Michael Anderson, California State Climatologist, California Department of Water Resources, manderso@water.ca.gov, 916.574.2830;
Scott Archer, Senior Air Resource Specialist, USDI-Bureau of Land Management, scott_archer@blm.gov, 303.236.6400;
Andrea Bair, National Weather Service Western Region Office, andrea.bair@noaa.gov, 801.524.5137;
Leonard Coop, Integrated Plant Protection Center, Oregon State University, coopl@science.oregonstate.edu, 541.737.5523;
Jan Curtis, Applied Climate Meteorologist, USDA-NRCS National Water & Climate Center, jan.curtis@por.usda.gov, 503.414.3017;
Nolan Doesken, Colorado State Climatologist, Colorado Climate Center, nolan@atmos.colostate.edu, 970.491.3690;
Laura Edwards, Asst Research Climatologist, Western Regional Climate Center, Laura.Edwards@dri.edu, 775.674.7010;
Francis Fujioka, Research Meteorologist, USDA-Forest Service, ffujioka@fs.fed.us, 951.680.1552;
Robert Gillies, Utah State Climatologist, Utah State University, Robert.Gillies@usu.edu 435.760.8023;
Steven T. Gray, Wyoming State Climatologist, Water Resources Data System, stateclim@wrds.uwyo.edu, 307.766.6659;
Cindy Mathews, Senior Service Hydrologist, NWS-WFO Sacramento, cindy.mathews@noaa.gov, 916.979.3041 Ext 240;
Cynthia Palmer, Climate Focal Point, NWS-WFO Sacramento, cynthia.palmer@noaa.gov, 916.979.3041;
Peter Palmer, AgriMet Program Coordinator, US Bureau of Reclamation, ppalmer@pn.usbr.gov, 208.378.5283;
Ted Sammis, New Mexico State Climatologist, New Mexico State University tsammis@nmsu.edu 575.635.7042;
Gary Sanger, Climate Focal Point, NWS-WFO Hanford, gary.sanger@noaa.gov, 559.584.0583 ext 221;
Nancy Selover, Arizona State Climatologist, Arizona State Climate Office, selover@asu.edu 480.965.0580;
Richard Snyder, Biometeorologist, University of California, Davis, rlsnyder@ucdavis.edu, 530.752.4628;
Joyce Strand, Integrated Pest Management Program, University of California Davis, jfstrand@ucdavis.edu, 530.752.8352;
A brief review of circumstances that lead to the annual meeting being held in Davis rather than Oregon State was provided. The Committee discussed the need for documentation for Committee renewal as the focus of next years meeting. Steve Gray was nominated to be president of the committee. It was agreed that the meeting would be held in California again next year with Lake Tahoe or Asilomar given as possible meeting sites. Jan Curtis, Michael Anderson, and Steve Gray agreed to organize next years meeting location and time. Joyce Strand provided information on the current committee documents.
A discussion of the current state of progress for the formation of a NOAA National Climate Service was held. Jan Curtis and Nolan Doesken provided updates on the status of the potential program.
Note: a detailed description of accomplishments in 2008 is described in the Word file attached to the Publications section of this report.
- An economic report released by NRCS Chief, Arlen Lancaster (17 Nov 2008) identified the cost benefit to expense ratio of the SNOTEL network to the Agriculture Community and to all stakeholders that make use of water supply forecasts. It showed that at a minimum, a four times savings is realized by this program (much higher savings in many cases).
- An irrigator in southern Idaho reported pumping energy savings ranging from $10 to $30 per acre annually on irrigated potatoes after he started using AgriMet weather data to schedule his irrigations. He reported total annual power savings between $14-$17,000 annually over his 1400 acres.
- Another irrigator in eastern Idaho reported increases in his potato yield and quality when he started using AgriMet data for irrigation scheduling. His yield increased 15%, resulting in an increased revenue of $60,000 over his 300 acres.
- A new modeling tool for fire specialists in Hawaii provides downloadable high resolution weather predictions for use with the FARSITE fire behavior prediction system. This tool was adapted to Hawaii conditions from a modeling system that the unit first developed for use in California. Fire behavior specialists will now be able to predict fire behavior for incidents where high resolution fuel maps are available.
- The pecan study demonstrated loss of $200 to $600 an acre by pecan growers because of a lack of irrigation scheduling using weather or soil based methods. The Pecanigator is being evaluated to see if its use will save money.
AgACIS has been launched through the NRCS DataMart for USDA internal use. This is part of the ACIS (http://www.hprcc.unl.edu/products/current.html), xmACIS (http://www.weather.gov/climate/xmacis.php?wfo=ilx) (NWS NOWData) backbone. It is expected that these climate resources will be part of the NIDIS (http://www.westgov.org/wga/publicat/nidis.pdf) portal.
