Climate science
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There have been a lot of stories in the news recently discussing various aspects of climate and its impacts on society, including agriculture. Here are some of my favorite ones. Tulane News: Study finds record-breaking rates of sea-level rise along the U.S. Southeast and Gulf coasts since 2010 Wired: One City’s Escape Plan From Rising…
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Every year in the ENSO blog, NOAA climate forecasters look back at the prediction for last season and discuss how good it was. This keeps them honest and shows that this year, the prediction was quite good, especially for the Southeast. As usual, temperature is easier to predict and get correct than precipitation, and that…
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A study published in February 2023 in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate quantified a 50-year warming trend in the surface water of the Gulf of Mexico. The rate is twice the rate that the global ocean is warming. This is important to us in the Southeast because of the economic and environmental impacts…
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I posted this information about frosts and freezes in the UGA Viticulture blog today after getting a request from a grape grower in northern GA. Clearly, it has been on the mind of a lot of growers this week due to our return to cold conditions after a very warm February. This is some information…
Posted in: Climate science -
For meteorologists and climatologists, spring begins on March 1 and goes through May 31. So for us, it’s happy spring to you all! And this year it sure looks like it, with many flowers blooming, including the peach trees at the UGA Horticulture Farm in Watkinsville GA. Now we are hoping to avoid a late…
Posted in: Climate science -
One question I often get asked when I give talks about the changing climate is whether ENSO, the tropical swing in temperatures between El Nino and La Nina, is affected by the warming climate. It turns out not to be a simple question because ENSO depends not only on sea surface temperatures but also the…
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The stratosphere over the North Pole is showing signs of a developing Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW), but there is no indication at this time of what impacts it might have, especially in the Southeast. Usually impacts from an SSW occur several weeks after the onset of its development in the stratosphere, but the strength and…