Snake River Valley AVA

Climate Explorer

The Snake River Valley American Viticultural Area (AVA) Climate Explorer is an interactive tool to visualize 30 years of high resolution climate data in the rapidly growing Idaho grape growing region and beyond.

In the age of big data and high computational power, new and novel climate datasets are available that can be leveraged to inform wine enthusiasts and farmers alike about historical climate conditions.

Use the toolbar at the top of the page to select the data or information category of interest and you’ll be directed to a dynamic graph for visualization or a table for downloading. Under the background tab you’ll find additional information about the project and dataset.

PLEASE NOTE: This app may time-out if left idle too long, which will cause the screen to grey-out. To use the app again, refresh the page. This will reset all previously-selected input options.

Spatial Data Explorer

The spatial explorer shows the Snake River AVA - where the majority of Idaho’s vineyards are located. The full [dataset] expands far beyond this area which can be visualized by selecting the region of your choice. The plot can be zoomed in or out in the same fashion as Google Maps.

To create a unique plot, select a climate variable (for example, temperature or precipitation) and years on the left and then click the ‘create map’ button. The historical option will require a date range to be averaged or summed over (depending on the variable).

Anomalies are the difference between your year of choice and the average of that variable for all 30 years. For example, if you select ‘Monthly Anomaly’, VARIABLE=’Minimum Daily Temperature’,‘YEAR=2011’ and ‘MONTH=April’ you will get a plot showing the difference between the average minimum daily temperatures for the month of April in 2011 and the average minimum temperatures in April for all years spanning 1988-2017. In this example, temperatures are about 2.0 - 3.5 degrees Celsius cooler in April 2011 than the 30 year average. If you were to look at your crop yields over the 30 year timespan, it would be interesting to see how the deviation from average in 2011 affected your yields that year!

Region

Snake River AVA (1km resolution)

Greater Idaho (1km resolution)

Greater Pacific Northwest (3km resolution)

Plot Type

Historical

Yearly Anomaly

Monthly Anomaly

Variable

Year

Days of Water Year

Select dates to view

Month

Error:

Timeseries Data Explorer

To use the time series graph, select the region, variable and up to five different years to be compared simultaneously - the graph will update automatically as inputs are changed. Mousing over the graph will display the values at that location for each value in the upper right corner along with the date. You can zoom into these graphs by clicking and dragging across an area on the map or by moving the slider below the graph.

Each data line represents the average value over the entire region that has been selected. These time series graphs are particularly useful for assessing climate differences between different years. For example, if you select Growing Degree Days and the years 2006 and 2007 you can compare the mean cumulative GDD of each year through time.

Domain

What would you like to plot?

Years

Variable

Unit type

Fahrenheit/Inches

Celcius/mm

Statistics

The data table will update as different regions or time periods are selected. Additionally, you can click on any header within the table itself to organize the table by ascending or descending values of that variable. To export the data …

Assessing these statistics allows you to see the total variability of each metric over 30 years and easily compare yearly summaries

In future versions of the climate data explorer we will add the capability for you to get these same statistics for your own area of interest!

Domain

Group by

Background

This project was done with through the support of a specialty crop block grant provided by the Idaho State Department of Agriculture. Viticulture and other specialty crops, such as hops, are rapidly emerging as significant crops in Idaho. The emergence of big data and computational power allows us to determine what the historical climate was in this region at a higher resolution (finer time and spatial scale) than most other products. We hope that making this data publicly available will become a valuable resource for individuals that currently, or are planning to grow crops in Idaho.

The climate data used for this project is a modeled dataset using the Weather and Research Forecasting (WRF) model. It was generated at the LEAF lab at Boise State University. It contains two regions of interest: a larger region covering much of the Pacific Northwest at 3km spatial resolution, and an inner region at 1km spatial resolution. Both of these have hourly data from water year (Oct 1 - September 30) 1988 through 2017.

The total size of full dataset in incredibly large - over 250 terabytes! The data we show through this app is but a very small piece of the pie. Of particular relevance is that all data shown here was aggregated from hourly to daily temporal resolution. Additionally, data in the time series or statistic sections were all spatially averaged over the region of interest. The animation on the right showcases some of this data during the deadly frost (for many vineyards) in January 2017. You can clearly see the cold air drain into Treasure Valley at night and stay there for a couple of days as one of our famous inversions. You can see some grey and white regions pop up at about the 0:20 mark where temperatures were -15 to -28 degrees F below zero!

If you have any questions regarding our ongoing Idaho projects or general questions please feel free to contact us! We look forward to hearing from you.

Charlie Becker - charles11becker@gmail.com
LEAF lab - lejoflores@boisestate.edu