Climate and Ag in the news
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The Washington Post reported this week that in spite of the giant sequoias appearing to be almost indestructible, they are finding many trees are dying from the prolonged drought that has plagued California that past few years. If it is too dry, tiny bubbles form in the tree sap, forming what are like embolisms in…
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Even if we were not in a drought and having significant shortages of forage and hay, livestock producers would have to watch their animals carefully in the cold weather that is occurring this week and may continue into next week. Wyatt Bechtel of Drovers Magazine here describes the changes that producers may need to make…
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Now that most of the harvest for this year is finished, losses from Hurricane Matthew can be more accurately determined. AgWeb published a story today on how farmers in Marion County, South Carolina, were affected by the storm wind and flooding. You can read it here.
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The National Weather Service noted that new experimental snowfall maps will be available this year for a number of stations across the US, including several in the Southeast. The new maps will show ranges of potential snowfall as well as probabilities of different amounts. That could provide some very useful additional information to what is…
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With the early formation of Hurricane Alex in mid-January and the appearance of Hurricane Otto in Central America on Thanksgiving this year, you could ask if the Atlantic hurricane season is getting longer. Fortunately, Ryan Truchelut analyzed the trends in the season and published the results in a recent Capital Weather Gang posting. While the…
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Chris Mooney of the Washington Post discussed the latest observations of sea ice extent in the Arctic and Antarctic in a recent article which you can read here. Contrary to slowly increasing levels of sea ice in the Antarctic Ocean, this year the sea ice extent there dropped precipitously. Since ice extent in the Arctic…
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Seth Borenstein of AP reported today on a new study published in Nature Climate Change that projects at least a fivefold increase in downpours in the Gulf Coast, Atlantic Coast and Southwest. The results of the study using a high-resolution computer model which can resolve smaller scale weather like thunderstorms shows that heavy rains are likely…