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NEW
ON-LINE TOOL TAILORS CLIMATE FORECASTS TO FIT RESOURCE MANAGERS' NEEDS
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A
soon-to-be-released online tool, developed through NASA funding, provides "Consumer
Reports" type evaluations of seasonal forecasts for water, land and agricultural
managers. By helping users determine what forecasts are right for their needs,
this tool could help users make multi-million dollar decisions. Seasonal
forecasts predict whether temperatures and precipitation in an area will be above
average or below average for an upcoming season. This tool tells users how accurate
these predictions have been in the past. If
understood and used properly, long-range forecasts can greatly aid in the management
of water, fires, cattle, agriculture, energy and more.
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2 | | | "There
is so much misinterpretation concerning climate forecasts in general," said
Holly Hartmann, a University of Arizona hydrologist, and lead author of a paper
that is the cover story in the May issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological
Society. "Part of our tool tries to make sure that forecasts are easy to
interpret and that people can reliably interpret them." When
millions of dollars and lives are at stake, resource managers have been tentative
about taking advantage of sophisticated climate forecasts available on the Web.
By explaining and evaluating these forecasts, the new tool helps decision makers
utilize them regardless of their training.
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3 | | | "One
of the major reasons why natural resource managers don't use climate forecasts
is because they don't know how good they are," said Tom Pagano, a University
of Arizona researcher, and co-author of the paper. Seasonal
forecasts are made through the use of data from satellites, computer models, and
ocean buoys. Scientists predict the climate of future seasons based on interactions
between atmospheric pressures and slowly varying ocean temperatures. They then
compare these assessments with historical weather patterns. The
tool allows users to customize evaluations to consider the lead-times, seasons
and locations most relevant to each resource manager's specific needs. For
example, the high likelihood of a wet winter gives water reservoir managers in
the southwest more confidence when they make decisions to let water out of a reservoir
in the fall. A mistake can lead to water shortages, as well as millions of dollars
spent pumping ground water. Ranchers,
on the other hand, use seasonal forecasts to make predictions concerning winter
and summer climates that effect grass growth. By having an idea of the probability
of unfavorable conditions, they can stock up on hay ahead of time. Also,
wildfire managers may use seasonal forecasts of temperatures and rainfall early
in the year to budget their resources for the rest of the year, make decisions
about fire risks, and figure out when might be a good time to conduct prescribed
burns, and rehabilitate previously burned areas. The
on-line tool is currently set up to assess the seasonal outlooks regularly issued
by the National Weather Service (NWS) Climate Prediction Center (CPC), which serve
as the government's official forecasts. "Since
seasonal forecasts aren't as consistently reliable as short term weather forecasts,
it's important that we communicate their performance characteristics in a way
that users can understand and exploit the forecast," said Robert Livezey,
chief of the NWS Office of Climate, Weather, and Water Services, and a former
senior scientist at the CPC. "This work makes substantial progress in this
regard for specific users." Funding
for the project was provided through grants from NASA's Earth Observing System,
and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Currently
in the latter stages of development, the site will be made public by late summer
through the University of Arizona's Hydrological Data and Information System (HyDIS)
website: http://hydis.hwr.arizona.edu/.
Potential
users interested in final testing of the site can contact Holly Hartmann at hollyh@hwr.arizona.edu.
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