Pam Knox

  • 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…

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  • The Corn Belt is making its own weather

    When I lived in Wisconsin, we blamed the hottest, most sultry days of summer on the corn in Iowa, which was pumping a lot of water vapor into the air. Now there’s a study published in Geophysical Research Letters that takes a scientific look at how the climate in the Corn Belt is changing due…

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  • A recent article in The Conversation discussed new findings that mangroves are expanding across the world and are moving into areas that currently are salt marshes due to warming temperatures. Mangroves are useful to protect shorelines from high waves and storm surges (and even tsunamis) because of their dense root systems. However, it is not…

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  • Stunning photos of ancient trees

    Atlas Obscura provided a link today to a website devoted to photographic images of the world’s oldest trees, taken by Beth Moon from San Francisco. If you love trees and the natural world, you will be amazed at these amazing trees. You can read about it and see the photos at https://themindcircle.com/ancient-trees/.

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  • Video: Cool season forage plot tour

    The Panhandle Ag Extension team recently produced a video which describes cool season forage production issues this year. According to their web site, “This video highlights the differences in cool-season forage types and varieties on February 15, 2018, that were planted November 1, 2017.  The challenging weather this season ( very limited moisture from October…

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  • Climate scientists know that as the earth warms under the influence of increasing greenhouse gases, the Arctic and Antarctic are going to see the biggest changes, especially at first since they are especially affected by changes in albedo due to the reduction of snow and ice at high latitudes as the earth gets warmer. Albedo…

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  • Climate scientists have known for over a century that carbon dioxide gas absorbs energy better than oxygen, nitrogen or most other atmospheric gases. The first discussion of this property and the likelihood that increases in CO2 would increase global temperature have been attributed to Irish physicist John Tyndall in 1859. But an article I recently…

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