Climate and Ag in the news
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NOAA’s latest set of maps summarizing the climate of the US shows that for October, the contiguous 48 states were the fourth warmest since records began in 1895. For the January through October period, the nation was the 6th warmest on record. You can see the breakdown by climate division in the maps below. I’ve…
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Many media stories have focused on either climate change or El Niño as an explanation for why the North Pacific Ocean is so warm this year. Yesterday this blog discussed one of the consequences of the warm water–the record-setting tropical season in the Pacific Ocean this year, which has far surpassed previous seasons in the…
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Did you know that the Southeast experiences a second peak in severe weather in late fall? While the biggest newsmaker is the spring severe weather season, there are a significant number of tornadoes that occur around November, particularly in the southern parts of the country. Weather Underground produced a story on November tornadoes today, including…
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The Washington Post‘s Capital Weather Gang had an excellent article summarizing the amazing record-breaking tropical season in the Northern Hemisphere this year. Not only did the numbers break the old records, they smashed them. The number of named storms was up 48 percent from normal, the number of hurricanes was 178 percent of normal, and…
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Two very strong tropical cyclones recent came onshore. Patricia slammed into a sparsely populated area of Mexico, while Chapala hit the war-torn area of Yemen in a very rare landfall on the Arabian Peninsula. Here are some images from the two storms which give you an idea of the impacts of the strong winds on…
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The Southeast Regional Climate Hub has recently mailed out a couple of newsletters that may be of some interest. Their latest newsletter describes some upcoming workshops on agriculture, forestry and climate-smart decision making. You can read it here. They also released a drought alert for November indicating the likelihood that drought in the Southeast will…
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National Public Radio had an intriguing story about a hay farm in Arizona that is owned by a Saudi dairy company and how it is affecting local groundwater levels. “That dairy company, named Almarai, bought the farm last year and has planted thousands of acres of groundwater-guzzling alfalfa to make that hay. Saudi Arabia can’t…