Tools for climate and agriculture
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Have you ever heard the term “degree days?” Heating and cooling degree days are derived from temperature data and used to monitor the amount of energy that is needed for heating and cooling. So if you have a winter like this past one, with a much lower number of heating degree days than average, you…
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The US Climate Resiliency Toolkit online has a good web page describing some of the steps that farmers currently use to assess their weather and climate vulnerability and how they take measures to protect against risks to their operations. It includes a five-step process to become more resilient in the face of unknown changes to…
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The combination of warmer than usual weather, lack of precipitation and the early emergence of plants from winter dormancy has helped lead to near-record low stream flows for this time of year on many rivers in Georgia. Here are a couple of examples. The Chattahoochee near Cornelia is at record low flows for this time…
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Here are some detailed global images of vegetation health, including several drought indices, fire danger and soil saturation maps as derived from the Suomi-NPP satellite. In addition to global maps you can view each variable by country. The detail is amazing! You can find out more about them at Climate.gov at https://www.climate.gov/maps-data/dataset/global-vegetation-health-images or go directly to…
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Today is a good day to remind folk that the Midwestern Regional Climate Center has a number of freeze map products available at their VIP site (Vegetation Impact Program). The site has national maps for a number of different parameters like median date of last spring frost (you choose 32 F or 28 F). Check…
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The US Environmental Protection Agency has a new publication available which describes some methods local communities can take to prepare for and adapt to changes in climate. A list of chapters in the publication is below. Chapter 2: Overcoming Barriers to Climate Adaptation discusses potential social and legal barriers. Chapter 3: Overall Strategies discusses smart…
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For those of you who are trying to find climate data and can’t get a hold of me, NOAA has put together a handy web page which tells you how you can search through their multitude of data sets to find what you need. You can read about the process and visit the starting page…