The following success stories highlight SCO activities and services. Click on the PDF icons to download the full story.

PRODUCTS & SERVICES

Climate Education Modules  

• Survey results indicate that most extension agents have no meteorology related training.
• These education modules address the need to help extension agents understand weather and climate.
• Building on this success, modules were also built for K-12 educators to use in the classroom.

CRONOS Database  

• There are many, disparate sources of climate data.
• CRONOS archives over 30-thousand stations from over 9 different observing networks.
• The database is accessed by clients throughout the nation and drives many climate-based decision support tools in North Carolina.

Data Services  

• We serve the public, in part, by providing climate data.
• Over 1800 requests were fulfilled from 2008-2010 to clients in every sector of our economy.

LSR Database  

• There is a high demand for reports of lightning, hail, flooding and storm storm damage.
• This database archives and maps storm reports throughout North Carolina and makes it easy to plot and analyze them.

NC-FIRST  

• Emergency managers responding to severe weather emergencies such as hurricanes, tornadoes and winter storms, need to understand the meteorological basics.
• This program provides an online count-level weather portal plus educational material that provides a basic understanding of various weather hazards.

Peanut Disease Advisories  

• NC grows a lot of peanuts. But 2 diseases are devastating to the crop.
• These climate-based advisories provide growers with guidance on disease pressures.
• Use of these advisories contributes to $2-6 million annually in savings.

Reference Evapotranspiration and Open Water Evaporation Estimates  

• Evapotranspiration and open water evaporation are essential to agricultural professionals and water resources managers, especially during times of drought.
• Estimates of these parameters are available online to help quantify the amount of water lost to the atmosphere from these processes.

TIMS  

• Turfgrass irrigation consumes a lot of water. Drought can make water resources scarce.
• This product estimates the amount of water actually needed by turf based on recent climate.

Wind Rose  

• A wind rose is helpful to visualize prevailing wind direction and speed over a period of time.
• This tool is used by DAQ and others to automatically and quickly generate wind roses.

Winter Storm Database  

• Winter weather can significantly impact North Carolina. Winter weather data can be hard to find.
• This database makes winter storm data searchable by date and location.
• It used by the media, forecasters, and researchers.

RESEARCH ACTIVITIES

ENSO and Crop Yield Relationships  

• Weather and climate are driving forces for agricultural production
• Evaluate ENSO's influence on corn yields, as it is the only predictable seasonal oscillation linked to shifts in southeastern U.S. temperature and precipitation
• Pre-growing season values of Multivariate ENSO Index are more strongly correlated with summer corn yield than growing season values

ENSO's Influence on Corn Planting Dates  

• ENSO affects precipitation patterns across the Southeast
• Research ENSO's impacts on silting stage of corn growth
• Reduced risk of drought stress during silking when planted:
  • As early as possible, or in June, of an El Niño year
  • In May of a La Niña year

Estimating Solar Radiation  

• Solar radiation is a critical parameter in crop and ecological modeling
• Evaluate two solar radiation estimation techniques -- Hargreaves and Samani; Stull
• Hargreaves and Samani method (with a constant k coefficient of 0.18) performs best for NC

Modeling Soil Moisture  

• Soil moisture observations are essential to the agricultural and environmental engineering communities
• Evaluate a soil moisture estimation technique using the ARIMA model
• Potentially use estimates for quality control of existing data and prediction of missing observations