Western Regional Climate Center

THE WESTERN REGIONAL Climate Center (WRCC), based in Reno, Nevada, and inaugurated in 1986, is one of six regional climate centers in the United States. The regional climate center program is administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Specific supervision is provided by the National Climatic Data Center of the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service.

The mission of the Western Regional Climate Center is to disseminate climate data and information of the highest standards pertaining to the western United States; promote better use of this information in policymaking; carry out applied research related to climate issues; and improve the coordination of climate-related activities at the state, regional, and national levels. The center receives queries from lawyers, media, insurance companies, different businesses, teachers and students, contractors, the Forest Service, state and local government, and individuals interested in weather observation.

The data collected by the center include daily climate observations for a digital period of record (6,781 stations, about 2,608 now active), summarized monthly climate data (5,240 stations), hourly precipitation data (1,937 stations), upper air soundings recorded twice a day (about 50 stations), surface airway hourly observations (over 1,800 stations nationwide). In addition, the center provides access to these databases: remote automatic weather station, historic lightning data though 1996, access to Natural [Page 1090]Resources Conservation Service SNOTEL (SNOw-pack TELemetry), and other western databases.

The WRCC coordinates the work of federal resource management agencies and western committees and commissions. It liaises with other centers and programs such as the National Climate Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina; regional climate centers; state climatol-ogists and state climate programs; the Climate Analysis Center, Washington D.C.; and the National Weather Service. Its main areas of research include the effects of climate variability in the western United States, the quality control of western databases, the relation of El Nino/Southern Oscillation to western climate, the climatic trends and fluctuations in the West, geographic information systems, and remote sensing. It is also the home of the regional climatologist.

Although the WRCC is concerned with some of the most evident phenomena of global warming, such as the effect of El Nino on western climate, the clima-tologists at the center do not agree on a single definition of global warming. For example, in July 2007, Jim Ashby, one of the WRCC climatologists, challenged the credibility of weather data collected by weather stations, as they are often moved. Even moving the weather station just few hundred yards could make a difference in temperature and moisture, Ashby maintained, creating a situation in which data belonging to different areas are compared. This comparison of inhomogeneous data would be, according to Ashby, the same as comparing apples and oranges. Ashby has also stressed that even stations that remain in the same place can have changing circumstances that alter weather readings.

Atmospheric readings can be altered by the surroundings (the presence of trees favors cooler temperatures, whereas new buildings and more roads and rooftops retain more heat). Ashby takes Reno, where the Western Regional Climate Center is situated, as a classic example of a place where weather is being changed by urbanization. Average low temperatures in town have risen about 10 degrees (5 degrees C) in the last 20 years. “Most of the warming is due to the fact Reno is growing like a weed,” Ashby argued. “The weather station used to be out in a field somewhere. Now it's surrounded by asphalt.” This line of reasoning comes dangerously close to that of global warming contrarians, who say that all the moves and changes at weather stations have affected the validity of the climate record.

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