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Identifying local climate impacts
on weather and water
Marina Timofeyeva, Fiona Horsfall and Jenna Meyers, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration;
Annette Hollingshead, Wyle Information Systems
U
nderstanding and provision of integrated environmen-
tal information is one of the top priorities in the new
Weather-Ready Nation strategy recently introduced by
the National Weather Service (NWS) at the US National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The ability to identify
and predict local climate impacts on weather and water is critical
because most climate-sensitive decisions occur at the local level
such as cities, counties and states.
Climate serves as a driving force in the frequency of extreme
weather and water events. Public warnings on the occurrence
of climate events and their possible impacts, such as fresh water
shortages in the Pacific Islands during El Niño events, provide
actionable information to help build communities’ resilience
to weather and water elements. Efficient local service is a key
component for the effective dissemination of climate informa-
tion. The NWS is presently working towards developing a local
climate analysis tool (LCAT) to enable office staff and techni-
cal users to access, manipulate, and interpret climate data, and
characterize climate variability and change linkages to weather
and water elements.
To ensure the relevance of the tool to end users, the LCAT
Integrated Working Team identifies requirements and sets priorities
for development. LCAT’s capabilities are being developed to respond
to the needs of NOAA staff providing operational climate services,
as well as those of external technical users making climate-sensitive
decisions. External technical user groups include:
• Natural resource managers (such as hydrologists,
planning and operational engineers of water
reservoirs and energy turbines using water, nuclear,
wind and solar sources of power generation)
• Wildlife managers including fisheries, national
parks, and marine sanctuaries
• Researchers working on climate information
applications for national security including
agriculture, environment, transportation and
military matters.
The LCAT Integrated Working Team is using different
ways to identify requirements, including literature surveys,
reviews of user logs maintained by NWS local offices, and
direct engagement with users, such as through the Annual
Climate Prediction Application Science Workshop.
The enabling role of LCAT
LCAT is an online interactive tool that will enable local
users to conduct regional and local climate studies using
state-of-the-art station and reanalysis gridded data and
various statistical techniques. LCAT uses the principles of
artificial intelligence to respond to queries, in particular,
through use of machine technology that responds intel-
ligently to input from users. The user translates customer
questions into primary variables and issues, and LCAT
pulls the most relevant data and analysis techniques
to provide information back to the user, who in turn
responds to their customer. Most responses take on the
order of 10 seconds, which includes providing statistics,
graphical displays of information, translations for users,
metadata, and a summary of the user request to LCAT.
The results are used to provide services to guide
local decision makers in weather- and climate-sensitive
actions and to deliver information to the general public.
LCAT augments current climate reference materials
with relevant regional and local. Its main emphasis is to
enable studies of extreme meteorological and hydrologi-
cal events such as tornadoes, floods, droughts and severe
storms. LCAT will close a very critical gap in NWS local
climate services because it provides analysis of climate
variables beyond average temperature and total precipi-
tation. NWS external partners and government agencies
will benefit by incorporating LCAT’s output easily into
their own analysis and delivery systems.
W
ater
Image: NOAA
A billboard in Pohnpei during the severe El Niño event in 1997-1998