Tools for climate and agriculture
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This is the famous quote that opens Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities”. In this case it is also a pretty good summary of the divided nature of temperature across the US this winter. The Weather Channel had a story today which described stations that had their record warmest winter ever, including a number…
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Do you have a need for chill hour measurements? There are a couple of online sources that you can use to calculate chill hours for your location. AgroClimate has a great graphic package that allows you to pick between two chill hour models. You can find it at https://agroclimate.org/tools/Chill-Hours-Calculator/. If you are in Georgia, the…
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As expected, the frigid air has arrived in the Southeast, and near-record setting temperatures were experienced across a lot of the area this morning. The map from CRONOS from the North Carolina State Climatology Office at 8 am below shows the extent of the cold air. Today the maximum high temperature in many areas will…
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Meteorologists are anxiously watching the latest blast from the Arctic, which is expected to move into the Southeast after a cold frontal passage on Wednesday. Predicted temperatures on Thursday show that it is likely that many areas of the Southeast will experience record low high temperatures and some record lows may also fall. A nice…
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The National Weather Service has just announced a new “experimental” forecast app for smartphones that may make it easier to make short-term decisions on what to do around the farm and when to do it. This app provides a variety of weather-related information in an easy to use format which adapts to your screen size.…
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The University of Minnesota’s Institute of the Environment published a research article this month in Nature Communications which shows how much of the crop yields of maize, rice, soybeans, and wheat depend on the impacts of the climate. In the study the researchers determined that historically 1/3 of the yield variability of the four crops…
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I spent the day down in Tifton attending the UGA Cotton Growers Workshop and Cotton Association meeting. Lots of good information and interesting people to talk to! I presented two sessions on the climate of 2014 and the outlook for 2015. I’ve posted my summary for 2014 on this blog already, but let me briefly…