National Weather Service Hosts Climate Workshop
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — This morning, the National Weather Service in Memphis conducted a conference with their local partners in media, education, and emergency management at the local forecast office. The meeting was designed to instruct partners in how to utilize various tools offered by the weather service across the board that are produced from the Climate Prediction Center located in Silver Springs, Maryland. The center puts out long term forecasts across the nation periodically for upcoming weeks, months, and three-month periods. Occasionally, you’ll see these shared on WBBJ 7 Eyewitness News weathercasts from the VIPIR 7 Storm Team!
One of the main topics of discussion was about the cooperative program of observers that makes some of the products offered by the Climate Prediction Center possible. West Tennessee is home to some of the 90 weather observers in the county warning area for the National Weather Service. There are roughly ten-thousand across the United States as a whole.
This week, the plane crash at the McKellar-Sipes Regional Aiport in West Madison County resulted in damage to an automatic surface observing system. Without being able to receive data from that site automatically now, Jackson will have to rely on local cooperative observers for the data across Madison county.
Local Storm Spotter William Brantley reported a high temperature of 95°F this afternoon which was important today especially because it tied the old record high temperature of 95°F set in 2010. Without cooperative observers we would miss a lot of data and wouldn’t be able to measure changes in climate like the changes we’re experiencing now!
National Weather Service Meteorologist Zachary Maye reported that the data that these observers collect is so vast that if the National Centers for Environmental Information climate data was converted to high definition television video, all of the data housed would play for over 230 years without repeat. All of that data is used to track the changes our weather makes over long periods of time, also known as the climate.
The National Weather Service isn’t exactly sure when the site at the McKellar-Sipes Regional Airport will be replaced but in the meantime we’ll be relying on our local observers for their reports!
