Climate science
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Today Mount Ulawun erupted in an explosive eruption that sent ash well over 50,000 feet in Papua, New Guinea. You can read more about the eruption at MSN at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/papua-new-guinea-volcano-spews-ash-triggering-eruption-alert/ar-AADrDYQ. This is likely to have important consequences for the climate of the Southeast in the next few years, since strong eruptions that put ash and…
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Now that we are back in a rainier pattern with more frequent showers and thunderstorms, it’s time for a refresher about how to determine how far away a lightning strike is. Contrary to some people’s views, when you see lightning strike and then count the number of seconds until you hear the thunder, it takes…
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For those of you who have been reading about the recent melting in Greenland, here is a very informative discussion by UGA’s resident expert, geography professor Dr. Tom Mote. He does field work in Greenland most summers and knows a lot about the dynamics of ice sheets there. You can read it at The Hill…
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Dr. Jonathon Foley is a former graduate of the University of Wisconsin like I am, and has spent much of his life looking at the impacts of changing climate on the earth. Here is a short and easy to read discussion of how we know climate is changing and where the greenhouse gases that are…
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Which came first, the warmer temperatures or the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? This has been one of the perplexing questions in studies of past climate. A new study was released last week which shows that the changes in carbon dioxide in past ice ages was due to a combination of colder sea surface…
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Smithsonian.com has an interesting article on the high temperature records that are being set in Alaska. You might think things have been hot here in the Southeast, but the Arctic is being much more affected by rising temperatures due to feedbacks with ice cover and melting of permafrost, which releases greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.…
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The journal Nature posted a story this week provides maps which compare the present Köppen-Geiger climate classification to what is expected in the time period from 2071-2100. The Köppen-Geiger classification is based on a combination of number of months above certain temperature thresholds and how much precipitation a location gets. Changes in the Southeast are…