Climate science
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CNN has a sobering video posted at https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2016/11/02/arctic-ice-animation-orig-bu.cnn. It shows how much the perennial sea ice has disappeared between 1984 and the present. With such big changes in the ice cover in the Arctic, no wonder the weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere are changing so much. It’s probably not surprising that at the same time…
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Dr. Brenda Ortiz of Auburn University announced today the release of a new iBook on climate and crops in the Southeast. I don’t have the iBook app downloaded on my smartphone and tablet yet, but when I do I will be sure to get a copy of this new book. I am still looking to…
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For the first time ever in recorded human history, the level of carbon dioxide for the full year was above 400 parts per million. Proxy data tell us that the last time it was at this level was 3.5 million years ago. This was most likely aided by the strong El Niño, since the droughts…
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The WunderBlog has a great new article on the heat wave that is dominating weather across much of the US. The author Bob Henson notes that “As a very strong Pacific jet continues to pump mild air into the nation, we could see a few all-time monthly records for November threatened later next week, especially…
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The latest US Forest Service monthly newsletter was released this week. It contains links to a number of interesting stories, including a video on how fire benefits forests and how climate change will impact forest hydrology. You can view the newsletter here.
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Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and one that has been linked to farming in several ways. Ruminants produce methane as part of the digestive process, rice paddies release methane through fermentation, and clearing land by burning forests or draining wetlands can all produce methane. But the amount of methane being released into the atmosphere…
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I was going through mail today and found this interesting commentary on interpreting climate records in Physics Today. The article discusses how different writers can take the same climate information (in this case, the very warm March 2012 temperature record from Durham NC) and write very different headlines based on how they interpret the data. All…