History
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In the past few years I have enjoyed dipping into the UGA Special Collections Library and viewing some old diaries of settlers in coastal Georgia and Carolina from the early days of the colony. As farmers, they were very aware of the weather around them and how it affected their crops. This is the science…
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Often people who talk to me about climate change mention the Little Ice Age, which occurred in the 1500s through 1800s and is associated with a lack of sunspots on the Sun. Many people think that the Little Ice Age was a period of cold around the globe, but recent research has shown that while…
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Proxy data like tree rings, pollen cores from lakes, and ice cores from glaciers can help scientists decipher the long-range climate history of a location by figuring out how the patterns of pollen or tree rings relate to the temperature and precipitation at the time they were laid down. Cave mineral deposits called “flowstones”(you probably…
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If you like weather history, you will be interested in this story map on extreme weather events for the state of South Carolina. It contains a lot of different information on the great storms, droughts, and hurricanes of the past 300 or more years, with pictures, maps and other items of interest. You can view…
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If you are interested in how farmers produced fruit and vegetables in the days before modern technology and greenhouses in colder climates, you will enjoy reading this article in Low-Tech magazine. It describes the use of walls to help warm up local areas…
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According to an article in Forbes.com this week, “The greatest cold weather event in the recorded history of the U.S. took place during the first half of February 1899. Sub-zero temperatures were observed in every state in the Contiguous U.S. – including Florida. The coldest temperature on record for many cities and states…”
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You know from previous blog posts that tree rings contain a lot of climate information encoded in the thickness of each annual ring, including information about temperature and precipitation as well as some occasional information about fires, floods and other impactful events. But you might not know that tree rings can also be used to…