Download pptx - Innovative Climate Products Heat Index, Holiday, and Recreation Climatologies Innovative Climate Products Heat Index, Holiday, and Recreation Climatologies

Innovative Climate ProductsHeat Index, Holiday, and Recreation Climatologies

Ashley Frazier, Corey Davis, John McGuire, Mark Brooks, and Ryan Boyles

Virginia and Carolinas Climate ConferenceOctober 20, 2009

Wilmington, NC

Motivation

• Heat Index Climatology– Request from NWS to look at frequency of high

heat index by location

• Holiday Climatology– Request from media for climatology for holidays

that don’t fall on same date each year

• Recreation Climatology– Corey’s dad wants to know where to fish

Virginia & Carolinas Climate Conference - October 20, 2009 - Wilmington, NC 2


Heat Index Climatology



• Only stations with long-term hourly data are included

• The earliest start year possible is 1972- Discrepancy among many of these long-

term stations from the late 1960s through the early 1970s when observations were taken every 3 hours








30 seconds to generate this graph

Holiday Climatology

• Product provides temperature and precipitation averages, extremes for a specified holiday

• Use NWS long-term COOP data


Holiday Climatology

New Year’s Day*Martin Luther King DayGroundhog DayValentine’s Day*President’s DaySt. Patrick’s Day*Easter*Memorial DayIndependence Day


*Labor Day

*Columbus Day

Halloween

*Election Day

Veteran’s Day

*Thanksgiving

Christmas Eve

Christmas Day

New Year’s Eve


Holiday Climatology


Recreation Climatology

• Provides favorable climate conditions for outdoor activities in the Southeast

• Users can input their intended activity, location, and/or date range, or may search for any of these three criteria


The recreation climatology main page, with a general search entered in the top panel.


• Once the information has been selected and the user clicks “Submit”, a three-step process takes place:


1. Data retrieval

2. Data rating

3. Data return


• Developed hourly climatology for temperature, humidity, winds, precipitation, cloud cover

• User defines location – we select nearest station

• Favorable conditions are calculated based on thresholds


• For each activity, the significance of each parameter is listed as a percentage

• Not all activities are sensitive to a given parameter


Recreation Climatology• A favorability rating between 0 and 5 is assigned

to each retrieved weather parameter for each hour





• The formulas used in the schemes are not currently based on scientific or survey data, so ratings may be arbitrary



• Finally, the results are returned to the user depending on his or her search


- General (user inputs Activity, Location, and Date Range)

- Activity (user inputs Location and Date Range)- Location (user inputs Activity and Date Range)- Date Range (user inputs Activity and location)





Questions?

Heat Index Climatologyhttp://www.nc-climate.ncsu.edu/climate/heat_index_climatology.php

Holiday Climatologyhttp://www.nc-climate.ncsu.edu/holiday_climatology.php

Recreation Climatology- Not yet operational; still work to be done to optimize queries

for quick data retrieval and display


http://www.nc-climate.ncsu.edu/climate/heat_index_climatology.php

http://www.nc-climate.ncsu.edu/holiday_climatology.php