SAES-422 Multistate Research Activity Accomplishments Report
Sections
Status: Approved
Basic Information
- Project No. and Title: WERA1012 : Managing and Utilizing Precipitation Observations from Volunteer Networks (from WDC43)
- Period Covered: 10/01/2019 to 04/30/2022
- Date of Report: 06/01/2022
- Annual Meeting Dates: 05/17/2022 to 05/19/2022
Participants
Meeting Minutes for Virtual Meetings in 2020 and 2021 as well as Hybrid In-Person/Virtual Meeting held in 2022 attached.
Accomplishments
Short-term Outcomes:
2019:
- Annual fundraiser accrued $120,340 from 2,863 donors ($42.03/donor)
2020:
- Moved QC database from Midwest Regional Climate Center to a CoCoRaHS server allowing for a better user interface and improved processes. QC tickets decreased by more than 20% from the previous 12 month period.
- New software migration project to Azure progressed and will soon allow for improved mapping, emailing observers, QC, cloud storage and web applications.
- Annual fundraiser accrued $175,242 from 3,345 donors ($47.32/donor)
2021:
- Software and QC database migration into Azure fully complete with improvements to mapping, emailing observers, QC, cloud storage and web applications - more below.
- Annual fundraiser accrued $195,014 from 2,906 donors ($67.11/donor)
2022:
- CoCoRaHS growth continues with a record number of stations - now over 25,000 and a record number of reports, now regularly over 15,000 per day and over 5 million per year.
Outputs:
2020:
- The number of daily reports have grown 39.7% in the past 10 years and 4.5% in 2019.
- The number of observers has also grown 37.2% over the last 10 years, but the 2019 increase was less than 1%.
- Watershed mapping product made available to the public: https://cocorahs.erams.com/
2021:
- New Water-Year Summary reports were released, now dynamic and updated hourly: https://wys.cocorahs.org/
- Interacitve mapping product released to the public: https://maps.cocorahs.org/
2022:
- Ice Accretion pilot year - research to practice
Activities:
Henry Reges, CoCoRaHS National Coordinator, visited 13 National Weather Service offices this year to promote CoCoRaHS and to connect with the many NWS staff who serve as volunteer state and regional coordinators for CoCoRaHS. The following is a list of presentations made during the report period.
May 2021
- National Weather Service Office – Coordinator visit – Wichita, KS
- National Weather Service Office – Coordinator visit – Goodland, KS
- National Weather Service Office – Coordinator visit – Dodge City, KS
June 2021
- National Weather Service Office – Coordinator visit – Albuquerque, NM
- Various organizations in Northern New Mexico
August 2021
- National Weather Service Office – Coordinator visit – Fairbanks, AK
- State Climate Office – Coordinator visit/presentation – Fairbanks, AK
- National Weather Service Office – Coordinator visit – Anchorage, AK
- National Weather Service Office – Coordinator visit – Juneau, AK
- Various additional organizations throughout Alaska
December 2021
- National Weather Service Office – Coordinator visit – Little Rock, AR
- State Climate Office – Coordinator visit – Little Rock, AR
- Various additional organizations throughout Central/NW Arkansas
March 2022
- ZOOM presentation to the LEO network – Alaska
Noah Newman, CoCoRaHS Education and Outreach Coordinator:
2020:
• NOAA Citizen Science Workshop – April 2020
• Live appearance on The Weather Channel – April, 2020
• School presentation - CoCoRaHS in North Carolina – May, 2020
• Denver Library Staff presentation – May, 2020
• SciStarter and CoCoRaHS presentation – August, 2020
• Explora Science Fiesta – September, 2020
• Hosted a breakout room for the CSU SPUR Water in the West Symposium – November, 2020
• Zoom class to 4th graders in Denver – December, 2020
• 9News Interview – December, 2020
2021:
• Presentation to GLOBE-ESS group – Putting CitSci into Practice – January, 2021
• April 26, 2021: Water & Weather Scientists LIVE in Virtual Expo Hall (Spotty Rain)
• May 20, 2021: Presentation to TCARES (Tippecanoe County Amateur Radio Emergency Service) about CoCoRaHS
• May 26, 2021: NOAA 2021 Environmental Literacy Program PI Workshop (CoCoRaHS presentation)
• June 1, 2021: Appearance on Podcast: Rain or Shine (along with Nolan and Henry) about CoCoRaHS.
• June 11, 2021: In-person event in Greeley – Teacher Appreciation Event at Houston Gardens
• June 21, 2021: NIDIS Southwest Drought Briefing – presented about CoCoRaHS after the briefing
• July 21, 2021: Town of Windsor – Water and Sewer Board – CoCoRaHS presentation
• August 20, 2021: NOAA EDM (Environmental Data Management) workshop – CoCoRaHS presentation
• August 24, 2021: New Mexico Explora virtual workshop – CoCoRaHS presentation
• September 7, 2021: Denver Christian and Denver Water partnership – CoCoRaHS pitch to teachers
• September 16, 2021: Water Education Colorado – film clips and panelist event with Russ - CoCoRaHS
• September 30, 2021: Weather and the Caribbean – presentation to school in British Virgin Islands
NSF Project "Spotty Rain" - focused on libraries engaging the public in drought-monitoring in the Great Plains Region - http://www.spottyrain.org/
NSF Project "We Are Water" - focused on libraries engaging the public in water-education in the Four Corners Region - https://wearewater.colorado.edu/
2022:
- Utilized research noted in previous report to implement a test protocol for measuring ice storms and accepting photos.
