Climate science
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This week’s question from the Georgia Climate Project Roadmap is on food security. Making sure Georgia citizens have access to good, healthy and reasonably priced food is a major concern in times of increased extreme weather, including both floods and droughts. Scientists need to know how these weather extremes will impact supply chains, prices, and…
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AgWeb posted a story this week on the results of a new study by University of Colorado scientists which looked at whether people of different political parties agreed or differed in their beliefs on global warming. They found that “Sixty-six percent of Republicans, 74 percent of Independents, and 90 percent of Democrats said they believed…
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As you know, there is a lot of variability in climate from one year to the next and even sometimes from one month to the next. How do you know if recent extremes in temperature, precipitation or other climate variables are just a manifestation of that natural variability or if they are a sign of…
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If you are an agricultural producer or an extension agent, chances are you spend a lot of time outside, especially during the growing season. You know what it’s like to work through extreme heat and humidity, and hopefully you have included time in your schedule to cool off and hydrate. For people who work outside…
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Since the 1960s, temperatures across the Southeast and the entire world have been increasing, although there is a lot of year-to-year variability which is the bane of farmers everywhere. For the Southeast, a temperature increase of 1 degree F translates into a roughly one-week increase in the length of the growing season based on some…
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The “Urban Heat Island” effect is an artificial warming of the climate in the center of urban areas due to increased heating by pavement and lack of shade due to loss of tree cover, among other things. This 3-minute YouTube video describes some efforts by big cities like Los Angeles and New York to combat…
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There have been a number of stories in the news in recent weeks about the number of record high temperatures that are being set around the world. You might wonder if this is becoming more frequent than in previous decades. Here is a careful analysis by climatologist Brian Brettschneider looking at the number of record…