Pam Knox
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People have had weather folklore going back to at least the Bible (remember “Red sky at night?”). Here are a couple of stories about Indian summer and other weather sayings. Indian summer article from TheEagle.com Weather, as told by nature from DiscoverNatureNotes.com Farmers are particularly good at phenology, the study of weather and climate by…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
Climate modeling is something that is often attacked by those who are skeptical about projections of future changes in climate. Today I saw three articles which I think do an excellent job of explaining some of the difficulties with climate modeling. The first is a blog posting on our sister site, Animal Agriculture in a…
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In the past few weeks there have been many forecasts for the coming winter made online. Most are from bloggers with limited meteorological or climatological training, and should be taken with a large grain of salt. Others, from places like the Farmers’ Almanac, are mysteriously produced and vaguely worded so that they can claim they…
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Clouds are one of the main unknowns in understanding how climate might change in the future. Low clouds reflect sunlight back to space, cooling the planet, while high clouds trap heat near the surface, warming things up. Because of their temporary nature, they are hard to model adequately in global climate models, leading to uncertainty…
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The wind map tonight shows several features that will likely affect our weather in the next few days. The remnants of Typhoon Nuri are still spinning in the Bering Sea and are contributing to the strong wave pattern in the atmosphere. The strong flow of Arctic air into the central Plains can also be seen.…
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In the next week you will hear a lot about the terms “jet stream” and “polar vortex” if you have not already. What are these phenomena? A couple of easy to understand references you can use: AthensGAWeather has a link to a website at the bottom of the page with a simple 2-minute explanation of…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
EarthSky has an interesting article posted about changes in Bhutan’s agriculture, particularly in their yak herding, due to the retreat of glaciers in the region. Glaciers retreat from a combination of warming temperatures and decreases in snowfall over time. The loss of glacier ice has made it more difficult for herders to move around the…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news