Climate science
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The North Carolina Climate Office has produced a number of recorded webinars that discuss different aspects of climate change on North Carolina. Most of these webinars would be generally applicable around the Southeast, so if you are interested, I am sure you would find useful information there. So far there are six in the series,…
Posted in: Climate science -
Snow comes in many different forms. The most familiar to us are dendrites, what we usually see in Christmas cards and in paper cutouts our kids make. Dendrites form in a very specific set of temperature and humidity conditions that only occur at some places in the atmosphere. But snow can also form as needles,…
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The use of computers in predicting the weather has been around for a long time. As far back as World War 1, scientists envisioned a method for calculating what the weather would be like in the future based on observations and knowledge of atmospheric physical principles. Lewis Fry Richardson, a Quaker who spent his spare…
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The polar vortex has been in the news again because it is contributing to the cold conditions we have been experiencing in the Southeast recently. But there is still a lot of confusion about what it is and how it has come to affect us here. PBS/Nova has a very interesting discussion of how there…
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A recent study by scientists at Michigan State University looked at how the storage of terrestrial water will change by the end of the century. Terrestrial water storage includes not just lakes and streams, but also water stored in soils and groundwater. The study showed that many areas of the globe are expected to lose…
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This week is the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society, the main professional organization for meteorologists and climatologists in the US and beyond. It is all online this year (a shame since we were supposed to be in New Orleans, but that’s life) so all their activities are available on the web. They offer…
Posted in: Climate science -
Rising temperatures from increased greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane are affecting many aspects of life, including sea level rise, rising costs of utilities, and production management for agriculture. Agriculture is often blamed for the increase in greenhouse gases, although in reality there are other factors that contribute just as much. But agriculture has…