I've just had an interesting experience while compiling weather data that was explained by
political events back in 2012.

I was cleaning up weather files for Tunisia for a personal friend, and noticed there was
one station out of the 30 ( TUN_ZINE-EL-ABIDINE-BEN_607255) for which I had not downloaded
the satellite solar data because the station had only two years of data 2010, 2011.? I
wasn't sure if that weather was worth improving and went to Google Earth to see where the
station was located, and found this:

A Google search revealed this as the Enfidha-Hammamet International Airport that was
opened in 2009.? What was really interesting was the history described in the Wikipedia
article:

"It was originally named after the former Tunisian president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. On
15 January 2011, one day after he left the country due to the social protests against his
long dictatorship, his name and his pictures were removed from the airport building. The
new name is Enfidha?Hammamet International Airport."

I then looked in my records and fond that, indeed, I have data for Enfidha
(TUN_ENFIDHA_607310S) starting in 2013.

So, mystery solved. TUN_ZINE-EL-ABIDINE-BEN_607255 was the weather station for the Zine El
Abidine Airport from 2010 to 2011. After Ben Ali fled? in the Fall of 2011, marking the
beginning of the "Arab Spring", the airport was renamed? and started reporting weather
data in 2013 with a new WMO # and name TUN_ENFIDHA_607310.? Moncef and other Tunisian
friends probably could have told me all this right away, but it didn't occur to me to ask.

Weather is clearly apolitical, but how weather data are reported can reflect politics.

Joe

--
Joe Huang
White Box Technologies, Inc.
346 Rheem Blvd., Suite 205A
Moraga CA 94556
yjhuang at whiteboxtechnologies.com
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