Scientists Gather at USU for Climate Diagnostics and Prediction Workshop

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) 47th Climate Diagnostics & Prediction Workshop recently brought national and international scientists, decision-makers, operational forecasters, and students from government, university, and private sectors to Utah State University’s Logan campus. The meeting — coordinated by USU Assistant Professor Wei Zhang — focused on climate prediction, monitoring, diagnostics, and service delivery with the objective of understanding and improving the prediction and monitoring of climate variability across spatial and temporal scales.

Participants were particularly focused on events such as on-going droughts, the drying Great Salt Lake, and declining snowpack and snowfall.

The Director of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center (CPC), David Dewitt, presented the keynote speech titled Recent Subseasonal to Seasonal Progress at the CPC. (Note: “Subseasonal” forecasts are generated at weekly intervals, up to five weeks in advance). Hailan Wang from NOAA/CPC presented Subseasonal Prediction of U.S. Drought in NOAA GEFSv12 Reforecasts. The representative of NOAA’s National Weather Service - Office of Science and Technology Modeling Division, Yan Xue, presented Improving NWS Subseasonal-to-Seasonal Forecast with Unified Forecast System: Highlights of Modeling and Analysis Results.

During the session devoted to hydroclimate in the Western United States, four speakers from USU presented the progress made in improving the understanding of Great Salt Lake water levels, Western U.S. droughts, and regional modeling at the Utah Climate Center for improving operational subseasonal climate services. These talks were presented by Professor Simon Wang, Ph.D. students Grace Affram and Matthew LaPlante, and climatologist Jon Meyer.

This workshop was chaired by USU climate scientist and Assistant Professor Wei Zhang and sponsored by Logan-based Campbell Scientific, USU’s College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences, College of Engineering, Ecology Center, and the Utah Water Research Laboratory.