Spring 2024 23 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE ENVIRONMENT of this change comes from increasingly comprehensive data. The map’s newest version uses data from 13,412 weather stations, compared with the previous version’s 7,983. A more sophisticated version of Daly’s PRISM climate mapping system also gives a nuanced picture of temperature patterns. For instance, a look at Northeast Portland in the map’s ZIP-code–searchable online version (planthardiness.ars.usda.gov) shows a patchwork of two zones that change, in some cases, neighborhood by neighborhood. Before Daly became involved in the process in the 1990s, this level of detail and timeliness was simply not possible. Working with hydrologist and climatologist Phil Pasteris of Tigard, he ushered the USDA into the digital world by creating a computerized replacement for a process so time-consuming that the nation’s climate maps hadn’t been updated in nearly 30 years. The newly digital map was “an immediate hit,” when it debuted in 2012, according to Peter Bretting, a national program leader for the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service. But more than that, he said, Daly’s work “helped establish a quality standard for this sort of thing. There’s nothing of this quality for any other place on the planet.” Better Data, Better Decisions PRISM is a computer model developed by Daly in 1991 when he was a Ph.D. student at Oregon State, studying under Ron Neilsen, a bioclimatologist with the EPA who had courtesy faculty appointments with the OSU colleges of Agricultural Sciences and Forestry. Daly devoted only one chapter of his dissertation to PRISM, but that was enough to generate interest from just about everyone who relied on the previously hand-drawn maps, including the Department of Agriculture. The PRISM Climate Group’s signature product is 30-year climate “normals” for the United States. The first edition of the normals covered 1961 to 1990. Since then, PRISM has published normals every 10 years, each time adding data and modeling from the most recent decade’s and dropping the least recent. “Any time you see a detailed map of climate variables — like precipitation, temperature or dew point — showing percentage of average or deviation from average, most likely PRISM normals are underlying that calculation,” Daly said. PRISM also produces a series of maps of several climate variables on a daily basis going back to 1981 and has monthly maps back to 1895. “These are downloaded about a million times a month from our website and used throughout government and industry,” Daly said. Why is this data so important to so many people? Expensive decisions both big and small are made based on it. The latest update of the normals was sponsored by the USDA Risk Management Agency, the group which oversees the federal crop insurance program and is a key supporter of Daly’s team. A Unique Career Path Daly, who started out as an electrical engineering student, calls his career “an interesting journey in terms of how the mind works” and a good example for younger people wondering what they should do next. “I thought I wanted to work in radio communications, but it made my brain happy to look at variations in climate,” he said. “My life has been a lesson in following what makes your mind active and interested. What I ended up doing involved some unexpected turns that I couldn’t envision when I made that book of elevations at 8 years old.” ↑ Eighty million gardeners and the growers who supply them have Chris Daly to thank for the data that tells them what grows where. ANY TIME YOU SEE A DETAILED MAP OF CLIMATE VARIABLES … MOST LIKELY PRISM NORMALS ARE UNDERLYING THAT CALCULATION.
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