Critical Skills Shortages in Meteorology:

Agroclimatology and Micro-meteorology

Jean L. SteinerUSDA Agricultural Research Service

El Reno, OK

Mini-Workshop, Office of the Federal Coordinator for Meteorological Services

Objectives

• Importance of Agroclimatology and Micrometeorology in advancing climate services

• Critical skills needed within the agricultural research community

• Current and projected skill shortages•Addressing skill shortages• Impact on weather and climate

services•Recommendations

Agricultural Research Service

•Over 100 locations nationwide•Natural resource locations intentionally

distributed in key agro-ecological regions • Coordination across locations within Office

of National Programs and 8 Area Offices•A great deal of autonomy given to

Research Leaders and Laboratory Directors at locations regarding skills needed, recruitment, and staff development

ARS National Programs dependent on climatology/ micrometeorology

skills

•Climate Change, Soils and Emissions

•Water Resources •Manure and Byproduct Utilization•Rangeland, Pasture, and Forages • Integrated Pest Management

Agroclimatology & Micrometeorology Research

Areas• Adaptation to climate change• Mitigating GHG emissions from agriculture• Drought planning and mitigation• Decision support for agriculture and

natural resource management• Environmental services and markets (e.g.

C-credits, water quality trading) • Monitoring technologies for environmental

markets and mitigation programs • Enhancing resilience of agriculture and

landscapes under extreme events

Critical skills needed within the agricultural research community

• Scaling (fluxes, mass balance) from field to landscape and regional scales

•Developing new measurement methods

•Developing decision support systems for multiple objectives, tradeoffs, & optimization

• Systems research skills

Land Use

Pressures on Water Resources

Beyond the need to collect new data, existing long-term records must be archived and

preserved carefully, and observations must be continued indefinitely at sites with long high- quality records, so that patterns of temporal variability, including long-term low-frequency fluctuations, can be identified and studied. .

A Plan for a New Science Initiative on the Global Water Cycle. Hornberger et al., 2001.

Critical skills needed within the agricultural research community

•Data system design and management

•Data mining of historical data sets

Interactive Communication

Spaces

Self-selection into communities of

interest

Open Information Age

Open access movement

Open Government/Open Information

• OMB Circular A-130 directed federal agencies to take initiative to disseminate information, maximize usefulness of information, and assist public in locating information. 1996.

• GAO Report 04-382. Watershed Management: Better Coordination of Data collection Efforts Needed to Support Key Decisions. 1998.

• Federal Geographic Data Committee FGDC-STD-001-1988 established standards for geospatial data publication

Software Interface

Skill shortages

•Remote sensing, GIS, modeling•Micrometeorology• Instrumentation development•Data assimilation into models•Communication, team skills•Conducting and managing

“systems” research•Working and managing research in

networked world

Programs to address skill shortages

• Technical •ARS Administrator’s Research Associate Program•Internships, graduate student training •Visiting scientists

•Research leadership and management •OPM management and executive training •Other management and executive training •Shadowing•Special assignments

Contributions of visiting scientists, research

associates, students

•Bring particular skill or expertise to a problem that is not in core staff

•Bring focus to a particular problem • Leverage capacity of base-program

•As staffing levels decline, capacity is not fully utilized at many locations

• Increase visibility and impact of research• For more remote locations, new

perspectives and approaches brought to team

Impact of skill gaps in agroclimatology &

micrometeorology on climate services

• Lack of quantitative rigor in projections• Poor connection of decision support research

to decision makers • Lack of quantitative information for

environmental markets • Lags in updating basic agroclimate information

used in planning and outreach – e.g. frost free periods, probabilities for particular intensity storms, seasonality of precipitation change…

• Continued reliance on historic climate information as though we were in a stationary climate

0

40

80

120

160

Ja

n-0

5

Ap

r-0

5

Ju

l-0

5

Oc

t-0

5

Ja

n-0

6

Ap

r-0

6

Ju

l-0

6

Oc

t-0

6

Ja

n-0

7

Ap

r-0

7

Ju

l-0

7

Oc

t-0

7

Ja

n-0

8

Ap

r-0

8

Ju

l-0

8

Oc

t-0

8

Pre

cip

itat

ion

(m

m d

-1)

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

Cu

mu

lati

ve

Pre

cip

ita

tio

n (

mm

)

Normal 813

2005 630

2006 500

2007 1105

2008 789

On August 19, 2007, Fort Cobb received over 9” of rain in a few hours. A nearby no-till field (above) withstood the storm, but the adjacent field (right) suffered massive erosion down to the plowpan.

Recommendations – 0 to 2 years

• Improve the process for obtaining security clearance for international scholars and students coming to work in federal laboratories

•Continue support for networks across agencies, such as this skills assessment, NIDIS, USGEO, etc.

• Ensure end users are involved in developing agricultural and natural resource climate products and services

Recommendations – 2 to 5 years

• Mechanism/avenues for peer-reviewed data publication

• Peer recognition for data publication/ contributions open data systems

• Strengthen reward systems to individual researchers for large contributions to large system projects

• Revisit how we treat basic climate analysis and communication – i.e., how relevant are 30 year “normal” analyses versus other ways to analyzed and present non-stationary long-term data.

Recommendations – 5 + years

• Federal support for continued earth observing satellites is essential

• Strengthen agroclimatology and micrometeorology programs in agricultural and natural resource management colleges/universities

•Make training in this discipline more visible•e. g., programs may be housed in soils, geography, engineering, agronomy, or other departments and lack a centralized access point for students to search out training options