Tuesday, November 14, 2006
141-7

Global Meteorological Data for Short and Long Term Agricultural Applications.

James Hoell1, Paul W. Stackhouse2, William Chandler1, David Westberg1, Charles Whitlock1, and Taiping Zhang3. (1) SAIC/Langley Research Center, One Enterprise Pkwy., Hampton, VA 23666-5845, (2) NASA Langley Research Center, 21 Langley Blvd., Mail Stop 420, Hampton, VA 23681-2199, (3) Analytical Services and Materials, Inc., One Enterprise Pkwy, Hampton, VA 23666-5845

Application of agricultural Decision Support Systems (DSS) requires accurate environmental data on time scales ranging from hours to decades. NASA’s Prediction of Worldwide Energy Resource (POWER) project, which has as one of its objectives the development of data products for agricultural applications, currently provides a climatological data base of meteorological parameters and surface solar energy fluxes on a global 10 latitude by 10 longitude grid. The daily agricultural data products currently available through a prototype web based information interface (http://earth-www.larc.nasa.gov/power), consist of total surface solar radiation, averaged dew point temperature and precipitation, and maximum and minimum temperatures. The solar data has been inferred from satellite observations that cover the time period from July 1, 1983 through 2004; the temperature parameters are from the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) version 4 analyses, and cover the time period from January 1, 1983 through 2004; and the daily averaged precipitation is taken from the Global Precipitation Climate Project and covers the time period from 1997 – 2005. Besides climatological data sets, NASA is also developing capabilities to produce near-real time data sets. In this presentation, we discuss the use of the near real time (2 to 3 day lag) global maximum and minimum daily temperature data from the GEOS quick-look products as input to solar estimators in order to provide near real time estimates of surface solar radiation. Global solar energy fluxes having a 4 – 7 day lag are also being developed and tested via the NASA FLASHFlux (Fast Longwave and SHortwave radiative Fluxes) project. Results of validation studies of the GEOS quick-look temperature data and the resulting estimated solar radiation are presented. These will be compared to FLASHFlux data sets as available for a few instances.