Climate science
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December 1st is the first day of meteorological or climatological winter (I guess depending on whether you are a meteorologist or a climatologist). You might wonder why it does not correspond with the astronomical season of winter, which is related to earth-sun geometry and starts this year on December 21. Here is a good article…
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Today is the 250th anniversary of the birth of Luke Howard, a pharmacist and amateur meteorologist who proposed the cloud classification scheme that is still in use today, 220 years later. In his honor, several meteorological agencies have posted stories about how to classify clouds based on information regarding how they look and how high…
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This time of year, many newspapers and magazines post stories about why the leaves change color in the fall. Many of you may already know, but on the off-chance that you are not familiar with the process, here is a good short discussion from Popular Mechanics that describes how weather changes the strength and timing…
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Yahoo News has been running a series of articles on how climate change is affecting different parts of the country. This week they are focusing on our region, the Southeast. In our region, some of the biggest likely impacts of the warming temperatures are more heat waves due to warmer temperatures and higher humidity, stronger…
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I am attending the EDEN (Extension Disaster Education Network) annual meeting up in Grand Rapids, MI, this week (my hometown!). I have been enjoying all of the colors of the trees, especially the sugar maples that are fiery red/orange at peak color. Here is a story from EarthSky explaining why the leaves change color. In…
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Today is the first day of astronomical fall, as we cross the ecliptic and start to see days that are shorter than 12 hours due to the tilt of the earth’s North Pole away from the sun. And even though it’s felt like summer for most of the month, the cold front that went through…
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Fog is at atmospheric phenomenon that occurs many places, including here in the Southeast, but for some places like San Francisco, fog is a necessary part of the ambiance of the environment as well as an important source for moisture during the dry season. But fog is becoming less frequent in the coastal areas of…