Pity the farmer, slave to the weather. The weather can be the farmer's ruination or salvation, and there's not a lot he or she can do about it.

Or is there?

Scientists and meteorologists are learning more about farming and more about the weather, and in that shared knowledge is hope for the farmer. True, no one can control the weather, but we can measure and predict it and in so doing make farming and other chores of modern life more efficient.

In offices on N.C. State University's Centennial Campus, meteorologists with the State Climate Office are scouring North Carolina and beyond for what Mark Brooks, climate services coordinator/environmental meteorologist, calls "high quality weather observations."

Brooks adds, "Our goal is to use weather and climate information - the observations, the science and the forecasting - to improve how farmers manage crops in the field, and not just crops, any other agricultural commodities."

The State Climate Office is an unusual entity. Dr. Ryan Boyles, director and state climatologist, explains that the office is a UNC system center that is tied to N.C. State. The office is funded by N.C. State's College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences and the North Carolina Agricultural Research Service within the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Boyles describes the office as a "public service center of the UNC system. We're here to provide public service to business and government sectors as well as educational institutions. Think of us as a weather extension service."

The State Climate Office was chartered as a center in 1998, so it's fairly new. Boyles says it took a few years to get the center up and running. Since then, the office has been reaching out, and much of its extension work has been in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

The office collects and archives weather information from 143 weather stations across North Carolina as well as hundreds of stations across the Southeast. It maintains 30 of the North Carolina stations. In recent years, the office has begun to use the weather data it collects to develop decision support systems designed to aid farmers.

The first of what Boyles and Brooks hope will be a number of decision support systems focuses on peanuts, enhancing already existing advisories for farmers.

Dr. Barbara Shew, research assistant professor and North Carolina Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Plant Pathology, administers peanut disease advisories, a concept that was first introduced to North Carolina peanut growers by the late Dr. Jack Bailey, professor and Extension plant pathologist, who died in 2002.

Realizing that peanut leaf spot, a fungal disease, needed specific weather conditions to damage crops, Bailey, together with peanut scientists in Georgia and Virginia, developed advisories that notified peanut growers when disease-accommodating weather conditions were present. Before the advisory, growers sprayed their crops with fungicide on a regular schedule, whether the disease was a threat or not. Growers who used the advisory sprayed when they needed to - that is, when the weather favored a disease outbreak.

Depending on the weather, growers who use the advisory can cut fungicide use dramatically. In the early days of the advisory, Bailey collected his own weather observations, locating small weather stations in peanut growing areas.

These days, Shew relies on the State Climate Office and its weather network for weather observation.

When she took over the advisory, Shew says she began looking for a way to provide growers with the information they needed without maintaining weather stations. She found an enthusiastic partner in the climate office.

Not only does the climate office provide weather data, Boyles, Brooks and their fellow meteorologists have automated the system. Advisories are issued daily beginning in July. Each advisory is sent first to Shew, who reviews it. Shew then emails the advisory to county agents, who provide growers with the information. And these days, advisories provide information on whether to spray for both leaf spot and Sclerotinia blight, another fungal disease that damages crops only under certain weather conditions.

Shew says advisories are used widely by peanut growers.

"If the advisory is late, I can count on hearing from a county agent," says Shew.

But peanuts are only the beginning, as far as Boyles and Brooks are concerned.

While the peanut advisories are what Brooks calls the "flagship," Boyles points out that the climate office is working with a number of other CALS faculty members to develop similar decision support aids.

They hope this year to debut a Web-based system that will tell homeowners whether and how much they need to water lawns. The climate office developed the system working with faculty with turfgrass responsibilities in the Department of Crop Science. The system will be part of the Center for Turfgrass Environmental Research and Education.

"Part of the goal of the turfgrass project is to help municipalities cut the amount of water that is wasted," Boyles explains. "There's only so much water out there, and with the growing population and growing demands on fresh water during times of drought, this is a tool that if used effectively can really reduce how much water gets wasted for outdoor irrigation."

Similar decision support aids are in the works to give burley tobacco growers better information on curing their crops, on heating and chilling blueberries and strawberries and on managing sweet potato and cucurbit disease more effectively.

Says Brooks, "The message we try to send is that wherever there are decisions that are made in agriculture that are weather sensitive, our office has the capabilities to help make better decisions or mitigate crop losses."

Boyles adds, "We're relying on CALS faculty; they know their crops. We're providing weather information to make their ideas effective."

-Dave Caldwell