Climate and Ag in the news
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Two paleoclimatologists at the University of North Carolina have found a way to track a storm—or, at least, track the average of all storms across the season—325 years in the past, according to an article in the latest The Atlantic magazine. The scientists used tree ring data from ponderosa pines in the Pacific Northwest to…
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Sometimes it takes me a while to find an interesting story. This 2015 story on dry beans from Modern Farmer discusses a cross between common beans like white or kidney and the tepary bean. The tepary bean is much less sensitive to hot temperatures than the common beans, and the crosses looks like they will…
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A new study released this week indicates that the American South will feel the worst economic effects of a warming climate. Articles in The Atlantic here and in the New York Times here describe the results of the study published today in Science which use a new economic method of calculating economic costs by calculating…
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Recent studies on the rate at which sea level is rising due to warmer ocean water and melting ice sheets show that not only is sea level rising in most areas, but the rate at which it is rising is increasing. This has important implications for coastal communities, which often do planning based on the…
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National Geographic has an interesting article this week on a new NASA study documenting increases in forest fires caused by lightning strikes in the boreal forest in the northern parts of North America. The article says that “Since 1975, the number of fires ignited by lightning has increased between two and five percent, driven by…
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I don’t live in Alabama, so can’t watch this new documentary on a recently discovered Ice Age forest hidden near Alabama’s coast when it is broadcast on the air, but for those of you who do, it looks like a fascinating look at some Alabama natural history. I am going to see if I can…
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As a graduate student one of the things I studied was the climate of the last Ice Age about 18,000 years ago. Physics Today just published a really interesting study of the end of the Ice Age in Europe and how changes in sea level affected life there. It’s based on a computer simulation that…