All You Wanted to Know about Climate but Never Knew Where to Ask It has been a busy two years for the Western Regional Climate Center (WRCC), part of the Atmospheric Sciences Center of the Desert Research Institute. And the weather isn't cooperating to help change that any time soon. From winter flooding in northern Nevada to the effects of El Niņo and summer fires, weather sometimes wreaks havoc on our lives, our homes, and our businesses. Although we can't prevent these events from occurring, with better climate information we can develop strategies--from water diversion to controlled burns--to minimize potentially disastrous effects. Where could you go if you needed to learn more about our unpredictable, and often costly, weather patterns? You could check at the library, watch the weather channel, or try to find a knowledgeable friend. Or you could contact the experts at the Western Regional Climate Center. If you choose WRCC, one of only six regional centers nationally, you will have immediate access to one of the most comprehensive collections of climate data available to the public. Under the leadership of Dr. Richard Reinhardt, WRCC serves the 11 western continental states, Alaska, Hawaii, and the Pacific trusts and territories. User Contacts (990) for March 1998 Reinhardt and his staff have developed a whole series of user-friendly products to make this information easy to access and even easier to understand. Many basic questions about the climate of the West can be answered on the center's Internet site at http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/. And if the answer isn't there, the WRCC staff is available to help. The cost? Eighty percent of requests are answered for free, and the remainder are only charged for shipping and handling. Monitoring climate information--from annual trends in temperature to snowpack in the Sierras--is critical to WRCC's mission. Without monitoring, scientists wouldn't be able to identify the patterns associated with drought, increased risk of wildfire, or global climate variability. The center is a vital link in collecting such information, making it available to a wide variety of users, and conducting the research that forms the basis for preventing, or at least minimizing, the property damage or death that can result from climate extremes. Monthly User Contacts You may think that WRCC is one of Nevada's better kept secrets, but the secret is out. With an average of nearly 1,000 monthly telephone contacts--a four-fold increase during the last five years--the center encourages use of the Internet as a first option for obtaining basic climate facts. The strategy appears to be working: web contacts exceed 500,000 per month!
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