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ARS Home » Pacific West Area » Boise, Idaho » Northwest Watershed Research Center » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #83527
Title: MICROCOMPUTER PROGRAM FOR DAILY WEATHER SIMULATION IN THE CONTIGUOUS U.S.

Author
item Hanson, Clayton
item CUMMING, KIRK - 5362-
item WOOLHISER, D.
item RICHARDSON, C.

Submitted to: Microcomputer Program for Daily Weather Simulation in the Contiguous United
Publication Type: Government Publication
Publication Acceptance Date: 7/31/1994
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary: There are a limited number of climate stations in the U.S., particularly in the Western United States, that have the necessary daily weather records for use in natural resource model development and validation or for utilizing models at field locations. Many applications of resource models require long records of daily precipitation, maximum and minimum temperature and solar radiation which can be used to simulate a weather record for any site in the contiguous United States by knowing the latitude and longitude of the site. Other applications of USCLIMAT.BAS include generation of daily precipitation to estimate daily runoff and erosion. Also, sequences of daily weather data can be used as input for estimating plant growth, developing farm and ranch management plans, and helping to improve knowledge of the climatology of the United States.

Technical Abstract: The microcomputer program USCLIMAT.BAS provides precipitation probabilities or simulates daily precipitation, maximum temperature, minimum temperature and solar radiation for an n-year period at a given location within the contiguous United States. The model is designed to preserve the dependence in time, the internal correlation, and the seasonal characteristics that exist in actual weather data. Daily maximum temperature, and solar radiation are simulated using a weekly stationary generating process conditioned on the precipitation process which is described by a Markov chain-mixed exponential model. Parameters for a specific station within a region can be accessed directly, or they can be estimated for points between stations. The seasonal variations of parameters are described by Fourier series.