{"id":217853,"date":"2025-06-24T14:13:52","date_gmt":"2025-06-25T00:13:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=217853"},"modified":"2025-06-24T14:13:52","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T00:13:52","slug":"uh-climate-tool-delivers-custom-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2025\/06\/24\/uh-climate-tool-delivers-custom-data\/","title":{"rendered":"New UH<\/abbr> climate tool delivers custom data to support wildfire, drought planning"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>
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Installation of a weather station on Mariner’s Ridge with the Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> Mesonet project.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A new tool developed by University of Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> researchers allows anyone in the state to generate custom, site-specific climate reports to support decisions related to drought, wildfire and land management—a major step forward in Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span>\u2019s climate resilience efforts.<\/p>\n

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Change Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> researchers meeting with members of the Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> Climate Data Portal User Group.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Climate Change, Climate Variability and Drought Portfolio tool<\/a> was unveiled at a May 2025 meeting of the Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> Climate Data Portal<\/a> (HCDP<\/abbr>) User Group, which drew lawmakers, emergency managers and wildfire officials. The new system lets users select or draw an area of interest, enter basic details and receive a tailored climate portfolio by email. It is free to use and portfolios are generated and delivered in less than an hour.<\/p>\n

“We used to generate these portfolios one at a time, but the demand for them was so great that we decided to automate the entire process,” said Ryan Longman, lead researcher on the HCDP<\/abbr> project and the UH<\/abbr> consortium director of the Pacific Islands Climate Adaptation Science Center<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The tool is part of the larger Change Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span><\/a> project, which is working to transform how the state tracks weather, drought and wildfire risk using advanced climate modeling, real-time data systems and artificial intelligence. Change Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> is part of the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research or Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> EPSCoR<\/abbr><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Real-time dashboard<\/h2>\n
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Tom Giambelluca presents on the Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> Mesonet project<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At the meeting, researchers also rolled out a newly developed, open-source dashboard for the Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> Mesonet<\/a>—a growing network of 110 weather monitoring stations statewide, 66 of which are now operational. Each station collects 21 environmental variables and generates more than a million data points daily that feed into predictive models for wildfire and drought.<\/p>\n