Climate science
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Modern Farmer published a story this week that discussed the conversion of prime farmland into urban areas across the world. This is certainly something that is happening in the Southeast as large cities like Atlanta and Charlotte expand into “mega-cities”, filling up all the space between city centers with suburbs and exurbs and removing good…
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Earlier in January I was fortunate to see “Hidden Figures”, a movie about brilliant African-American women mathematicians who helped NASA successfully launch astronauts into space. If you haven’t seen it yet, you should, and take your kids with you. This week Dr. Marshall Shepherd discusses some of the hidden women in atmospheric sciences in his…
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NOAA’s climate blog has a new entry which provides an excellent description of the difference between short-term weather and long-term climate. In addition to the analogies in this blog, I also like the comparison between a baseball player’s batting average (climate) and his actual performance in one trip to the plate. You can read the…
Posted in: Climate science -
You may have heard folks claim that climate scientists are just pushing a climate change agenda because they are making a lot of money doing it. How do you respond? I thought this description by Katherine Hayhoe did a good job of explaining how money for climate grants is split between universities and researchers. “Climate…
Posted in: Climate science -
NASA has a new online post which describes how trees are able to capture climate information in their annual growth rings. This information, called paleodata or proxy data, allows us to look back farther in time than using just instrumental records. You can use not only living trees but also trees from the past that…
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My heart goes out to the folks around the Southeast that have been hit by severe weather the past few days and the families that have lost loved ones. While the threat of the worst weather is mostly over, sooner or later another round will come. Here is an article from US Tornadoes which describes…
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AgWeb reprinted a story from Bloomberg News this week describing some troubling results of a study by researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the University of Chicago. The study shows that with the warmer temperatures expected from global warming, yields of corn and soybeans could drop significantly. According to the article,…