Tools for climate and agriculture
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For those of you wondering how to know when to expect high levels of heat stress on livestock, the USDA has a great web site which contains daily heat stress maps for the US for up to a week ahead. Today’s forecast for Monday June 13 shows high levels of heat in a large area of…
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In my previous post I discussed the impacts of high heat on outdoor workers. Another source of stress is poor air quality, which can be either from high particulate levels or from corrosive ground-level ozone. Both of these can put stress on breathing in vulnerable populations. You can get air quality information from the Environmental…
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Spring has ended and the preliminary statistics show that for many areas in the Southeast, temperatures were much above normal, placing them in the top ten warmest on record. A number of stations were also in the top ten driest on record, particularly in the areas that are now experiencing drought. A few coastal stations…
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The Southeast Regional Climate Center has a good source of NWS cooperative weather data linked on their web site at https://sercc.com/nowdatamap. When you click on the link, it provides access to NOAA’s xmACIS data server for the NWS station in the area you clicked on. It’s a menu-driven source of climatological data like daily temperature and…
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Now that hot summer temperatures are coming on, you might need information about the likelihood of heat stress injury to your livestock. USDA has a set of forecast maps which show the likelihood of heat stress each day for the next week based on weather forecast models (the forecasts are produced as a partnership with the National Weather…
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In addition to the data access site cli-MATE from the Midwestern Regional Climate Center, there is another web site which provides access to the National Weather Service’s cooperative weather observing network. It’s called xmACIS and contains a lot of the same information as the cli-MATE site (in fact, it’s built on the same datasets). You…
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Weather Underground posted a story today about how one winery owner in Virginia uses a personal weather station to help manage his vineyards. It shows the benefits of having hyper-local weather data so you know exactly what is happening in your own fields. You can read the story here. Weather Underground collects weather data from many…