Drought
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AgWeb posted an article this week on the impacts of the continuing California drought on dairies in the region. Competition for scarce water has led to fallowed crops and higher costs for irrigation. A shift to permanent crops like nut trees has also removed acreage once used to produce feed for dairy cattle. Dropping milk prices…
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The Los Angeles Times ran an article today describing the impacts of groundwater pumping on agriculture in California’s Central Valley (link). High rates of groundwater use have caused ground levels to subside by as much as a foot a year, and have also lowered water tables, forcing farmers to pay high prices to pump water…
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The headline above sounds sensational, and some people claim that it is, but the warning comes from a respected NASA scientist. He says “As our “wet” season draws to a close, it is clear that the paltry rain and snowfall have done almost nothing to alleviate epic drought conditions. January was the driest in California…
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We’re about halfway through March, and so far for the month the Southeast has been warmer and drier than normal across almost the entire region. The warmth has been especially strong in Florida and southern Georgia. Dry conditions in southern Alabama have contributed to the continuing drought there. Generally the coolest temperatures have corresponded with…
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As the window on the wet season in California starts to close, there are signs that the drought affecting the area is likely to continue and perhaps even to grow over the coming year. The Western Governors’ Association released a report this week stating that snowpacks in the mountainous areas are far below normal after…
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A recent study by researchers at Kansas State University looked at wheat yields in areas across the world to see how temperatures affected the yields of the popular crop. For the study, researchers systematically tested 30 wheat crop models against field experiments from around the world that were conducted in areas where the average temperature…
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A new NASA study this week shows the potential impacts of the warming climate on the occurrence of “megadroughts”, which are multi-year extreme droughts that have historically affected areas like California and the central part of the US. (Tree ring analysis has shown that the Southeast has also experienced megadroughts in the last 500 years.)…