University of Montana Starts Montana Climate Center

Weather impacts all Montanans. From outdoor enthusiasts to wheat farmers and winter drivers, weather plays a crucial role in all our lives and livelihoods.

University Relations

But Big Sky Country is one of only three states without an office of climatology. To fill this void, The University of Montana has stepped forward to start the new Montana Climate Center. The office will provide detailed information on weather, climate, snow, fire, agriculture and much more.

“Climate data is amazingly important,” said Don Potts, the new center’s director and a UM water resources professor. “Much of our economy is directly driven by weather.”

The Montana Climate Center will be operated by UM’s College of Forestry and Conservation — specifically the Numerical Terradynamic Simulation Group. NTSG has designed software for NASA environmental satellites, and Roger Pielke, past-president of the American Association of State Climatologists, calls NTSG the best climatology research group in Montana.

The new center has a Web site at http://climate.ntsg.umt.edu. Potts said the site provides a gateway to a vast array of information, including weather alerts, current satellite snapshots of Montana skies and instant links to weather conditions in communities across the state. The site also includes links to Montana Department of Transportation Web cameras that give up-to-date images of mountain-pass roads.

The site also funnels people to prominent Web pages like those run by the National Weather Service , U.S. Geologic Survey, Montana Department of Agriculture and Montana Natural Resource Information System.

“We want this site to be one-stop shopping for people,” Potts said. “It serves as a conduit of information. We don’t want to replace good, existing information sources, but rather lead people to them. If farmers need information on irrigation, we can take them to it. If a boater needs to check river levels, we have it. If a skier wants snow levels, this is the site.”

Of the 47 states that have offices of climatology, all but seven are housed at universities. Montana previously had an office of climatology based at Montana State University-Bozeman until the mid-1990s, but it was discontinued when the state climatologist there retired and the decision was made to discontinue funding.

NTSG director Steve Running said the UM Montana Climate Center will operate using existing resources. He said Daniel Dwyer, UM’s new vice president for research, was instrumental in getting the center jump-started at UM.

Running’s research group has amassed vast amounts of climate data on Montana during the past 20 years, and the new center will provide a practical outlet for this information. He said his office will generate unique information for the site such as weekly vegetative productivity of the state to Montana-wide temperature profiles — all from NASA satellites.

“This is a valuable service we can provide to Montana for little money using our existing in-house capabilities,” Running said. “We plan to keep updating and improving the site as much as possible.”

http://www.umt.edu/urelations/releases/2003/Climate03.htm