Climate and Ag in the news
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The Packer published an article this week describing the impact of recent climate on the strawberry market. The article states that a heat wave in California in October brought on fruit faster than expected, but since then cooler weather has cut volumes, decreasing supplies and increasing demand. Production in southern California, Mexico and Florida are…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
Two recent studies have looked at changes in climate which could occur in the future if global warming trends continue. In one study, described in this article in Phys.org, scientists used coral growth rings in the remote island of Kiribati to compare with measured temperature and salinity patterns in the western Pacific to find a…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
A recent study of perceptions of climate change (published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society) shows that there are significant differences between attitudes of scientists and agricultural producers on the causes of climate change. Over 90 percent of scientists are sure that climate change is occurring and more than 50 percent attribute it…
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Soil quality is a key factor in plant productivity in agriculture. Every good farmer tries to preserve or improve their soil to assure healthy crops and good yields in the future. In fact, 2015 will be the International Year of Soils and December 5 of this year World Soil Day. I’ve run across several articles…
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People have had weather folklore going back to at least the Bible (remember “Red sky at night?”). Here are a couple of stories about Indian summer and other weather sayings. Indian summer article from TheEagle.com Weather, as told by nature from DiscoverNatureNotes.com Farmers are particularly good at phenology, the study of weather and climate by…
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In the past few weeks there have been many forecasts for the coming winter made online. Most are from bloggers with limited meteorological or climatological training, and should be taken with a large grain of salt. Others, from places like the Farmers’ Almanac, are mysteriously produced and vaguely worded so that they can claim they…
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In the next week you will hear a lot about the terms “jet stream” and “polar vortex” if you have not already. What are these phenomena? A couple of easy to understand references you can use: AthensGAWeather has a link to a website at the bottom of the page with a simple 2-minute explanation of…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news