Cloud cover
The Climatological Station has provided daily readings for well over a century. Gardens staff record the information at 9 am each day. Cloud cover, visibility, wind direction, rainfall and other details are forwarded to the national Meteorological Service. The 1940s wooden building beside the Climatological Station is a remnant of the Magnetic Observatory set up here in 1901. The Magnetic Observatory site was a complex of buildings devoted to magnetic, atmospheric, gravitational, seismic and celestial studies. The observatory was famously used by both Captain Robert Falcon Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic teams to make magnetic surveys in preparation for their expeditions.