APPLICATIONS FOR CLIMATIC INFORMATION
from the State Climatology programs

Prepared  by Kelly Redmond  for the course Weather and Climate Applications for Resource Managers, National Advanced Resource and Technology Center, Marana, Arizona.

Kelley Redmond was the state climatologist for Organ and is currently a climatologist for the Western Regional Climate Center. The paper describes the type of requests that all state climatologists receive including the state climatology program in New Mexico

 
Introduction:

Even to the casual observer, it is obvious that weather and climate play extremely influential and significant roles in the natural world. The behavior of natural and managed systems is integrally related to the behavior of the atmosphere on a wide variety of time scales and space scales. These scales range from milliseconds to millenia in the time domain, and from the cell to the planet in the space domain.

One way to illustrating the ways in which weather and climate influences are made manifest is to simply examine informational requests springing out of a need to better understand or quantify such influences. This listing is based on about 35,000 - 40,000 requests personally processed by the author over the past 13 years. In total, they readily convey the tremendous diversity of needs for weather and climate information. Since there are other sources for near-term forecasts, the listing reflects needs which can be satisfied by obtaining retrospective historical climate information and performing the requisite analysis, rather than those based on day-to-day weather forecasts.

They have been grouped into several major sectors and are included as an attachment. The grouping is somewhat arbitrary, and some individual items span categories. The items are based on actual requests received to date. Other needs continue to arise as additions to the list, but few needs are disappearing. Many of the individual entries are based on dozens or hundreds of similar requests.

An important point is that many of the needs for weather and climate are not immediately obvious, but can be seen to be legitimate and necessary upon further reflection. One difficulty in appreciating the breadth and depth of these influences is the inability to keep track of all of them at once.

It can be seen that the large variety of needs has led to the evolution of complex system for the acquisition, retention, and dissemination of weather and climate information. In many ways, this system for the provision of information is, in its degree of complexity, reminiscent of the complexity of the climate system which it attempts to describe.

The categories are:

1.Agriculture and the life sciences

2. Engineering

3. Legal

4. Economic Development and Other miscellaneous needs