World Weather Atlas Owes Utah Plenty

Captivated by wind and water since childhood, Donald T. Jensen has spent most of his 57 years hoarding every weather map, temperature list and rainfall measurement he could find.

Now his stash, and his method of tying it all together, has helped form the database of the World Water and Climate Atlas, a series of CD-ROMs.

International agricultural officials say the collection of worldwide weather conditions should help farmers, engineers, scientists and policymakers boost farm production, conserve water and possibly anticipate the effects of global warming.

“We expect scientists to find many other important applications for the atlas that we haven’t even dreamed about ourselves,” said Jensen, a professor at Utah State University and the state’s climatologist.

Compiling global weather history into a single source was an unfulfilled goal for Jensen until just over a year ago, when a representative of the International Irrigation Management Institute walked into his Utah Climate Center on the university’s campus in Logan, 68 miles north of Salt Lake City.

The institute is one of 16 research centers supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, an organization financed by the World Bank and other private and public entities.

The institute wanted an electronic database of climate information and dispatched its consultant, Andy Keller, a Logan-based irrigation engineer, to see what Jensen had.

“I was told Don had a lot of data, but I was surprised by the amount,” Keller said.

Maps of Utah hung on the walls and Jensen had used his own system of color codes to illustrate them with historical weather patterns.

“They asked if I could do that for them, and I said I’d be glad to,” Jensen recalled.

Jensen then directed a project that gathered precipitation, temperature readings and other information from 56,000 weather stations around the world.

Finally, data from a 30-year period--1961-90--was transferred onto detailed maps to illustrate climate conditions for anywhere in the world.

To demonstrate, Jensen slips a CD-ROM into a computer, clicks on a world map and highlights the southern tip of India and Sri Lanka.

After selecting a series of precipitation readings for a 12-month period, a rainbow of color slowly moves across the terrain, illustrating dry seasons in shades of red and wet periods in green and blue.

Because weather patterns often repeat, having historical weather extremes and averages can help farmers or government agronomists make better use of land and water. By using the atlas, irrigation systems can be fine-tuned so water is not wasted.

Some 70% of all water annually goes to irrigation, which produces 30-40% of the world’s food crops on just 17% of the arable land, Jensen said.

“The atlas will assume even greater importance in coming years as water, especially for agriculture, becomes scarcer,” said David Seckler, director general of the irrigation institute, based in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research says the atlas also will give national and international agencies a clearer picture of how best to invest scarce resources in agriculture.

The first volume of the atlas covers Asia and is available on disc or on Utah State University’s Internet site. The entire database should be complete by year’s end.