VLaanderen IN DE weeR - VLINDER (Flanders in the weather)
The VLINDER-project (Flanders in the weather) studies the local weather in Flemish city centers, woods, industrials areas, suburban areas... The researchers have places 56 weather stations on various locations.
Everyone knows the phenomenon: it's raining cats and dogs in your own city, but the neighbouring town is dry as a bone. This is because the weather is affected by a lot of local environmental factors, for instance the urban heat island effect. Nonetheless, the official weather stations are all placed in the countryside in an open field. By placing more weather stations across Flanders and across various environments, scientists want to explore the influence of that environment on the weather.
In 2019, hundreds of Flemish schools applied to receive, build and manage one of the VLINDER weather stations. The project coordinators chose a variation of locations out of all the applications; in city centers, in suburban areas, in the woods, in agricultural areas, near water... Schools that were chosen can in turn work on an e-learning platform and with the online data from all the weather stations spread across Flanders.
