Climate science
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A megadrought is a strong and persistent drought that can last for one, two or three decades. While the US has not seen a real megadrought since climate started being measured here in the 1800’s, tree rings and lake sediments can go back much farther in time and tell a different story. There have been…
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What makes weather oppressive to you? For most people, it is probably a combination of heat and humidity. Climatologist Brian Brettschneider has put together a Forbes blog post which describes how he calculated how he used climate data to calculate which parts of the US have the most days with “oppressive” weather. As you can…
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As the Arctic warms up and sea ice melts, it is changing the large-scale weather patterns that help move storms around. These steering currents affect the movement of mid-latitude low pressure centers, but also help push around tropical storms and hurricanes. A new study of the impacts of this shift in the big atmospheric wave…
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If we want to understand the climate of the future, it is important that we first understand the climate of the past. Unfortunately, weather records only go back about 150 years. To look climates on longer time frames, we need the help of paleoclimatologists who look at proxy data like tree rings, lake and ocean…
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Have you ever seen a strange cloud in the sky and wondered what it was? Smithsonian.com posted a short but interesting article about a new “weird cloud atlas” that helps people identify some of the stranger clouds in the sky. You can read about it and see a few pictures at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ufo-or-crazy-cloud-weird-cloud-atlas-helps-you-decide-17428407/. Or go to the…
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This week’s question from the Georgia Climate Project’s Roadmap focuses on how we can leverage natural systems to help protect Georgia’s coastline and important infrastructure. For example, by rebuilding natural wetlands we may be able to protect against some of the likely increased flooding scientists expect us to experience in the future. Maintaining the string…
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Projections of future climate indicate that global temperatures are likely to get a lot warmer by 2100. If this occurs, we will need to determine ways to counteract the warming. Geoengineering is the process of making changes to the earth to keep the earth from warming as much as we expect. These techniques could include…