Climate and Ag in the news
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USA Today published a story on New Year’s Day providing a preliminary look at the climate statistics of the world in 2023. While it will be a few more days before the final numbers are in, the results showing that 2023 was the warmest year since official records began in 1880. This was a combination…
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Over the last few weeks I have seen a lot of discussion about the change in the weather pattern that has occurred due to the weakening of the polar vortex over the North Pole. There is a lot of misinformation about what the polar vortex is and how it affects weather and climate in the…
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Over Christmas I ran across this very interesting story on Maureen Sweeney, a woman whose forecast helped make D-Day a success. She and her husband took barometer readings in Ireland that were critical for getting the D-Day forecast correct, helping the Allies choose the right day to make the critical landing in Normandy, France. By…
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The fine folks at CoCoRaHS posted this map showing counties across the country that had only one or no precipitation observers. I am sad to see so many counties in Georgia that don’t have any observers, not even at extension offices. South Carolina, North Carolina, and Florida are doing a much better job of getting…
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Those of you who like history might be interested in this story about the first weather map produced. It was put together on January 1, 1871, after the Army Signal Service started taking observations in February 1870. There were only a few stations back then, and none in the west, so the detail was very…
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The American Climate Corps is a new government initiative to train workers to implement projects related to responding to climate change. I post it here because one of the initiatives is to work on projects that enhance agricultural systems to protect natural resources and conserve water during droughts. If this is something you would be…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -

The December solstice marks the sun’s southernmost point in the sky, for the entire globe, for this entire year. On this solstice, the sun will be overhead at noon as viewed from the Tropic of Capricorn. In 2023, the December solstice falls at 3:27 UTC on December 22 (9:27 p.m. CST on December 21). For us in the Northern…