Climate science
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Is the sun causing the warming we have seen in recent decades? This is a comment I occasionally get from people who are not paying careful attention to how climate works. While solar radiation can affect climate on a variety of time scales (ice ages from distance-related orbital changes in our trip around the sun,…
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If you’re wondering where the cold air is this time of year, you are not alone. A number of my friends have noted on Facebook how late the frost is to Minnesota and the upper Midwest this year and here in the Southeast we are later than normal as well. You can read about some…
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Have you enjoyed the view of the full moon that has occurred over the last two nights? Even with all of the smoke in the Southeast, the drought has kept skies reasonably clear and most folks have gotten a glimpse of how big it is, because it is on the nearest point of its orbit…
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Earlier this fall EPA announced that they have updated their web resources on climate impacts in the Southeast. You can find information on trends in temperature and precipitation around the region as well as projections for future conditions at https://www.epa.gov/climate-impacts/climate-impacts-southeast.
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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…