Annette Hollingshead,
Marina Timofeyeva,
Fiona Horsfall,
and Jenna Meyers
Enhancement of Local Climate Analysis
Tool (LCAT) to support food resilience
Background & Motivation
Local Climate Analysis Tool (LCAT) introduced in July 2013,
enables studies of climate change impacts at the local level
 LCAT provides access to local and regional data and analysis
methods recommended by NOAA subject matter experts for
application at the local level
 LCAT can extend its utility to provide a beneficial resource to
decision makers like water supply managers, farmers, and
transportation planners
 LCAT could leverage variables to analyze local climate impacts and
help to ensure crop stability and hence food resilience such as
growing degree days, monthly extreme data, and drought indices
among many others
 LCAT potential  a valuable agricultural decision-support tool

What is LCAT?
LCAT can answer agricultural questions by connecting users with
the best data sets and analyses and provide clear informative output
in the form of statistics, plots and metadata
Will I need to
plant a more
resilient crop
variety?
What’s the best time
to plant & harvest to
avoid potential
drought?
Will soil moisture
be optimal?
Will climate affect
storage and
transportation of my
crop yield?
Which climate
model performs
best in my
region?
Data Set: ACIS Monthly Extreme data
NWS Forecasters
LCAT
Analysis: Time series analysis, trends,
rate of change
Data Set: NCDC Climate Division (CD)
Drought data
Analysis: Composites, risk assessment
Data Set: NCDC Climate Division
Soil Moisture data
Analysis: Time series analysis,
composites
Data Set: NCDC CD Cooling Degree
Days or CPC Forecast Region
Total precipitation
Analysis: Composites, risk assessment
Data Set: GCM outputs
Analysis: downscaling
LCAT functions and features
http://nws.weather.gov/lcat/
4
Summary

LCAT is a new and evolving climate services tool

LCAT can provide a better understanding of how
climate change and climate variability contribute to
local climate-related hazards such as, the
increase of extreme floods, droughts, or severe
weather


These have a direct impact on food resilience
LCAT can be enhanced to facilitate decisions
such as favorable planting cycles, crop types, and
harvest schedules
Future

Hopefully this can be a start to
collaboration with agricultural planners to
evaluate what new requirements are
needed in LCAT:
 Additional data sets and variables
 New analyses types
 Desired output formats (graphics, statistics,
etc…

Future work includes sharpening LCAT to
enable region specific agricultural indices
LCAT Website