Climate and Ag in the news
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Yale Climate Connections has an interesting explainer that discusses how the warmer temperatures we are seeing due to climate change are leading to an increase in droughts worldwide. For one thing, higher temperatures cause an increase in the speed and amount of evaporation, leading to drier soils and less runoff that can contribute to drought…
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Natural hazards do not have to cause disasters if communities are well prepared for them to occur, but often due to politics, economics, or happenstance this does not occur, leading to injury or even death, destruction, and the loss of community bonds. I don’t often recommend books in this blog but wanted to encourage you…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
This week many of us were a little surprised to hear that the National Hurricane Center determined that a big swirl that meteorologists noticed in the Atlantic Ocean in January had qualified as an official subtropical storm after examination of additional weather data tabulated after the storm dissipated. Since NHC counts subtropical storms as part…
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Vegetable crops are harvested across the Southeast throughout the year. This time of year the production of cool-weather crops like broccoli is going full-speed. Here is a story from John Holcomb at the Farm Monitor describing how broccoli production is affected by soil moisture and heat stress. I was interested to read that monitoring soil…
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If you plant corn or work with farmers who do, you are probably well aware of the importance of watching soil temperatures before you plant. But if not, you might be interested in these Indiana PrairieFarmer stories that describe how soil temperature and moisture can affect corn germination and emergence. Farmers need to be aware…
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The multiple atmospheric river events in California this year have caused massive areas of flooding that has damaged trees by suffocating their root systems. This is similar to damage that we have seen here in the Southeast with Hurricanes Ian this past year and Hurricanes Irma and Matthew in previous years. The result of this…
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As the global temperature warms up in the future, we can expect to also see changes in related variables like degree days, growing season length, and plant hardiness zones, which are tied to minimum temperatures. The Washington Post has an interesting map that compares the expected plant hardiness zones across the United States from the…