Farm Director KC Sheperd spoke with Dr. Andres Cibils, Director of the USDA Southern Plains Climate Hub, to learn more about the most recent National Weather Assessment. Dr. Cibils is a Rangeland Scientist whose professional interests revolve around resilient rangeland-based animal agriculture systems.
The USDA Southern Plains Climate Hub, based in El Reno, Oklahoma, serves Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas. The Climate Hub’s central mission is to support climate-involved decision-making, reduce agricultural risks, and build climate resilience. This is accomplished through three main workstreams: Science and data synthesis, Technology for development and decision support, and outreach by partnering with extension offices and other agencies.
During the Peanut Symposium, Dr. Cibils shared the results of the fifth, and most recent, national climate assessment. The report, published every four years by the U.S. Government, is mandated by Congress, and summarizes recent trends and climate projections.
Some of the trends outlined in Dr. Cibils’s presentation showed through weather records from the previous century, that temperature and precipitation trends are changing. Roughly, he said, there is somewhat increased precipitation on the eastern side of the continental U.S., and decreased precipitation on the western side according to a comparison of the latest 30-year normal to the 20th-century average for rainfall.
He added, “With rainfall, the other thing we see is that, depending on the region, but in general and especially on the eastern part of the United States, is an increasing frequency of extreme rainfall events.”
Concerning temperatures, he said that the continental United States is hotter according to a comparison of the latest 30-year normal to the average of the entire century. “In general, in the western part of the United States, we see larger increases in annual mean temperatures. In the eastern United States, we also see increases, but in many cases, not as severe as what we saw in the western United States.”
He added that extreme patterns have changed according to the most recent national climate assessment. “The frequency of hot days and warm nights, especially, has varied across the country, but the frequency in warm nights has increased quite a lot.”
The implications for the Southern Plains that the recent national weather assessment has revealed are twofold: the combination of varying precipitation patterns and hotter temperatures affect the frequency, onset, and duration of flash droughts.
“This situation of drought characteristics happening sooner because of the compounding effect of a period of less rain and higher temperatures is one thing we have observed,” he explained. “On the other side of the spectrum for places in the Southern Plains region where we received more annual rainfall, the increased frequency of extreme rainfall events increases the risk of flooding.”
Additionally, the latest climate assessment maps showed changes in the frequency of later frost dates which also impacts crops and animal agriculture in the Southern Plains.
When asked what concerns his Climate Hub the most, Cibils replied, “One of the things that we are worried about is being of use to our producer base. In being able to work with our producer base to develop tools that will help with decision-making in varying weather and climate situations.
“There are many sources of information and a variety of decision-support tools out there, but they are not easy to find. So, our Hub is trying to develop our website to serve as a real hub for weather and climate information.”
Dr. Cibils said that producers can help the USDA Southern Plains Climate Hub better serve them by providing feedback through a variety of tools they have developed with various partners, one of which in known as the Grass-Cast. “It gets used quite a bit by folks involved in ranching on rangelands. With this tool, we try to reach out to people who we know are using it to receive feedback about how to improve it. Feedback from producers and users of these tools and websites is very important to help us improve them, to know which tools are being used, and which tools are not useful at all.”
Producers can access the information on the website by Googling “Southern Plains Climate Hub” or by clicking here.
