Climate science
-
If you watch the weather forecasts carefully, either for regular weather or for tropical storms, you probably already know that meteorologists use multiple models to help make their predictions of what the weather is likely to be and how storm systems will move across an area. Forbes has a great description of why forecasters use…
-
You might expect that in an El Nino winter, the chance of freezing nights would go up, since El Nino winters are generally cooler than average. I decided to test that by looking at the number of nights that the minimum temperature got below 32 F and seeing if years with El Nino had more…
-
Climate prediction is a combination of looking at patterns that historically have affected our region in the past (analogies with previous events) and what computer models are saying about what we can expect this year based on large-scale weather patterns and how they are expected to evolve over time using mathematical formulas and current observations.…
-
When I talk about impacts of El Nino in the Southeast, I often mention that the jet stream moves south to a position that is usually located across southern AL and GA and northern FL. The jet stream pushes along the winter storm systems that bring rain (and occasionally snow) to the region. Cloud cover…
-
Over the weekend we passed from astronomical summer to fall as the sun moved across the plane of the earth’s equator. Days just get shorter from now until the winter solstice in December. I can certainly tell the change, and I bet you can too. You can learn more about the fall equinox at EarthSky…
Posted in: Climate science -
Many of you complain about how poor the seasonal forecasts are and how much you would like to have better long-range forecasts for planning purposes. While predicting a specific weather event a year in advance is never going to happen, you might be interested in reading this story from Growing Produce on advances that scientists…
-
This week Jim Downer, one of my colleagues at The Garden Professors blog, posted an article about how garden plants (and really most plants including crops) respond to very high temperatures. Fortunately, here in the Southeast we have not seem extremely high temperatures here very often this year, but the summer is not over so…