Development, Operation, and Modification of UUNET for Local Stakeholder Needs

The University of Utah mesonet (UUNET) has its origins in the late 1990s, with multiple weather stations installed within the urban Salt Lake Valley and remote sites surrounding the Great Salt Lake. These weather stations were, and remain, a critical source of real-time meteorological information for county, state, and federal partners. Stakeholders include the local National Weather Service forecast office in Salt Lake City, state wildlife agencies for monitoring of Great Salt Lake boating conditions and biological health, commercial industry for infrastructure and lake evaporation monitoring, recreation, and educational initiatives.

Recent reports and media stories have highlighted that the combination of climate change and continued growth of the urban sector of the Wasatch Front are having significant impacts on northwest Utah and the Great Salt Lake. On a multi-year average, the lake level continues to decrease, increasing concerns of ecological collapse of habitats on and surrounding the lake, and exposing an ever-growing urban population to air quality concerns from lakebed dust events. Further, continued increases in extreme heat events in combination with air quality concerns involving local ozone formation present additional dangers that are receiving wide attention by local and national stakeholder communities. As a result, we have engaged with these local stakeholders to expand funded infrastructure to include local meteorological and air quality monitoring on existing UUNET deployments as well as mobile-based units for spatiotemporal monitoring. This presentation will discuss these efforts, with a focus on the installation, maintenance, and end-user product management of multiple systems to meet these various past, present, and future stakeholder needs.