The National Weather Service recognized the Dauphin Island Sea Lab for its 50-year contribution to the Cooperative Observer Program on Thursday, June 11.

The Sea Lab signed on as a COOP member in August of 1975. Today, you can spot the weather instruments as you walk the boardwalk outside the Alabama Aquarium. There is a temperature sensor, a Fischer Porter Rain Gauge, and a Standard Rain Gauge.

The primary observers at the Sea Lab recognized for their support of the daily data include Dr. William Schroeder, Mike Dardeau, Renee Collini, Matt Boehm, Cory Harper, AJ Stewart, Cameron Tyler (current), and Josh Goff (current).

“The data truly are representative of where people live, work, and play,” Joe Maniscalco, Observation Program Leader and Meteorologist for NWS Mobile/Pensacola, said during the presentation.

Mike Dardeau wrote a paper in 2009 outlining the Sea Lab’s history of collecting real-time meteorological data. An excerpt from the paper below shares the humble beginnings of the data collection. Click here to read the full paper.

Dauphin Island Sea Lab (DISL) began taking seawater temperatures and twice daily weather observations over 35 years ago. By no stretch of the imagination automated, these observations involved a staff member, or more often, a graduate student walking out on the pier, taking the water temperature with a bucket thermometer and calling in the results of the weather observations to the local National Weather Service Office. From these humble beginnings, the present automated system of real-time coastal environmental observations gradually evolved.

The NWS COOP is the nation’s largest and oldest weather network. It was established in 1891 to formalize the collection of meteorological observations and establish climate conditions in the United States.

You can view archival data collected at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab through this link.