Weather and Climate Research at the Kentucky Climate Center based on Mesonet Observations

The Kentucky Mesonet is a great asset for the Commonwealth of Kentucky in a multitude of ways, from real-time storm monitoring to building a detailed climate record. A detailed climate record is essential as causality between observations and extreme weather can be identified, making it a great tool in an evolving climate system. The climate record being developed at the 75+ Kentucky Mesonet observation stations consists of approximately 75 indices that reflect frequency, extremes, range, duration, trends of precipitation, droughts, and extreme temperatures. Calculations are done for daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal, bi-annual, and annual aggregation periods. Tools will also be developed based on interactions with policymakers and stakeholders as they will be making decisions today that impact the region’s main economic sectors (e.g., water, energy, transportation, etc.) as infrastructure erected today will likely be in place when the climate is different than at present. We will present the list of indices and explain how they add to our understating of Kentucky’s evolving, yet distinct, climate systems (e.g., Appalachia in the east, the Southern Mississippi River Valley in the west, subtropical in the south and continental humid in the north). Additionally, a discussion on the use of real-time weather observation from the Kentucky Mesonet on traffic accident location, causality, and severity will be addressed. This will aid in the future development of infrastructure under an evolving climate. To accomplish the objectives, the unstructured grid established by the ~80 Mesonet sites across the state are interpolated to a 500-meter cartesian grid using physical principles and remotely sensed data (e.g., elevation, surface roughness, and albedo). This new data set will then provide accurate details on weather conditions and the time and location of an accident. Results will be provided for 11 major interstates across the Commonwealth