- Created new protocol and data entry pages with intentions for improving/testing one more year before implementing fully into the CoCoRaHS website: https://www.cocorahs.org/Content.aspx?page=ice-accretion-pilot
Milestones:
2021:
- NOAA included more than 5,400 CoCoRaHS stations in their newly updated Climate Normals: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/noaa-delivers-new-us-climate-normals
- CoCoRaHS was recognized and highlighted as a case study in the Federal Crowdsourcing Citizen Science Toolkit: https://www.citizenscience.gov/cocorahs-precipitation/#
Impacts
- CoCoRaHS data are used in grids by PRISM, which in turn are used by the crop insurance industry. CoCoRaHS data save tax payers millions and millions of dollars per year, with $100 billion of crop value insured every year.
- CoCoRaHS observations were a key piece of evidence in a case of agricultural insurance fraud in eastern Colorado.
- CoCoRaHS Condition Monitoring Reports have had a significant positive impact on the assessment of drought. For example, The North Carolina Drought Management Advisory Council incorporates report information into the weekly state drought map. NWS Forecast Offices in the Carolinas reported using the reports to recommend the drought status in their county warning areas and for other products and forecasts (e.g., fire weather warnings). US Drought Monitor map authors download the reports each week as a GIS layer, as part of their “convergence of evidence” in designating drought.
- CoCoRaHS was awarded funding from the National Integrated Drought Information System to improve representation of forested areas in drought monitoring through expansion of CoCoRaHS Condition Monitoring Reports.
- In addition to Condition Monitoring Reports, CoCoRaHS rainfall and evapotranspiration measurements are incorporated into drought monitoring tools at the Midwest Regional Climate Center: https://mrcc.purdue.edu/cliwatch/drought/drought.jsp
- CoCoRaHS Snowfall data are used to secure federal snow removal aid (FEMA). Snowfall used to determine resolution of snow plowing contracts.
- CoCoRaHS precipitation data and Significant Weather Reports are used to verify radar, and are part of NWS Local Storm Reports (LSR) during severe weather and snowstorms. They are used in “event maps” for significant storms by NWS offices.
- CoCoRaHS is a source of new U.S. Coop observers
- State Climatologists rely heavily on CoCoRaHS data to fill in the gaps – a major role in monthly “situation reports”
- CoCoRaHS data are used by Natural Resource Conservation Service range condition recommendations, which in turn feeds decision by producers (stocking).
- CoCoRaHS data used to quality control U.S. Cooperative data, and vice versa.
- CoCoRaHS data provides the observational density to ensure the quality of both networks (CoCoRaHS and COOP).
- The National Hurricane Center uses CoCoRaHS for post‐storm analysis.
- CoCoRaHS promotes the use of citizen scientist data in the National Coordinated Soil Moisture Monitoring Network (NCSMMN).
- CoCoRaHS data are used to help verify State Records from the COOP network, and high quality CoCoRaHS observations can also set records for precipitation.
- CoCoRaHS is a designated case study in the Federal Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science Toolkit: https://www.citizenscience.gov
Publications
Grieser, J. and M. Hill, 2019: How to Express Hail Intensity—Modeling the Hailstone Size Distribution. J. Appl. Meteor. Climatol., 58, 2329–2345, https://doi.org/10.1175/JAMC-D-18-0334.1
Goble, Peter E., Nolan J. Doesken, Imke Durre, Russ S. Schumacher, Abigail Stewart, and Julian Turner, 2019: Who Received the Most Rain Today?: An Analysis of Daily Precipitation Extremes in the Contiguous United States Using CoCoRaHS and COOP Reports, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 101, 6 (2019): E710-E719.
Smith, Kelly Helm, 2019: Drought Impacts: Detecting Deviation from Expectation across Space and Time. ETD collection for University of Nebraska - Lincoln. October, 2019, AAI27547805.
Renato Morbidelli, et al, 2020: The history of rainfall data time-resolution in a wide variety of geographical areas. Journal of Hydrology, Volume 590, 125258, ISSN 0022-1694, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2020.125258.
Goble, Peter E., Nolan J. Doesken, Imke Durre, Russ S. Schumacher, Abigail Stewart, and Julian Turner, 2020: Strength in Numbers: Daily Precipitation Extremes over CONUS, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 101, 8 (2020): E679-E682
Henry Reges & Nolan Doesken, 2020: A Day in the Life of the CoCoRaHS Network, Weatherwise, 73:4, 32-39, DOI: 10.1080/00431672.2020.1762416
Campbell JL, Rustad LE, Garlick S, Newman N, Stanovick JS, Halm I, Driscoll CT, Barjenbruch BL, Burakowski E, Hilberg SD, Sanders KJ, Shafer JC, Doesken NJ., 2020: A comparison of low-cost collector configurations for quantifying ice accretion. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 59: 1429-1442, https://doi.org/10.1175/JAMC-D-19-0280.1.
Montano, P., Gold, A., Leckey, E., et al., 2020: We Are Water - Community Perspectives at the Center of Designing Informal STEM Education Experiences About Water, AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts, vol. 2020, 2020.
Rongstad, B, Montano, P., Newman, N., et al., 2021: We Are Water - Community Voices and Collaborative Partnerships Inform Development of Informal STEAM Education Experiences, AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts, vol. 2021, 2021.
Spaccio, Jessica, Arthur DeGaetano, and Nolan Doesken, 2021: COVID-19 Stay-at-Home Orders Result in a Decrease in the Number of Missing Daily Precipitation Observations, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 102, 3 (2021): 207-209
Elmore, K. L., Allen, J. T., & Gerard, A. E., 2022 : Sub-Severe and Severe Hail, American Meteorological Society, Weather and Forecasting, 37(8), 1357-1369.