Climate science
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The US Department of Agriculture has an interesting website with ten case studies documenting their plan to help farmers and foresters plan for climate change. Here is some of the information from the web site. You can read more at: https://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?contentidonly=true&contentid=climate-smart.html ——————————————————————————————————- The effort relies on voluntary, incentive-based conservation, forestry, and energy programs to reduce…
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To understand how common crops respond to changes in climate, some researchers at the University of Minnesota have built a sophisticated climate-controlled laboratory for studying how crops like corn respond to changes in temperature, carbon dioxide concentration, and rainfall. I was amazed at how carefully they had to put together the lab, for example in…
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If you’re tired of hot summer weather, you might enjoy a chance to think about cool winters. North Georgia Weather published a blog article on the relationship between ENSO phase and the likelihood of getting a cold winter in the Southeast back in September 2015. You can read it at https://www.northgeorgiawx.com/weather-blog/category/el-nino. The statistics show that about…
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Do you know what a “flash” drought is? I always thought it was a rapidly developing severe drought that primarily affected agriculture. I was surprised to learn that there are actually two types of flash drought, as explained by John Feldt, the retired Hydrologist in Charge of the NWS Southeast River Forecast Center. John now…
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Now that we are firmly stuck in the “hot and humid” mid-summer conditions of the Southeast, you might be interested in these fun facts on heat and humidity published by the Capital Weather Gang this week. You can find them by clicking here.
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I ran across a detailed journal article about the effects of climate variations on a whole list of specialty crops, some of which are grown in the Southeast and others of which are from other climate regions such as the tropics. In this Elementa Science review article, the authors looked at published studies on impacts…
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My colleague Dr. Brenda Ortiz from Auburn University recently had a paper published in Nature about climatic effects on maize yield in the Southeast that you might find interesting. You can read the article, entitled “Climate Change and ENSO Effects on Southeastern US Climate Patterns and Maize Yield”, at https://www.nature.com/articles/srep29777. Keep in mind that it is a…