Astronomical events such as eclipses and lunar tides can induce short-lived or subtle variations in near-surface meteorological parameters. Conventional weather stations, with low temporal resolution and high costs, often fail to capture these anomalies. This study presents the design and deployment of a low-cost, IoT-based weather station network for real-time monitoring of air temperature, relative humidity, and atmospheric pressure in Sri Lanka. The system, built on an ESP32 platform with DHT21 and BMP180 sensors, records data every 60 s and transmits it to a cloud-based dashboard while maintaining local storage for redundancy. Four stations were deployed to monitor atmospheric responses during the super new moon event on 10 February 2024. Results show a consistent increase in mean daily atmospheric pressure (0.69–1.03 hPa) compared with a control day, while no significant variations in air temperature or relative humidity were observed. These findings suggest that the low-cost IoT system can reliably detect short-term atmospheric pressure anomalies during lunar events, offering a scalable solution for scientific and educational applications in resource-limited contexts.
Madushan et al. (Sun,) studied this question.