February 2018
-
While we’ve been suffering under May-like conditions in the East (if you can call this suffering), California has seen extremely cold temperatures, including frost in some areas that don’t often get it. So farmers have been busy running wind machines and other frost protection to keep their citrus fruit from freezing. Temperatures got into the…
-
The latest Drought Monitor, released this morning, indicates that drought has diminished across northern and western parts of the Southeast due to continuing rain in those areas. Two areas of abnormally dry conditions were identified in the Florida peninsula due to the lack of rain there. This rainfall pattern is likely to persist for at…
Posted in: Drought -
In trying to keep up with current climate science, I often run across articles that I think are interesting or challenging. Here are a few of the articles that have caught my eye in recent weeks. Cosmos magazine describes an counterintuitive impact of a warming climate at the end of the last Ice Age–a temporary…
-
Spring has sprung with a vengeance, and warmer weather means that severe weather is more likely. That can contribute to power outages, road blockages, flooding, and other things that may affect agricultural production. Winter weather like ice storms can also cause problems for farmers trying to take care of their livestock, and get milk to…
-
Earth.com had an article this week by Chrissy Sexton about some new research scientists from Minnesota have published in Nature Climate Change. The research concerns the impacts of increasing rainfall variability on the carrying capacity of grazing lands. As rainfall becomes more variable, the number of animals that can be supported by an acre of…
-
I frequently hear complaints from some of my friends who are skeptical about climate change that the climate models are no good and therefore any projections they make about future climate cannot be trusted. I find that interesting because climate models are similar to weather forecasting models in how they operate although some facets of…
-
The latest monthly summary of global climate conditions has been released by NOAA today, and it shows that this past January was the 5th warmest since records began in 1880. According to their report, “the 397th consecutive month (since January 1985) with temperatures above the 20th-century average. The last four years (2015-2018) saw the five…
Posted in: Climate summaries