Climate and Ag in the news
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CNN has a sobering video posted at https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2016/11/02/arctic-ice-animation-orig-bu.cnn. It shows how much the perennial sea ice has disappeared between 1984 and the present. With such big changes in the ice cover in the Arctic, no wonder the weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere are changing so much. It’s probably not surprising that at the same time…
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Some new research at the University of Georgia indicates that sands from the Sahara, blown across the Atlantic, can do more than suppress hurricane formation. Researchers there have found that a genus of marine bacteria called Vibrio feed off the Saharan dust, leading to large blooms of the potentially harmful pathogen in ocean surface water. Vibrio…
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NPR had a story yesterday about the damage caused to beaches in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. According to the story, “the U.S. Geological Survey has found that the storm washed over and damaged 15 percent of sand dunes on Florida’s Atlantic Coast, 30 percent along Georgia’s coastline and 42 percent of the dunes on South…
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The Huffington Post had a scary article this week about the terrible drought that is occurring in Alabama (and Georgia and parts of the Carolinas). Some farmers say that they have never seen it so bad in their lifetimes. Impacts include corn yields at 1/3 of normal values, dried-up streams and pastures and potential impacts…
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Several articles out this week described continuing efforts by farmers in southeast Georgia and eastern North Carolina to determine the damage caused by the wind and flooding rain from Hurricane Matthew a few weeks ago. In North Carolina, Modern Farmer reported here that while livestock farmers are starting to compost dead chickens and deal with 3300…
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Have you voted yet? I have! No matter which candidate wins in November, they will face many scientific challenges in the years of their presidency, including impacts from weather and climate. Weather forecasting in the US has fallen behind other nations, and that becomes especially important when short-term disasters like hurricanes or floods threaten. Climate…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
The WunderBlog has a great new article on the heat wave that is dominating weather across much of the US. The author Bob Henson notes that “As a very strong Pacific jet continues to pump mild air into the nation, we could see a few all-time monthly records for November threatened later next week, especially…