North Carolina State University Undergraduate Symposium





2011 - 20th Annual NC State Undergraduate Research Spring Symposium

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2012 - 11th Annual NC State Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium
Session Time : 8/1/12 1:30 PM - 8/1/12 2:45 PM
Content Area : Computation for Undergraduates in Statistics Program (NCSU CUSP)
Lead Student Presenters : Meagan Leigh Gentry
Co-Presenters : Austin John
Abstract Title : Expected minimum temperatures for NC by methods of spatial statistics to predict dates of spring freezes
Abstract :
The goal of this paper is to provide a high-resolution map of daily predicted minimum temperatures over the Southeast US. From these predicted temperatures, we can determine the first date of spring freeze in any location on the map, which is valuable to agricultural industry among other things. First, we introduce a spatial regression model on the daily minimum temperatures recorded by the gauge stations in West Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. The spatial model not only incorporates certain climatic and geographical variables, but also considers the spatial dependency among locations. By the same procedure, we also apply spatial models for longer time periods (weekly, monthly, and seasonal), in order to see the variation in models from time to time. We utilize simple spatial kriging to predict the daily minimum temperature for each point on the high-resolution map. The probability of the minimum temperature lower than 28 Fahrenheit can be estimated for each location over time under assumption of normality. The map of these probabilities is useful in determining the expected first spring freezes date for different locations.
Mentor and/or Co-Author : Sujit K. Ghosh