Climate science
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I recently ran across this story from January 2018 which describes an invited talk that Edward Geller, famous physicist and part of the Manhattan Project, gave to a gala celebration noting the 100th anniversary of the petroleum industry. According to a transcript of the speech, given in 1959, Geller warned petroleum executives that the increase…
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Atlas Obscura had a very interesting post in October that discussed how scientists are using prehistoric sand ripples that have been preserved in rocks from about 200 million years ago to determine what the weather was like. These scientists from MIT used rocks from Massachusetts that had both preserved ripples and dinosaur tracks on old…
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In the last few weeks I have run across two new methods for estimating precipitation amounts in places where no rain gauge is present (which is most of the US). These methods incorporate new techniques for filling in the gaps between surface rain gauges using radar data. NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information posted a…
Posted in: Climate science -
Georgia Climate Project: How can Georgia increase climate sequestration in agriculture and forestry?
This week’s question from the Georgia Climate Project’s Roadmap has to deal with opportunities that Georgians might have for capturing carbon from the air using trees or agricultural techniques. Pulling carbon dioxide from the air has the benefit of reducing the increase in greenhouse gases that is occurring across the world, but could also present…
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Yale Environment 360 has an interesting story which shows how different climate zones around the world are shifting in response to warming temperatures. The article shows 7 pairs of maps describing changes in climatic variables like plant hardiness zones and the “tornado alley” over time. I think you will be interested to see how some…
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I saw a very interesting article in Nature magazine this week about how dandelion seeds float through the air. Apparently the science of how they sustain flight after someone blows them away was not well understood, and when researchers figured it out, it showed a new method of flight that has not been previously seen…
Posted in: Climate science -
This week the New York Times published a long article looking at whether farmers in Georgia that have been affected by recent storms like Hurricane Michael are attributing the impacts from these storms to climate change. While most farmers think that they are primarily caused by year-to-year weather variations, which I usually call “climate variability”,…