Climate Patterns Viewer now available

This new tool provides a historical look at how the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Arctic Oscillation (AO) can influence local climate conditions and corn yield across the Corn Belt. You can use these simple maps and charts to show when and where specific phases of ENSO or AO have influenced:

• average monthly temperatures and precipitation,
• deviations of temperature and precipitation from 1981-2010 climate normals, and
• deviations of yield (in percent) from the de-trended 1981-2010 average yields.

This tool was developed by Useful to Usable, or U2U, aiming to improve profitability and longevity of U.S. farms amid a variable and changing climate. U2U is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and is composed of a team of 50 faculty, staff and students from nine universities who specialize in applied climatology, crop modeling, agronomy, cyber technology, agricultural economics and other social sciences. Linda Prokopy, associate professor of forestry and natural resources at Purdue, leads the team.

For more information on this tool and other decision-support resources including a corn nitrogen calculator, nitrogen watch, irrigation scheduling and a cover crop decision tool, view the Useful to Usable web site. All of these can be found by clicking on the "Decision Dashboard" tab.