August 2018
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As the Arctic warms up and sea ice melts, it is changing the large-scale weather patterns that help move storms around. These steering currents affect the movement of mid-latitude low pressure centers, but also help push around tropical storms and hurricanes. A new study of the impacts of this shift in the big atmospheric wave…
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Southeast Farm Press posted an interesting story this week about Brangus cattle that are currently being studied at the University of Florida. The cattle are better adapted to heat than other varieties, which makes them ideal for the warmer climate in the Southeast. They eat better and put on more weight, which improves their marketability.…
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If we want to understand the climate of the future, it is important that we first understand the climate of the past. Unfortunately, weather records only go back about 150 years. To look climates on longer time frames, we need the help of paleoclimatologists who look at proxy data like tree rings, lake and ocean…
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If you have been following the news out of Florida, you know that they have been experiencing severe marine devastation from something called a “red tide”, which is a toxic algal bloom along the coast which kills fish and sickens humans and animals that swim in it. The red tide itself is not that unusual,…
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This week Thursday August 16 at 3 pm EDT I will be giving a webinar through the Climate Learning Network on sources of weather and climate data online. I am gearing this talk towards Extension agents in the Southeast but most of what I discuss will be broadly applicable to other parts of the US…
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The Southeast has the wettest area in the US for the first 12 days in August 2018. While most of the country is below normal in rainfall for the month so far, most of the Southeast has received plenty of rain so far, especially along the spine of the Appalachian Mountains. The driest areas are…
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Have you ever seen a strange cloud in the sky and wondered what it was? Smithsonian.com posted a short but interesting article about a new “weird cloud atlas” that helps people identify some of the stranger clouds in the sky. You can read about it and see a few pictures at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ufo-or-crazy-cloud-weird-cloud-atlas-helps-you-decide-17428407/. Or go to the…