Real Time Climate

The meteorological monitoring station on Isla San Jose, Las Perlas Archipelago, was installed by the Physical Monitoring Program of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Automated instruments on the tower record air temperature, relative humidity, rainfall, solar radiation, wind speed and wind direction and transmit the data, as soon as it is collected, to a computer on Smithsonian’s Isla Naos Marine Laboratory at the entrance of the Panama Canal. Here, a special program constructs a chart of the latest data and automatically updated the chart on the STRI website every 15 minutes. In the near future marine sensors such as seawater temperature and sea-level (tides) will be included in the monitoring program.

The primary purpose of collecting the data are so that STRI scientists, visitors and students, can observe the effect of long term trends in the weather, as well as of extreme short term weather events, on the plants and animals in Panama’s environment. However, the daily data can also be viewed by the general public on the internet on the link below:

• Isla San Jose Data

The charts below show how basic physical measures of the environment change in concert through time for San Jose Island (08°13’46” N – 079°06’38” W), a private island located in the southwestern side of the Las Perlas Archipelago, Gulf of Panama.