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 “This tool isn’t itself tracking what’s happening in the current
season. But it helps you put into perspective what has been
happening in the past,” said Melissa Widhalm, associate director
of the climate center.
Climate change has affected agriculture, noted Dennis Todey,
director of the climate hub. Among those changes are first fall
freezes coming later and final spring freezes happening earlier.
"We talk about that, but we didn’t have any graphics, easily
accessible data or visualizations to show people at a local
level. And agricultural producers like to see something more
local,” Todey said.
The tool may interest producers of tree fruits, grapes and row
crops such as corn and soybeans to help them take advantage of
longer growing seasons.
“They want to understand how things are changing, and they are
changing fairly rapidly in the spring and the fall,” Todey said.
Agricultural advisors, weather forecasters, university Extension
staffers and state climatologists also have expressed interest
in the tool.
“We’ve had a lot of interest from National Weather Service and
others who are responsible for issuing watches and warnings in
real time, so they put that into context with their forecasting
of this season compared to previous seasons,” Widhalm said. But
homeowners may also consult the tool to help them decide when to
bring in their plants when fall arrives or begin planting in the
spring.
“When you think about freeze, you immediately think 32 degrees.
But when it comes to agricultural applications, you might be
interested in values that are colder or warmer,” Widhalm said.
Corn and soybeans, for example, can survive 28 degrees, while
fruit trees are more sensitive to freezing or near-freezing
temperatures. And the freeze-date tool allows users to query
their desired temperatures.
Although the tool was developed for visualization rather than to
explain trends, it does have research potential.
“Just because your fall freeze date changes doesn’t mean your
spring freeze date is changing, or it could mean both of them
are changing,” Widhalm said. “Trends can be revealed in this
tool that may indicate areas needing more research.”
The Midwest Climate Hub, which funded the tool, uses it to
monitor conditions within its eight-state coverage area.
“This tool has helped us not only to display what is happening
with changes at a local level but has given us a look regionally
at where the trends are a bit different from location to
location,” Todey said. “It’s also provided us a look at the
difference in trends at different temperatures because the
trends are not the same even at the same location, depending on
what criteria you’re using.”
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The tool, which will be updated annually, draws upon Applied
Climate Information System (ACIS) data from 1950 to 2021.
Weather stations across the U.S. feed data to the ACIS, but
there are gaps in the network.
“You can combine data from the individual stations to start
filling in those gaps,” Widhalm said. “They create a product
called a gridded data set, which lets us look at these values
for a county. So if you have a lot of stations in a county, it
aggregates them.”
Purdue and the USDA had previously teamed with 10 other
universities and agencies on the Useful to Usable project. The
project’s goal was to help farmers and farm advisors integrate
climate information into their decision-making.
“We built a suite of tools that are still in use today to focus
on keeping corn production profitable, even in a shifting
climate,” Widhalm said. “The most popular was the
corn-growing-degree-day tool. Farmers could go in and track
growing degree days across the season and compare it to the past
to understand their vulnerability early in the season and help
with timing fieldwork throughout the growing season.”
The Purdue Midwest Regional Climate Center (MRCC) and the USDA
Midwest Climate Hub (MWCH) have worked well together over the
years, said MRCC director Beth Hall.
“The MWCH works with the agricultural community to help them be
more cognizant of climate impacts and how variability and
extremes might affect their production decisions,” said Hall,
who also is Indiana’s state climatologist. She noted the MRCC’s
access to historical climate data and its capacity to translate
data into usable public information.
“Agriculture is one of the most critical climate-impacted
sectors of the Midwest region, so this partnership has been a
wonderful way to help convey the trends and risks without
overwhelming stakeholders with too much science and raw data,”
she said.
Freeze Date Tool
[Purdue News Service]
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