Climate and Ag in the news
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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…
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“Silvopasture” is the combination of growing trees, forage and livestock together. The USDA National Agroforestry Center has put together a great list of resources online that describe how silvopasture works and what things agricultural producers need to consider if they are thinking about converting. There are also some useful worksheets that help you determine if…
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NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information published a new article this week on the historical comparisons between the current strong El Niño and previous ones. You can read it at https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-references/dyk/elnino-2015-2016. The article displays the difference between each of the historical El Niño years so you can see the year to year variation in where…
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As the World Series ended last night with the Royals on top, the skies lit up with amateur fireworks across Kansas City. In fact, there was so much smoke and debris they were visible on the NWS radar. You can read about it at Deadspin here. Radar has been known to pick up migrating birds,…