Climate and Ag in the news
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WRAL chief meteorologist Greg Fishel and renowned hurricane specialist Kerry Emmanuel hosted a presentation on the future of hurricanes in North Carolina last night. The town hall presentation has been recorded and is available at https://www.wral.com/news/video/14586628/#47gpHetXx8OqUdW8.99. Note that the full presentation is almost two hours long.
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With all the rain we’ve had this week, the smell of rain has been on my mind. EarthSky had a blog entry on petrichor, the official term for the smell of rain (here). I was surprised to learn that the word was created by the Australian National Science agency, CSIRO, based on Latin roots. I…
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NOAA released their global climate summary for March 2015 today. It shows that March was the warmest on record for the Earth as a whole since historical records began in 1880. The first quarter, January through March, was also the warmest on record. The eastern US was one of the few places that was near…
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Sam Ingram of the Effingham County Extension News reports that last week’s dry weather was good enough for farmers in his county to plant corn. Because of the warm conditions and adequate moisture, the corn is really popping up. You can see some pictures and read his blog at https://site.extension.uga.edu/effingham/2015/04/corn-is-popping-up/ A bit farther afield, AgWeb reports…
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Today marks the anniversary of one of North Carolina’s worst tornado outbreaks in history. The State Climate Office of North Carolina offers this blog posting on the storms (link). Another excellent article about this outbreak can be found at https://www.ustornadoes.com/2013/04/16/north-carolinas-largest-tornado-outbreak-april-16th-2011/.
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
Eighty years ago yesterday, the most famous dust storm of the Dust Bowl Era occurred in Oklahoma and Texas. You’ve probably seen pictures of the tremendous wall of black soil picked up by the strong winds and blown for miles across the Great Plains. The sight of all this dirt carried by the wind prompted…
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One of the consequences of the continuing drought in California has been the unprecedented string of extremely high temperatures that have occurred in the last few years. Normally a portion of the sun’s energy that hits the earth goes to evaporating water from the surface, either from soils or water bodies or indirectly through evapotranspiration…