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If you are a history buff, you will enjoy reading about the first official weather forecast, made by Admiral Robert FitzRoy, a well-known mariner who also happened to be the captain of the HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin’s ship of discovery. The key to FitzRoy’s ability to forecast was the development of the telegraph, which allowed…
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The State Climate Office of North Carolina put out another blog posting in their series on extremes in the state. In this edition, they look at spring freezes and the damage that can be done by a late frost to crops in the region. In the article several devastating frosts of the past are described,…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
If you have looked at the Keeling curve for carbon dioxide concentration that I have shown in past blog postings, you may be wondering why there is a yearly cycle in the concentration of carbon dioxide. The graph below shows the last two years of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, as measured on Mauna Loa…
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The Atlantic tropical storm season officially starts on June 1. However, this year the unofficial season may start a little earlier than usual if model predictions hold true. The models show the potential for an extratropical storm to form on an old frontal boundary over the Bahamas which could drift north to North Carolina over…
Posted in: Climate outlooks -
The “Spring Predictability Barrier” is well known to climatologists as the difficulty we have in predicting whether an El Nino will occur in the coming months in springtime compared to other times of the year. This is due to the seasonality of El Nino, which is usually strongest around Christmas (hence the name “El Nino”,…
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Vox.com had a thoughtful article about possible changes in California agriculture over time under a warmer climate and how it might impact other areas of the country. In particular the Southeast was identified as a place where some agricultural production might move. However, there are differences between the climate of California and the Southeast which…
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The blog site for UGA Urban Agriculture posted a story last week about the establishment of the National Resources Conservation Service eighty years ago during the Dust Bowl. You might be interested in this story, which is at https://site.extension.uga.edu/urbanag/2015/04/2300/.
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news