Land-Atmosphere Interactions as Observed by a Statewide in-situ Surface Observation Network

The Kentucky Mesonet is a great asset for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, from realtime storm monitoring to building a detailed climate record. A detailed climate record is essential as causality between observations and extreme weather can be identified. The climate record being developed at the 80+ Kentucky Mesonet observation stations consists of approximately 75 indices. The indices include frequency, extremes, range, duration, and trends of precipitation, droughts, and temperature. For example, calculations of Warm/Dry days (daily mean temperature > 75th percentile of daily mean temperature and daily mean rainfall < 25th percentile of daily precipitation sum where the percentiles are based on a climatology taken from reanalysis between 1961 and 1990) are done for daily, monthly, seasonal, bi-annual, and annual aggregation periods. Particular attention will given to soil moisture - precipitation feedbacks as Kentucky has a karst geology which generates soil moisture gradients. Soil Moisture-precipitation feedbacks, the beginning and ending of land-atmosphere interactions in general, are highly dependent on the wind flow regime and atmospheric stability, so these relationships will elucidated in the presentation.  Tools will 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. Examples will be provided that sample the different climate zones of the state, relative elevations of site locations, as well as different land cover and land uses.