Climate and Ag in the news
-
The Atlantic hurricane season may be off to an early start. The National Hurricane Center indicates that there is a 40% chance of tropical development in the eastern Gulf of Mexico in the next five days. If it happens, the first named storm of the year, Alberto, could bring more rain to the southeast. More…
-
The EcoWatch newsletter posted a story this week about the impacts of the exceptional drought in the Southwestern US on water supplies in the Colorado River basin. Lake Mead, the largest reservoir on the river, has not been at full pool since 1983, but in recent years has been much lower. When reservoir levels get…
-
NASA Earth has an interesting article showing the movement of fresh water around the world as tracked from their satellite GRACE. Over that 15-year time period, they observed that “Earth’s wet areas are getting wetter and dry areas are getting drier due to a variety of factors, including human water management, climate change and natural…
-
The National Park Service has issued a number of new maps showing the impacts of storm surge on NPS sites such as Biscayne Bay FL, Assateague Island VA, and Fort Sumter SC. As you can imagine, there are quite a few sites for the Southeast since we have such a long coastline. For more information,…
-
Drovers Newsletter has a timely article this week on cattle heat stress and when it is too hot to work cattle, and especially calves, which are more susceptible to stress than full-grown animals. You can find it here along with links to sources of cattle heat stress maps (or go directly to the Cattle Comfort…
-
NOAA reported this week that they have detected an increase in the production of chemicals that were banned due to their impact on high-altitude ozone. This indicates that someone has begun producing it again. The study narrows it down to somewhere most likely in eastern Asia. This is bad news because the reduction in the…
-
Phys.org posted a article at the beginning of May on the terrible droughts that have occurred in Australia in recent years. According to tree ring and other paleoclimate studies, these droughts may have been the worst that continent experienced in the last 800 years. You can see a good video depicting those changes at the…