RELATING SITE-SPECIFIC WEATHER DATA TO REGIONAL MONITORING NETWORKS IN THE LAKE STATES

Meteorological variables most frequently used in ecological studies in clude, or are derived from, daily precipitation and air temperature, I n many studies, weather data from the nearest permanent weather statio n are used as surrogates for on-site measurements. This study discusse s the problems with this approach and illustrates methods for developi ng regression equations for calculating site-specific daily minimum, a verage, and maximum temperatures, and precipitation amount from region al monitoring information, Meteorological data were collected at four sites along a 650 km climatic gradient from Houghton County (47 degree s N, 89 degrees W) to Oceana County (43 degrees N, 86 degrees W), Mich igan, Data from several National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administratio n (NOAA) stations within 40 km of each study site were related to meas urements made at each site, Predictive ability was improved by using i nformation from move than one NOAA station to predict on-site temperat ure, No increase in predictive ability resulted from including informa tion from more than a single station when predicting precipitation, Fo r the majority of the sites and climate variables, the best relationsh ips were not obtained by using the nearest NOAA station; variables suc h as the relative distance from large bodies of water or elevation app eared to be influential, Since distance between two locations is rarel y the most important factor governing the relationship between their c limates, the use of the nearest weather station is not the best method to describe weather conditions on specific sites of interest.