Climate and Ag in the news
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Scientists have recently identified the oldest tree in Europe as a Bosnian pine growing in Greece which has been measured to be at least 1,075 years old based on tree rings. While old trees are more common in the US, they are rare in Europe because it has been populated so long, and exposure to…
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In the news today I heard that the FDA is recommending that we test all blood donations for the Zika virus, which is carried by mosquitoes and can cause severe birth defects in babies if the mother gets infected during pregnancy. Zika is just one of several severe diseases that is carried by mosquitoes in…
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NOAA announced that they have new and expanded tables of normal temperature and precipitation values now available on their web site. Typically, climatologists consider 30 year averages to be “normal” climate conditions, and they are updated every ten years. The current 30-year normal period is 1981-2010. But some groups like utilities want normals over different…
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Yahoo News reported this week that “rain, cold and high winds from the storms caused the loss of 133 acres (54 hectares) of pine and fir trees in the forests west of Mexico City, more than four times the amount lost to illegal logging this year. It was the biggest storm-related loss since the winter…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
In 1992 on August 24, Hurricane Andrew made landfall just south of downtown Miami as a major hurricane, causing incredible devastation across the south Florida peninsula before it emerged into the Gulf of Mexico on its way to a second landfall in Louisiana. My husband and I visited Miami ten months after Andrew hit and…
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NOTE: Latest update on the bottom of this entry My Facebook feed has been jammed with posts from meteorologist friends uploading the latest computer models of where Investigation 99L might go and how strong it might get. (For those of you who don’t follow tropical weather news closely, Investigation 99L is an area of disturbed…
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Brad Haire in the Southeast Farm Press noted today that the US Navy is considering adopting peanuts as an alternative energy fuel in the near future. They are mandated to provide at least 50 percent of their energy consumption from alternative fuels by 2020. Peanut oil is a good fuel for transportation but is currently…