The American Association of State Climatologists officially recognized the Tennessee Climate Office at ETSU, making Andrew Joyner the state climatologist and Wil Tollefson the assistant state climatologist.
State climate offices have existed since the 1970s, but up until now, Tennessee and Massachusetts were the only states to not have designated climate offices.
Joyner and Tollefson have been working towards establishing a Tennessee state climate office since 2016.
They started producing monthly climate reports in 2017, while working with the Southern Regional Climate Center.
“So, working with us at ETSU, we have partners at UT Institute of Ag[riculture] down in Knoxville, UTK, UT Martin, Vanderbilt University, University of Memphis,” said Tollefson. “They were supporting us hosting it here at ETSU, and so that was kind of the big push.”
They have many plans in place to grow and expand the office in the years to come.
“Our main goal is a state climate office is to get specific, useful and easy to understand data about weather and climate in Tennessee to stakeholders,” said Tollefson. “So that includes state agencies like TDOT, TDEC, The Environment Conservation Group, as well as the general public.”
This data includes comprehensive understanding of weather patterns, archiving climate information and checking drought levels. They also work on hazard mitigation planning for Tennessee, which FEMA requires every state and county to do.
“One other kind of a long-term goal is we’d love to build what’s called a mesonet for Tennessee,” said Tollefson. “And this is a network of research grade weather stations. Kentucky has a really great one, and they would be someone we would model that after.”
As their office expands, Tollefson said they would love to take on more research and graduate assistants, and eventually, they may create a new concentration around climate and hazard management in their department.