VIPER (New water supply forecasting tool) summarized at: (ftp://ftp.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/downloads/centennial/article3220060925.pdf)
New Weather Generated Technology(http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/climate/gem.html) dataset and model (coding) has been released: ftp://ftp.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/downloads/climate/gem/GEM_6_States
Adjusted wind data has been released: ftp://ftp.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/support/climate/wind_daily
that contains the follow datasets: ftp://ftp.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/support/climate/wind_daily/readme_first.txt - weekly snowpack and drought monitor updates (http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/water/drought/wdr.pl); soil narrative climatology: (http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/cgibin/soil-nar.pl); Climate Conservation datasets by county (http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/climate/climate-map.html) and as described at: (http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/climate/wets_doc.html)
Chen, S.-C.; Preisler, H.; Fujioka, F.; Benoit, J.; Roads, J. 2008. Seasonal prediction for wildland fire severity. Third International Symposium on Fire Economics, Planning, and Policy: Common Problems and Approaches. April 29-May 2, 2008, Carolina, Puerto Rico.
Coen, J.L.; Fujioka, F.M.; Jones, C.; Riggan, P.J. 2007. The Esperanza Fire: comparison of coupled atmosphere-fire model simulation and FireMapper thermal imaging data. In: Proceedings, Seventh Symposium on Fire and Forest Meteorology, 2007 October 23-25, Bar Harbor, Maine.
http://ams.confex.com/ams/7firenortheast/techprogram/paper_127443.htm
Esteban, M.A.; Chen, Y.-L. 2008. The impact of trade wind strength on precipitation over the windward side of the island of Hawaii. Monthly Weather Review 136: 913-928.
Lii, K.S.; Chen, S; Huang, S.; Fujioka, F.M.. 2007. Spatial/temporal characteristics of air quality prediction errors in the Bluesky modeling framework. In: Proceedings, Seventh Symposium on Fire and Forest Meteorology, 2007 October 23-25, Bar Harbor, Maine. http://ams.confex.com/ams/7firenortheast/techprogram/paper_127384.htm
Preisler H.; Chen, S.-C.;.Benoit, J.; Fujioka, F.;.Westerling, A. 2008: Wildland fire probabilities estimated from weather model-deduced monthly mean fire danger indices. International Journal of Wildland Fire 17: 305-316
Roads, J.; Tripp, P.; Juang, H.M.H.; Wang, J.; Chen, S.; Fujioka, F. 2007. Fire danger applications of NCEP's downscaled CFS forecasts. In: Proceedings, Seventh Symposium on Fire and Forest Meteorology, 2007 October 23-25, Bar Harbor, Maine.
http://ams.confex.com/ams/7firenortheast/techprogram/paper_124515.htm
Weise, D.R.; Chen, S.C.; Riggan, P.J.; Jones, C.; Butler, B.W.; Fujioka, F.M. 2007. Using high-resolution weather data to predict fire spread using the FARSITE simulator--a case study in Calilfornia chaparral. In: Proceedings, Seventh Symposium on Fire and Forest Meteorology, 2007 October 23-25, Bar Harbor, Maine. http://ams.confex.com/ams/7firenortheast/techprogram/paper_126873.htm
Yang, Y.; Chen, Y.-L. 2008. Effects of terrain heights and sizes on island-scale circulations and rainfall for the island of Hawaii. Monthly Weather Review 136: 120-146.
McCabe, G.J., J.L. Betancourt, S.T. Gray, M.A. Palecki, H.G. Hidalgo. 2008. Associations of multi-decadal sea-surface temperature variability with US drought. Quaternary International, 188:31-40.
J. C. Kallestad, J. G. Mexal, T. W. Sammis and R. Heerema. 2008. Development of a Simple Irrigation Scheduling Calendar for Mesilla Valley Pecan Growers HortTechnology 18(4) 714-725.
Juming Wang, Ted W. Sammis, and D. R. Miller. 2008. Eddy covariance measurements of crop water uses: the energy closure problem and potential solutions. In. Agricultural Water Management Research Trends Nova Science Publishers Inc , NY. Pages 1-7
Holmén, B., D. Miller, A. Hiscox, W. Yang, J. Wang, T. Sammis and R.Bottoms. 2007. Near-source particulate emissions and plume dynamics from agricultural field operations. Journal of Atmospheric Chemistry. 59 (2):117-134.
Wang, Junming, April L. Hiscox, David. R. Miller, and Ted W. Sammis. 2008.A Dynamic Lagrangian, Field-Scale Model of Dust Dispersion from Agriculture Tilling Operations. ASABE Transaction. Transactions of the ASABE 51(5) 1763-1774.
Moller, Alan and Gillies, Robert. 2008. Utah Climate 2nd Edition, Utah State University Publication Design and Production