Climate and Ag in the news
-
According to a recent story by Brad Haire in the Southeast Farm Press, compared with 30 years ago, pollen production has extended by about a month, starting about 20 days earlier and ending 10 days later. This makes life miserable for everyone with spring allergies but probably makes owners of car washes happy. The change…
-
Over the last couple of weeks, wildfires have flared up again in Canada, some apparently even from fires that got tamped down over winter but reignited again in the warmer spring weather. Smoke from these fires is now starting to appear across northern parts of the United States and could move farther south in the…
-
We know from experience in the Southeast that hurricanes and tropical storms can leave a terrible mess in both croplands and forests when they pass through. One of the biggest issues with assessing the damage to forests is that it is difficult to get an accurate assessment of how much timber was destroyed by the…
-
Did you know that the first people to identify the climate swing we now know of as ENSO or El Nino Southern Oscillation were potato farmers in Peru? They noticed that in some years very wet conditions occurred and caused problems with growing potatoes there due to the wet conditions, and other years were very…
-
Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed. Abraham Lincoln The folks at the Yale Program on Climate Connections just released this new tool that you can use to generate climate change fact sheets by state, county, or congressional district showing how attitudes towards climate change vary across your…
-
As we go into Hurricane Awareness Week, here is a good reminder of why it is important to keep records ahead of time, from Drovers Newsletter. One a disaster is upon you, it is too late to write down your records of inventory, costs you have incurred, etc. You need to plan ahead so that…
-
Many of you have rain gauges (CoCoRaHS or otherwise), work for the National Weather Service or other agencies, or just love watching the weather. Today is your day! We celebrate everyone who observes the weather and reports it via work or citizen science. I have been watching the weather since a tornado came two blocks…