The Kentucky Climate Center (KCC) is the state's official climate office, responsible for the collection, dissemination, and assessment of weather and climate information across the Commonwealth. Located at Western Kentucky University, the KCC leads research, educational, and outreach activities in collaboration with federal, state, and local governments; private sector firms; universities; and non-profit organizations. KCC partners include the American Association of State Climatologists (AASC); Kentucky Dept. of Public Health; Kentucky Dept. of Transportation; the National Weather Service; NOAA Midwest Regional Climate Center; the University of Kentucky; and the USDA. In its ongoing efforts to enhance local weather data collection, the KCC operates and maintains the Kentucky Mesonet, a network of 0 weather stations deployed in 71 counties across the state. Each station collects real-time, high-quality soil and atmospheric data, including air temperature, relative humidity, pressure, precipitation, wind speed and direction, solar radiation, and soil temperature and moisture. All data are collected, quality-controlled, archived, and disseminated to users in real-time, 24/7. These data support a variety of weather-sensitive industries and emergency management operations statewide.

The KCC also supports basic and applied research. Its Applied Climatology program engages in research in a wide variety of areas, including agriculture, emergency management, hydrology, public health, transportation, and wildfire. The KCC internship program supports student research and engagement, providing students with hands-on experience in communication, data analysis, programming, statistics, visualization, and writing. Through these observational, research, and educational efforts, the KCC is working to help mitigate the negative impacts from high-impact weather and climate. Please contact us at kyclimate@wku.edu if you would like to collaborate with us on any of these activities.