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It’s All Relative: Examining Heat Severity Using the United States Climate Reference Network

April 6, 2021 @ 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm

OneNOAA Seminar Series

Title: It's All Relative: Examining Heat Severity Using the United States Climate Reference Network

Presenter(s): Jared Rennie, NOAA NESDIS NCEI NCICS

Sponsor(s): NOAA NESDIS NCEI Seminar Series

Seminar Contact: Jake.Crouch@noaa.gov

Remote Access: Please register for NCEI Seminar Series at: 

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Abstract: Extreme heat is one of the most pressing human health climate risks in the United States, exacerbated by an aging population, warming climate, and suburban sprawl. Much work in heat health has focused on temperature-only thresholds, which do not measure the physiological impact of heat stress on the human body. The National Weather Service incorporates Heat Index (HI) in its warning criteria. While the HI metric incorporates both temperature and relative humidity, it is calculated in the shade, and does not take into account factors such as wind and solar radiation. For human health applications, wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT) is a more comprehensive measure of how heat affects humans, and is currently used in operational settings by industry, military, and athletic organizations. In this study, observations from the United States Climate Reference Network (USCRN) will provide the critical weather elements required to estimate WBGT. A data set including WBGT has been developed for the114 USCRN sites in the contiguous 48 states for the period 2009-2020. Using this derived heat exposure product, two separate analyses of heat are conducted. The first analysis is based on standardized anomalies, which places current heat state in the context of a long-term climate record. Traditional approaches require a lengthy record (usually 30 years) in order to generate a climatology. In this study, a method will be described that generates robust climatologies from shorter time series such as those of the USCRN. In the second analysis approach, heat events will be classified and organized by severity and duration. There is no consensus as to what defines a heat event, so a comparison of absolute thresholds (>= 90F >= 100F, etc.) and relative thresholds (>= 95th percentile, >= 98th percentile, etc.) based on several heat measures will be examined. The scale of WBGT tends to be in a lower range than other heat measures. Within this context, the issues of communicating WBGT to the general public will be discussed. 

Bio: Jared Rennie is a research meteorologist at NCICS, which is co-located with NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) in Asheville, NC. He joined NCICS in 2010 and currently supports maintenance and expansion of major land surface datasets, including NCEI’s Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) and United States Climate Reference Network (USCRN). These products are essential to addressing climate data needs on a national and international scale. Mr. Rennie is also interested in data visualization and is constantly working on new ways to convey weather and climate data to the public. In 2019, he received a certificate in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), from NC State. He has also completed scientific research using various weather datasets, working with organizations such as FEMA, CDC, the Society of Actuaries, and the Department of Defense.  

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{Jared Rennie, NOAA NESDIS NCEI NCICS}

Details

Date:
April 6, 2021
Time:
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm

Venue

Webinar