Putting Citizen-Collected Observations to Work -- The Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS)

Abstract:

When CoCoRaHS was born (1998), climate-relevant information was far from our minds. We were simply enlisting volunteers to help capture, display and communicate the nature of small scale variability within northern Colorado storms. Climate change was talked about then, but not with the sense of concern and urgency as today. Now, many years later, the simple back-yard precipitation measurements being taken by thousands of volunteers across much of North America are creating valuable and easily-accessible data and information serving many and varied purposes from federal and state climate monitoring to drought and extreme storm analysis and research. Many volunteers have been with the project now for a decade or longer and have contributed literally thousands of individual observations and reports. Long-time participants along with recent recruits of all ages are seeing first-hand how day by day observations of weather conditions combine – over time and space -- to define and describe key elements of our climate and its variations. The fact that the data from volunteers are frequently used and applied by scientists and decision makers is one of the key factors in retaining long-term volunteers. Examples will be presented of volunteer precipitation data being used both independently and in combination with data from federal monitoring systems. Challenges of maintaining a large volunteer network will be discussed along with some plans and opportunities for the future.