Climate and Ag in the news
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Do you listen to Chicken Little? Is the sky really about to fall? In the last few days I’ve seen a lot of posts on Facebook and Twitter that discuss the possibility of impending winter weather, snow, ice, and Arctic blasts for later in January. Some of them are from reputable meteorologists; many more are…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
The latest CoCoRaHS blog has a summary of the crazy December 2015 weather across the US that you might find interesting. I’ll be posting the individual climate summaries for Southeastern states later this week as they come in. Welcome to a new month and a new year! https://cocorahs.blogspot.com/2016/01/a-december-to-remember.html
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A blizzard that hit parts of Texas late in 2015 has caused significant losses to the dairy industry, including the loss of 40,000 dairy cattle, according to an article in AgWeb on December 31. In addition to the deaths of many cattle in the frigid and stormy conditions, hundreds of truckloads of milk had to be…
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A recent study of Australian wheat and sheep farmers after years of increasing drought and dust storms shows that the farmers are suffering from depression, according to a recent story in Modern Farmer. “The biggest problem seems to be the uncertainty. Farmers don’t know whether their crops will survive or be hit by a sudden…
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The Los Angeles Times published a recent story on California farmers responding to 4+ years of drought. In addition to the drought they have experienced a number of related impacts, including decimation of some crops due to insect infestations. Some of them have run out of resources to keep farming and are taking a break…
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Today, December 21, the winter solstice will occur AT 11:48 pm EST. Historically this marks the shortest day of the year and the start of astronomical winter (meteorological winter already started on December 1). You can read more about it at EarthSky here, including links to what a solstice is and why the latest sunrise…
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On a day when many people are traveling for the holidays, I thought you might be interested in a recent story from Smithsonian magazine on the impact of contrails on local and regional climate. Contrails are high-altitude clouds made of ice crystals and are formed by emissions from jet aircraft interacting with moisture high in the…