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AgWeb published a report today on a talk given to the Texas Plant Protection Association by Carlos Rubinstein, chairman of the Texas Water Development Board. The talk covered the effects of recent droughts on crop and livestock production in the state. Rubinstein reviewed the impacts of the 2009-2011 drought on farm incomes and discussed the growing population in Texas…
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Clint Thompson of UGA published an article this week in Growing Georgia which notes the unusually large losses in tobacco this year due to black shank disease. He said that losses were between 4 and 5 percent of the state’s 12,000-plus tobacco acres. The heaviest losses were in Coffee and Berrien counties, Georgia’s top tobacco-producing…
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The winter solstice this year is on December 21. The winter solstice is the date on which the sun is lowest in the sky and the day is the shortest of the year. It marks the start of astronomical winter (remember, climatological winter starts on December 1). But it is not necessarily the day with…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
The latest Drought Monitor came out this morning and shows that severe drought has been reduced to less than half a percent of the Southeast. It is now confined to an area in the panhandle of Alabama surrounding Mobile. Abnormal dryness continues in many areas of the Southeast except for the Florida peninsula, but is…
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One of the comments that I often hear from those who are skeptical about climate change is the comment that in the 1970s scientists were talking about global cooling. In particular they reference a couple of articles in Time and Newsweek which discussed recent cooling in the atmosphere and what it might mean for future…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
NOAA has just published their December 2014 Climate Connections newsletter. In it they discuss the rapid warming in the Arctic (twice what is occurring in other areas–direct link to story) and why that may affect future weather and climate. They also provide links to some tools to help visualize changes in coasts under storm surges…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
In honor of the winter and holiday season, I thought you might be interested in an article about the science of snowflakes. Did you know that the shape snowflakes takes depends on the atmospheric conditions in which they form? The most common snowflakes, which we make with paper and scissors in schoolrooms, are called dendrites,…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news