Ag-Climate Tools
Welcome to the MRCC's new Ag-Climate Tool dashboard, which houses the Useful to Usable (U2U) tools and newly developed ag-climate tools.
AgClimate Viewer
A convenient way to access customized historical climate and crop yield data for the U.S. Corn Belt. View graphs of monthly temperature and precipitation, plot corn and soybean yield trends, and compare climate and yields over the past 30 years.
Corn GDD
Track real-time and historical GDD accumulations, assess spring and fall frost risk, and guide decisions related to planting, harvest, and seed selection. This innovative tool integrates corn development stages with weather and climate data for location-specific decision support tailored specifically to agricultural production.
Corn Split N
Determine the feasibility and profitability of using post-planting nitrogen application for corn production. This product combines historical data on crop growth and fieldwork conditions with economic considerations to determine best/worst/average scenarios of successfully completing nitrogen applications within a user-specified time period. Now available for 12 states in the north central U.S.
Irrigation Investment Tool
The U2U Irrigation Investment tool lets you explore the potential profitability of installing irrigation equipment at user-selected locations across the Corn Belt. Discover how many years from 1980-2005 irrigation would have been profitable, calculate the net present value of investment, and compare dryland and irrigated corn and soybean yields under different rainfall conditions.
About U2U
Useful to Usable (U2U) was a multi-year, multi-university project funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to improve the usability of climate information for agricultural production in the Midwest. A suite of ag-climate decision-support tools (DSTs) was developed to help producers make better long-term decisions on what, when and where to plant, and how to manage crops for maximum yields and minimum environmental damage. The Midwestern Regional Climate Center was a partner in this effort and is proud to host the U2U DSTs.
Soil Temperature Climatology
The Soil Temperature Climatology Tool is a product developed by the Midwestern Regional Climate Center (MRCC) in collaboration with the USDA Midwest Climate Hub to provide historical soil temperature statistics based on the period 1991 to 2020 for the north-central United States. Determine climatological dates when soils reach certain temperature thresholds.