Georgia Automated Environmental
Monitoring Network (AEMN)
• Established in 1991
• Housed on UGA Griffin Campus in Department
of Crop and Soil Sciences, College of
Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
• Goal: To collect detailed weather information
and other environmental variables across the
State of Georgia
Measurements
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Air temperature
Humidity
Precipitation
Soil moisture
Soil temperature (three depths)
Wind speed and direction
Air pressure
Solar radiation
Some stations also measure one or more of:
Open pan evaporation. Water temperature. Leaf
wetness. PAR (photosynthetically active radiation).
Dissemination
• A summary is calculated every 15 minutes.
• Daily summaries are calculated at midnight.
• Data is sent to a computer on the UGA Griffin
campus by radio, internet, land line phone, or
cellular modem.
• Data made available to public in near real time
at www.georgiaweather.net
• N.B. New Web address: weather.uga.edu
Applications
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Degree days
Chilling hours
First and last frost dates and frost protection
Wind chill and heat indices
Wet bulb globe temperature
Environmental heat stress
Heating and cooling requirements
Irrigation management and water conservation
K-12 Education
Crop Modeling
Support
• Annual budget approx $350K
• UGA salary support $150K
• Remainder from data sales, grants, support
from user groups. E.g. Forestry commission.
• AEMN is NOT in imminent danger of closing.
User Examples
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In September 2010 the AEMN had over 60,400 separate visitors,
representing 49 states and 82 countries. Almost 300,000 of the
individual hits were from within Georgia.
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County agents polled informally at meetings repeatedly identify the
Georgia Weather Network as their main source of current weather
information, as it is for many of the farmers they support.
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The regional energy utility Southern Company, requiring
information on power demand and temperatures for billing purposes,
makes extensive use of AEMN. They are responsible for about 13% of
site visits.
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Peanut growers use a calculator at the AEMN website to
determine the risk of tomato spotted wilt, and fruit producers utilize a
chilling degree-day calculator to determine if their peaches, blueberries,
etc. have met dormancy requirements for bloom in spring.