Pam Knox
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The Week posted an intriguing article this week on the continuing loss of soil from the United States and other parts of the world due to erosion caused by poor land management practices. Farmers and anyone who likes to eat depend on the presence of good soil to grow the food that feeds us all. […]
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
The Southern Regional Climate Center (based in Louisiana) announced a new Climate Extremes Portal today. It is available at https://extremes.srcc.lsu.edu/. This map-based product provides extremes of temperature and precipitation for each station across the country (not just the South). An example of the display for May 13’s record high maximum temperature is shown below. Note that […]
Posted in: Sources of weather and climate data -
Rome Ethredge of Seminole County posted some pictures of the wheat harvest that is beginning in southwest Georgia this morning on his blog (link). He pointed out that some of the crop has been affected by fusarium head blight, which reduces yields. Dewey Lee, the UGA Extension agronomist, says that he has seen fields with […]
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While the last couple of weeks have been very dry, they have followed a wet April. For the year to date, most of the Southeast is fairly close to normal in both temperature and precipitation. By comparison the West Coast has been much hotter and drier than normal and the Northeast has been cold and […]
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Slate.com posted an article this week on the dire state of water in Arizona as Lake Mead set a new record low level. Because of the way water is allocated in the West, Arizona farmers are arguably worse off than California farmers in terms of how their water may have to be cut this […]
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It’s been a very dry May across the Southeast so far. I was driving back to Athens from Quincy FL today and noted the large plumes of dust behind the tractors out planting in the fields in southwest Georgia. The radar-based precipitation map from the National Weather Service shows that many areas have received no […]
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You’ve probably heard about the “urban heat island”, which is a pocket of warm temperatures created by pavement and buildings in the center of cities. It’s not surprising that Atlanta and other large cities have well-documented “heat islands” that make the cities warmer than surrounding areas. A bit more surprising is that even moderate sized […]