By Jim Collins (UCD) - In the realms of Irish science, the names of Tom Keane and AGMET are inextricably entwined.  In the 1970s, Tom who saw a need to link like-minded individuals, then loosely associated to the discipline of agrometeorology.  He arranged with the Met Éireann Director to call a meeting of invited individuals to its Glasnevin HQ, on Feb 29 1984. AGMET was born there and then and T...

‘Soils wetter than normal nearly everywhere’ Met Éireann operates a Soil Moisture Deficit (SMD) model based on the research by Schulte at al.† This model accounts for three different drainage regimes, approximating different soil types in Ireland. These are: well drained, where the soil never saturates; moderately drained, where the soil may saturate on wet days and poorly drained, where the soi...

Can We Still Use 'Irish Rules' To Forecast Potato Late Blight Epidemics In Ireland? Potato late blight is one of most devastating crop diseases and the most important disease of potatoes and tomatoes globally. It was one of initiators of the Irish Famine and investigations into the cause of the potato crop failure during these years have led to the scientific discipline known today as plant patho...

Grazed grass is a cheap source of feed for Irish farm animals, and therefore to maximise profits it is important to have efficient use of grass on farms. A predictive grass growth model would help farmers with their grassland management. However to date, weather forecasts have not been included in Irish grass growth models; only retrospective observations have been used as weather inputs. In this...

Since 1985 the AGMET group have been publishing, reports, books and conference proceedings. When any new agrometeorological research project kicks off, one of the first things that is typically done is to review how the current systems were developed, i.e. what has been done in the past. It is for this reason that it is believed that these old AGMET publications are still of value. To addres...

Workshop - Agrometeorologists for farmers in hotter, drier, wetter future This workshop will be held in Ljubljana, Slovenia 9-10 November 2016. The workshop is organized by Slovenian Environment Agency, Meteorological Office through the budget of the Tromp foundation and is primarily addressed to agrometeorologists of Central and Southern European countries, where agrometeorology bears a sig...

"Using a surface energy balance approach to characterise agro-environmental zones in Ireland in support of on-farm decision making" Background "Farming, particularly pastoral farming, involves the management of biological processes within a specific ecological and weather environment to generate income which in turn is also a function of the costs of inputs used on farm and prices for the output...

Dear Agrometeorologist Colleagues, With sadness, I am informing you that Prof Kees Stigter passed away on 19 May 2016 at the age of 79, in Indonesia. Prof Stigter was a colleague and friend to many of us. He served as Vice-president (1986 – 1991) and president (1991 – 1999) of the WMO Commission for Agricultural Meteorology and Dutch principal delegate to CAgM (1985 – 2007). He was also the foun...

"Development of a ground based automated ‘real time’ grass quality measurement system to enhance grassland management information platforms."   Background "The focus of this project is to develop and enable an intelligent system that will apply precision management to whole farm grassland and grazing systems. To precisely allocate to the cow herd the absolutely correct area of grass, it ...

The objective of the Summer School is to provide the attendees with a comprehensive overview on agrometeorological applications and crop modeling, basics of numerical weather prediction (NWP) and its application in agrometeorology. The Summer school will take a place at Faculty of Agriculture, University of Novi Sad, Novi Sad, Serbia, from 27th June till 1st July 2016. More details can be fo...