Climate and Ag in the news
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This time of year we are subjected to all sorts of lists of the best, worst, and most notable of the past year. Summaries of the past year’s events are also posted frequently. Weather and climate are no exception. Here is a collection of “highlights of 2022” focused on US or world weather and climate…
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We are very excited in the UGA Atmospheric Sciences program to have access to a brand-new radar system that we have purchased jointly with Georgia Tech. It will fill in an area of northeast Georgia that is not well-covered by current National Weather Services radars and will also serve as a teaching tool for our…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
Hurricane seasonal forecasts usually provide an estimate of the number of storms that you can expect in a given season. This year, with an El Nino expected to develop rapidly over the next few months, could be a rare year when the El Nino warming in the Eastern Pacific Ocean is especially strong, leading to…
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The first official forecast of the 2026 Atlantic tropical season was released this week by Colorado State University scientists. It shows that they are expecting the number of named storms to be slightly below the long-term average and all of the other related hurricane variables like accumulated energy are also expected to be below average.…
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As temperature and humidity rises, conditions for living safely without heat-related illnesses become less frequent. Days with very high temperature and humidity lead to increases in heat stress and illness as well as deaths. A study published in Nature Communications concluded that “deadly conditions have already placed hundreds of millions of people at grave risk.” The…
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NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center announced today that the latest La Nina is now officially over and has been replaced by neutral conditions, as has been long expected. The ocean conditions in the Eastern Pacific Ocean (EPO) are now expected to swing rapidly to the opposite phase, El Nino, with warmer than normal sea surface temperatures…
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The exceptionally warm and dry winter that affected the western US is likely to lead to summer conditions that could be disastrous in the extent of fire and drought that may be experienced. Grist magazine describes the devastating lack of snow cover this year, which usually provides 60-70 percent of the Northwest’s water supply and…
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If you don’t suffer from asthma, you might be surprised to know that an episode of difficult breathing can be triggered by a thunderstorm. The Weather Channel recently posted a story about how air flow in a thunderstorm can make asthma worse by concentrating pollen and dust particles beneath the downdraft of the storm. Those…
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I got an email a week or so ago asking me about “fungal storms” and how they are changing over time. This was the first time I had ever heard of this phrase, which sounds to me like something out of science fiction. So I did a little research and found out that this is…