Weather of Fort Necessity National Battlefield and Friendship Hill National Historic Site: Eastern Rivers and Mountains Network summary report for 2011

Knight, Paul; Imhoff, Kyle; Bahrmann, Chad; Miller, Sonya

Weather and climate are widely recognized as key drivers of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, affecting biotic as well as abiotic ecosystem characteristics and processes. Global and regional scale climatic patterns, trends, and variations are critical to the cycling of elements, nutrients, and minerals through ecosystems and can deliver pollutants from regional and even global sources (National Assessment Synthesis Team 2001). These variations and trends influence the fundamental properties of ecologic systems such as soil-water relationships and plant-soil processes and their disturbance rates and intensity. Information obtained from meteorological monitoring will be useful to interpreting and understanding changes in species composition, community structure, water and soil chemistry, and related landscape processes (Marshall and Piekielek 2007). The purpose of this report is to provide a concise weather and climate summary for January 1 to December 31, 2011, and to place current patterns and trends in an appropriate historical and regional context (Marshall et al. 2012). It is our intention that this report will satisfy an inherent interest in meteorological phenomena and meet portions of the Eastern Rivers and Mountains Network (ERMN) Weather and Climate Monitoring objective: Document current status and long-term trends in air temperature and precipitation at multiple temporal scales (e.g., daily, monthly, seasonal, annual, and decadal) and spatial scales (e.g., individual stations and aggregated stations such as climate divisions) utilizing existing weather and climate monitoring programs and datasets. To accomplish this objective, a variety of atmospheric data streams were evaluated for their quality, longevity, and applicability to the ERMN parks. Since no single weather-observing network contains all the pertinent measures of atmospheric phenomena to assess ecosystem health, an objective analysis of the data networks was developed and outlined in the Weather and Climate Monitoring Protocol for the Eastern Rivers and Mountains Network and the Mid-Atlantic Network of the National Park Service (Marshall et al. 2012). Through this analysis, a select number of weather/climate-observing stations were chosen as representative of each park; these are the primary data sources used to profile climate summary and trends. In addition to a suite of summary tables, graphs, and narratives, we specifically identify a series of key weather indicators to report status and trends on an annual basis and periodically in separate and more thorough reports. These key indicators are further described in the protocol (Marshall et al. 2012) and summarized in the body of this report.

Weather of Fort Necessity National Battlefield and Friendship Hill National Historic Site: Eastern Rivers and Mountains Network summary report for 2011

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