Climate science
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Those of you who like exciting movies may be planning to see the movie “Twisters”, which is somewhat an extension of the movie “Twister” from quite a few years ago about storm chasers competing to get the best tornado footage. Here is a discussion about the science in the movie from Dr. Marshall Shepherd of…
Posted in: Climate science -
If you have ever been asked to explain the difference between weather and climate, you might say that climate is the average weather over time. And while that is true, climate is also oscillations from one season to the next, multi-year swings like El Nino and La Nina, and trends over time. Michelle L’Heureux of…
Posted in: Climate science -
I’ve been traveling this weekend to celebrate my mom’s 90th birthday up in Michigan, so am running a little behind. However, I do have a few stories to share with you that I have recently seen in the news of interest. Also included are a couple of hurricane YouTube videos that you might find informative.…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news, Climate science, Crops, Drought, Forests, Fruit, Tropical weather -
Carbon Brief recently published an interesting article that described how climate change will modify the area of land that is suitable for a variety of different crops, including many that are planted here in the Southeast. The authors provided a graph that shows how the areas suitable for tropical crops like banana may expand in…
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If you have been watching national weather news this week you may have noticed images of tremendous dust storms in western Texas, including El Paso. These dust storms caused visibilities near zero on highways, leading to accidents and health issues there. But you may not have seen the stories about the dirty rain that fell…
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The words “polar vortex” have been trotted out a lot this winter as waves of cold air and, sometimes, snow and ice have occurred. The polar vortex has been blamed for a lot of this activity. In fact, I saw a Facebook post from a retired Atlanta weather broadcaster that claimed we have had 11…
Posted in: Climate science -
I noticed when I was looking at the hourly weather forecast for Athens that the next two nights will both have freezes here in Athens, but the types of freezes will be quite different. You can see it quite well using the hourly graphical temperature forecast, so I thought I would discuss them using the…
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Meteorologists like to describe weather in terms of how hot, dry, wet, or cold things have been. A newer measure of the impacts of winter weather on humans is the Winter Misery Index, known more completely as the Accumulated Winter Season Severity Index (AWSSI). It is mapped by the Midwestern Regional Climate Center and posted on their…