Ag News
Knox named interim director of Georgia weather monitoring network
Posted on Jun 26, 2018 at 20:00 PM
University of Georgia agricultural climatologist Pam Knox has been named interim director of the Georgia Automated Environmental Monitoring Network. The position came open when Dr. Ian Flitcroft retired in May.
As interim director, Knox will oversee the UGA weather network, which includes 86 weather stations statewide. Every second, each station monitors air temperature, relative humidity, rainfall, solar radiation, wind speed and direction, soil temperature at depths of 2, 4 and 8 inches, atmospheric pressure and soil moisture.
Data from the stations are summarized at 15-minute intervals. At midnight, a microcomputer on the UGA Griffin campus calculates a daily summary. This data can be accessed on the weather network’s website at weather.uga.edu.
“The weather network is used by a great variety of people in the agricultural industry to keep track of growing degree days or chill hours. Chill hours are especially important for peach growers, as peaches require a number of these hours to bloom properly. If they don’t get them, farmers have to spray chemicals to mature the trees,” Knox said. “Corn growers use the weather data to determine when to apply pesticides to fight fungal diseases.”
The National Weather Service (NWS) uses the weather network precipitation data to create the drought monitor map released every Thursday, Knox said. The NWS also uses current wind and rainfall data to identify severe weather in progress.
In addition to those in the agricultural industry, utility companies use the UGA weather network, established in 1991, to help them determine when maximum loads will occur.
“They need to know the hottest and coldest parts of the day to prepare for power usage,” Knox said.
Average people who are interested in weather and students who are learning about weather use the stations, too. Knox was once one of those students.
“I became interested in the weather when I was in the third grade and a tornado came three blocks from my house,” she said. “In college, I was into physics and I got my master’s degree in meteorology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.”
Knox came to UGA in 2001 and worked alongside David Stooksbury, UGA agricultural engineer and former state climatologist. Since 2012, Knox has worked as an agricultural climatologist in the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
“Some of the projects I have been doing over the past five to six years have been granted-funded projects on agriculture and climate variability and how climate affects crops and livestock,” Knox said.
Before coming to Georgia, Knox was the Wisconsin state climatologist. Over her career, she has worked with numerous weather observation systems and cooperated with the National Weather Service and other state and federal offices. For more on Knox and the weather network, visit http://www.caes.uga.edu/newswire/story.html?storyid=7611.
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