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- The Joint Agricultural Weather Facility (JAWF), located in USDA?s South
Building in Washington D.C., is jointly operated by USDA?s Office of the Chief
Economist (OCE)/World Agricultural Outlook Board (WAOB) and the National
Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), and the U.S. Department of Commerce?s
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)/National Weather Service
(NWS)/National Center For Environmental Prediction (NCEP)/Climate Prediction
Center (CPC). Created in 1978, the primary mission of the JAWF is to routinely
collect global weather data and agricultural information to determine the
impact of growing-season weather conditions on crop and livestock production
prospects.
The JAWF staff includes NWS meteorologists and WAOB agricultural
meteorologists, working as a team to provide weather information and products,
weather analyses, weather data for more than 6000 stations around the globe,
weather-satellite imagery, and interpretation of meteorological information for
use in agricultural assessments. A primary source of weather information is
the worldwide network of meteorological station data transmitted over the World
Meteorological Organization?s Global Telecommunication System (WMO/GTS) and
provided to JAWF through NOAA?s state of the art data transfer and network
systems. The WAOB agricultural meteorologists merge these data with
climatological analyses and global agronomic data to arrive at the weather?s
impact on agricultural production.
Global weather and crop conditions are monitored on a daily basis and
agricultural assessments are prepared weekly to keep the Nation?s growers,
exporters, USDA commodity analysts, as well as the Secretary of Agriculture and
top staff, informed of worldwide weather-related developments and their effects
on crops and livestock. The JAWF serves as the focal point in USDA for weather
and climate information and impact assessments. Inputs from the JAWF are
integrated into USDA?s monthly foreign crop production estimates.
Website: "http://www.usda.gov/oce/waob/jawf/"
[Summary provided by the USDA.]
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