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Critical Skills Shortages in Meteorology: Agroclimatology and Micro-meteorology

Critical Skills Shortages in Meteorology: Agroclimatology and Micro-meteorology. Jean L. Steiner USDA Agricultural Research Service El Reno, OK Mini-Workshop, Office of the Federal Coordinator for Meteorological Services. Objectives.

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Critical Skills Shortages in Meteorology: Agroclimatology and Micro-meteorology

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  1. Critical Skills Shortages in Meteorology:Agroclimatology and Micro-meteorology Jean L. Steiner USDA Agricultural Research Service El Reno, OK Mini-Workshop, Office of the Federal Coordinator for Meteorological Services

  2. 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

  3. 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

  4. 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

  5. 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

  6. 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

  7. Land Use

  8. 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.

  9. Critical skills needed within the agricultural research community • Data system design and management • Data mining of historical data sets

  10. Interactive Communication Spaces

  11. Self-selection into communities of interest

  12. Open Information Age Open access movement

  13. 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

  14. Software Interface

  15. 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

  16. 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

  17. 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

  18. 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

  19. 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.

  20. 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

  21. 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.

  22. 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

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