meteorological Station site (since 1767), and the Durham University Observatory (since 1841). These were first published in the author’s books, jointly authored with Professor Tim Burt of Durham University, in 2019 and 2022 respectively. Datasets are made available courtesy of the University of Oxford and the University of Durham respectively.
Oxford Weather and Climate since 1767, by Stephen Burt and Tim Burt: Oxford University Press, 2019
Durham Weather and Climate since 1841, by Stephen Burt and Tim Burt: Oxford University Press, 2022
‘I like this book very much. I am a lifelong weather observer and user of weather data both as an amateur and a career professional. This second edition answers so many of the questions I have had over the decades and the many questions I continue to field. At last, I have a single book that I can point people to, comprehensive, scientifically rigorous, yet very readable.’
NOLAN DOESKEN
Colorado State Climatologist, former President of the American Association of State Climatologists
‘‘If you still have some doubts about the robustness and reliability of the data on which we base our knowledge of meteorology and climate, this book will definitively and clearly explain how instruments work properly and measurements are accurate. Stephen Burt brings us on a journey across meteorological instrumentation, starting from a very easy approach, let’s say from an “amateur perspective”, up to professional measurement procedures and high-level systems, passing through a variety of users’ needs … In a world where distributed networks, low cost sensors and citizens’ science data will increase their role in weather and climate analysis, disseminating good practice in meteorological observation, with a constant taste for “metrological rigor”, is surely a valuable mission, and is fully achieved by this book.’
ANDREA MERLONE
Research Director, Italian Institute for Research in Metrology
Reviews of the first edition
‘I would highly recommend this comprehensive weather-observing guide to hobbyists, professionals, teachers, and college instructors.’
SYTSKE KIMBALL
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
'The book’s great strength is that it draws on the author’s wealth of experience and expertise in making amateur measurements over several decades, and is liberally illustrated with photographs and data.'
GEOFF JENKINS
Weather
'All the historical information and notes contribute in making The Weather Observer’s Handbook a perfect reference book both for beginners and for expert readers, and as a possible guide for meteorology and atmospheric physics classes and laboratories. This is a manual that should be found in any amateur or professional library.'
MARCO CASAZZA
Contemporary Physics