Developing a framework to provide local agro-meteorological data in the U.K. (INTERMET)

Abstract

Agricultural enterprises across the UK frequently face important environmental management decisions which will have an impact of their businesses.  With regard to the management of pests and diseases, growers aim to adopt a holistic approach to factors which they can control (e.g., seed sources, previous season residue disposal) with those they cannot - mainly related to the weather.  As development and severity of attack by crop pests is closely related to weather conditions, management decisions can be guided or improved if timely and relevant weather information is available to growers.  Existing monitoring networks across the UK were not developed to service agri-environment needs but to help make long range weather forecasts.  Their data quality can be inconsistent, their locations skewed towards airfields, the coast and hill tops and they don't usually record parameters which are vital for pathogen development, such as leaf wetness duration.  In order to investigate how the situation could be improved this project was commissioned with the aim to use data from those existing networks and spatial interpolation to provide more localised weather parameters.  A world wide web based delivery system which would enable interested parties to access data relevant to them in near real time and at reasonable cost was also developed.