Climate and Ag in the news
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Here in the Southeast we often think about the impacts of El Niño as being something that primarily affects us. However, El Niño is actually a global phenomenon that impacts crops around the world. Bloomberg BusinessWeek has a good write-up of the some of the impacts on agricultural commodities like coffee and cocoa beans that…
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In the last day, Hurricane Patricia in the Eastern Pacific Ocean has reached an unprecedented pressure of 880 mb and sustained winds of 200 mph with gusts to 250 mph. This is the strongest hurricane ever measured, although some past storms may have surpassed it but were not directly measured. No doubt its rapid growth…
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The Packer reported today that fresh green bean supplies from the Southeast are expected to be light this year due to the flooding in South Carolina. Estimates are that the crop will be reduced by about 60% from normal amounts. The green beans that are available are expected to be of high quality, though. The link to…
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The National Weather Service Southeast River Forecast Center has released their winter water resources outlook on video this week. It is based on a live webinar they held and lasts about 20 minutes. It discusses the effects of the strong El Niño and the outlook for winter and spring. They also discuss the increased chance for river…
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NOAA’s latest global climate summary for September 2015 was released this morning. According to the report, September 2015 was the warmest September in 136 years of record, and the January through September period was also the warmest on record for the globe. Of the last nine months, seven were the warmest on record, January was…
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The USGS, working quickly, has provided a preliminary report on the South Carolina floods which describes the weather conditions that led to the flood and the consequences of the heavy rain on stream flows in the area. You can get the report at https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/ofr20151201.
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
What do we expect this coming winter now that the strong El Niño is here? Mike Halpert of NOAA discusses the likely conditions across the US in the Climate.gov blog post here and shows the variation of previous El Niño winters from strong to weak years. Even in the strong years, there is still quite…