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