Tropical weather
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This is the time of year when predictions of how active the Atlantic tropical season is likely to be start popping up in the news. Here is a story from Growing Produce that describes the probabilities of different coasts being hit as well as what years are considered the best analogs to this coming season.…
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This past week, hurricane forecasters at Colorado State University released their preliminary forecast for the number of tropical storms and hurricanes expected to form in the Atlantic basin this season. They predict a total of 13 tropical storms will form, of which six will become hurricanes. A tropical storm becomes a hurricane when its sustained…
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The National Hurricane Center’s final report on Hurricane Ian was released earlier this week. It shows that for a short time before landfall it reached category 5, one of just a few hurricanes to do so. In the past, conventional wisdom has said that hurricanes generally weaken as they get close to land due to…
Posted in: Tropical weather -
A recent report published in the scientific journal Nature and described here by BBC indicates that as the globe continues to warm and the Antarctic Ice Sheet melts rapidly, the infusion of fresh meltwater into the ocean could cause large changes in the large-scale ocean circulation that transports heat, salt, and nutrients around the world.…
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Here in the Southeast US, we aren’t really thinking about tropical storms at this time of year, but in other parts of the world, they can occur in almost any month of the year. This year, Tropical Cyclone Freddy started as a tropical storm in the eastern Indian Ocean on February 6 and moved westward…
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A study published in February 2023 in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate quantified a 50-year warming trend in the surface water of the Gulf of Mexico. The rate is twice the rate that the global ocean is warming. This is important to us in the Southeast because of the economic and environmental impacts…
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If you are a citrus grower in Florida that has been affected by the wind and rain of Hurricane Ian, you might be interested in hearing about this new study that is being undertaken by scientists at the University of Florida. Over the next year, they will be looking at the continuing impacts of Hurricane…