Development of a Low-Cost Aspirated Temperature Measurement Radiation Shield

Presented at the 34th Conference on Agricultural and Forest Meteorology in June 2021. Measuring air temperature accurately with low-cost sensors is difficult due to solar radiation, which heats up the sensor and causes it to record a higher temperature. Even with the industry standard radiation shield, solar radiation still affects measurements. To better mitigate this problem, a fan can pull air over the sensor; this is called aspiration. Though aspirated units are available commercially, they are prohibitively expensive for use on distributed sensor networks. This project was focused on designing and validating a low-cost housing unit using aspiration to more accurately measure air temperature.