The Southeast Climate Consortium (SECC) is a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional team that conducts research and outreach to a broad community of potential users in agriculture and natural resource management in the Southeast U.S. The Florida Climate Center and the FSU Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies (COAPS) continue to be key partners in the consortium since its inception in 1998. The SECC met on May 7-9 at COAPS here in Tallahassee for their Spring Program Review. State Climatologist David Zierden and Assistant State Climatologist Melissa Griffin attended the meeting and presented on Florida Climate Center activities. David Zierden began the meeting with a presentation on the current and forecasted state of the Pacific Ocean and the possible development of a strong El Niņo. Melissa Griffin wrapped up the three-day meeting with an overview of the education and outreach efforts of the Florida Climate Center in support of SECC activities.

During mid-May, Assistant State Climatologist Melissa Griffin presented at the annual Taylor County 4-H Agriculture Day in Perry, FL. The goal of the event is to have each of the 250 children in attendance to leave with an understanding of how important agriculture and natural resources are to them personally, the county, state, and country. Ms. Griffin presented a segment on how to use weather and climate information to make informed decisions when it comes to agriculture.

Toward the end of the month of May, Assistant State Climatologist Melissa Griffin attended the annual planning meeting of the Western Education and Research Activity (WERA) 1012 group, a collaborative effort with members from land grant universities across the U.S, the National Weather Service, the National Climatic Data Center, numerous State Climate Offices, and more. The group is tasked with managing, educating, maintaining, and improving volunteer weather observer networks used to collect valuable precipitation data in the U.S. and Canada. This year's meeting highlighted precipitation extremes, collaboration with other environmental citizen science networks, updating infrastructure, and keeping observers engaged and involved in the various programs. Ms. Griffin currently servers as the state coordinator for the Florida CoCoRaHS Network and the previous chair of the Training and Education sub-committee, and will spend the next year working on a variety of projects as part of this corporative effort.

In conjunction with the Florida Climate Center and the Florida Climate Institute, members from the Department of Health's Building Resilience Against Climate Effects (BRACE) project presented two special seminars at the end of May. The first seminar, presented by Meredith Jagger, Program Manager for BRACE, and Kristina Kintziger, an environmental consultant with BRACE, was focused on examining the relationship between drought and human health implications, mainly in the form of increased instances of respiratory illnesses but also examining impacts of food-borne and waterborne diseases. 

The second seminar, presented by Laurel Harduar Moran to the National Weather Services Offices that serve Florida, highlighted the results from a statewide analysis examining the relationship, in Florida, between ambient outdoor temperature/heat index measured at the weather stations and heat-related hospitalizations and emergency department (ED) visits in surrounding populations. The goal of the talk was to provide Florida specific information on the rate of heat-related illness as temperature/heat index increases in order to help inform about the impacts and responses to heat advisories and warnings across the state.