Climate and Ag in the news
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If you are in the Central Time Zone or farther west, the summer solstice is today. But if you are in the Eastern Time Zone, it’s technically tomorrow because the solstice occurs this year at 12:24 am EDT on June 21 which is the same as 11:24 pm CDT on June 20. Those time zones!…
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The Southeast Regional Climate Hub, which is located in Raleigh NC and covers all of the Southeast states, has published their latest newsletter. I’m excited to be working with SERCH for the next ten months looking at ways to show how climate affects agriculture, forestry, livestock and other sectors in the Southeast. I’ll be working…
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In contrast to last year, when a late-season drought and subsequent dry conditions early this year caused problems with lack of moisture, this spring and summer so far Alabama farms have been inundated with rain, leaching nutrients from the soil and forcing farmers to replant or make other management changes to their farm plans. The…
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In conjunction with the tidal flooding forecast I put out earlier today, here are some interesting stories about rising sea levels I have seen in the past few weeks. Washington Post: Scientists say the rapid sinking of Louisiana’s coast already counts as a ‘worst case scenario’ Quartz.com: The US is relocating an entire town because…
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A recent study by NASA scientists shows that climatologists may be underestimating the amount of rain that might fall in the future because of underestimates in the loss of high-level clouds in the tropics. You might think that less clouds means less rain, not more, but because these high clouds can change the energy balance…
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As I mentioned earlier this week, the Atlantic Ocean’s tropical season is starting to kick in, and there are two areas which may become named storms in the next few days. You can read more about it at Weather Underground here. No immediate threat for us in the US, but they will bear watching for…
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Here’s an interesting article from Fivethirtyeight.com about why NOAA and USDA have slightly different plant hardiness zone maps. These maps help gardeners determine what kind of plants are likely to do well in a given location and are based primarily on lowest minimum temperatures. Because of the way they are calculated, the two maps show…