Published: July 22, 2007 10:45 pm      

MSU receives climate monitoring system

Morehead — A statewide automated environmental monitoring network will locate one of 100 stations at Morehead State University, officials said.

MSU’s Derrickson Agricultural Complex is one of the sites for the new Kentucky Mesonet monitoring station. Construction of the station was in mid-July at the farm on Ky. 377.

The project is a collaborative effort to provide local climate data to residents, who can access the information via the Web, said Dr. Adam Kantrovich, MSU assistant professor of agricultural and human sciences.

Once complete, the $1.5 million, federally funded Mesonet system will allow collection and archiving of real-time climate information and allow anyone to go to the Web to view the up-to-date and archived climate information.

The capability can assist farmers and community members decide when to plant their crops and gardens for yield maximization, to control for pests and diseases, or to simply know what the local weather is like for the family picnic, Kantrovich said.

“The system will be able to provide a service to a variety of the population for a wide variety of purposes,” Kantrovich said.

“These range from educating students about the math and science of weather and agriculture, to engineers and contractors about average annual soil moisture and temperatures for construction purposes, to local school systems and emergency personnel about weather conditions with relation to road conditions, and for the local agricultural producers to make appropriate management decisions about their crops and livestock.”

The statewide network will collect real-time weather and climate observations, and will support a variety of products to serve needs across Kentucky.

Instruments will measure precipitation, temperature, relative humidity, solar radiation, wind speed and direction, soil moisture and soil temperature.

Data will be packaged into observations every five minutes and transmitted to the Kentucky Climate Center every 15 minutes, 24 hours per day, throughout the year. Data from Mesonet will have wide-ranging application in agriculture, education, emergency management, engineering and construction, water supply management, weather forecasting and other areas.

“Kentucky doesn’t have a widespread climate data system in place, which is what we hope to accomplish,” said Stephen Struebig, Mesonet technician. “This project will help communities and will provide a good set of data for the National Weather Service, emergency planning agencies and others affected by severe weather.”