Pam Knox

  • Drought eases in Southeast

    The latest Drought Monitor came out this morning and shows that severe drought has been reduced to less than half a percent of the Southeast.  It is now confined to an area in the panhandle of Alabama surrounding Mobile.  Abnormal dryness continues in many areas of the Southeast except for the Florida peninsula, but is…

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  • One of the comments that I often hear from those who are skeptical about climate change is the comment that in the 1970s scientists were talking about global cooling.  In particular they reference a couple of articles in Time and Newsweek which discussed recent cooling in the atmosphere and what it might mean for future…

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  • NOAA has just published their December 2014 Climate Connections newsletter.  In it they discuss the rapid warming in the Arctic (twice what is occurring in other areas–direct link to story) and why that may affect future weather and climate.  They also provide links to some tools to help visualize changes in coasts under storm surges…

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  • The shape of snowflakes

    In honor of the winter and holiday season, I thought you might be interested in an article about the science of snowflakes.  Did you know that the shape snowflakes takes depends on the atmospheric conditions in which they form?  The most common snowflakes, which we make with paper and scissors in schoolrooms, are called dendrites,…

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  • NC: Revisiting a Coastal White Christmas

    The State Climate office of North Carolina released a blog post today describing the coastal snowstorm of 1989 in North Carolina.  If you are dreaming of a white Christmas, you might enjoy the story, which is at https://nc-climate.ncsu.edu/climateblog?id=111&h=5666e5c1.

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  • Christmas lights from space

    Even  though this has nothing to do with climate and agriculture, I still find this a fascinating study.  The Washington Post published an article yesterday on a new NASA-based study showing major increases in lighting as viewed from satellites in December compared to other times of year.  They attribute it to increases in lighting from…

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  • Interesting climate stories in the news

    There are climate stories in the news almost every day.  Here are three that I thought were especially interesting this week. Men’s Journal provided a balanced discussion of GMOs and their place in agriculture.  I’m not going to discuss the GMO controversy (other than to note that this is a topic that, like vaccination and…

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