• Last week I had the honor of testifying before the House Agriculture Committee on the topic of “Climate Change and the US Agriculture and Forestry Sectors.” It was a long hearing that lasted almost five hours. My key points from the testimony are below. If you are interested in hearing the full hearing, you can…

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  • I have many friends who share stories about climate and agriculture with me via social media and email. Here are several stories I have read in the news and their posts lately related to climate that you might find interesting. National Science Foundation: Tree rings and Iceland’s Laki volcano eruption: A closer look at climate…

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  • Today is the last day of meteorological winter, and in spite of being in a La Nina this year, it has not felt nearly as warm and dry as we usually expect from a LN winter due to the impacts of the Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW) which pushed the storm track south into our region,…

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  • More rounds of rain this week are expected in most areas of the Southeast except for the Florida Peninsula. The heaviest rain is expected to be in Alabama and western Georgia, with lighter amounts elsewhere. The Florida Peninsula should see only light amounts of rain, which could lead to the potential expansion of abnormally dry…

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  • The latest Drought Monitor, released earlier this week, shows that the recent rains have removed the abnormally dry conditions (D0) that were western North Carolina and in Georgia and have reduced them in Florida. Moderate drought (D1) and abnormally dry conditions also shrunk in Alabama. With this week’s rain, I expect to see more decrease…

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  • A lot of the Southeast is covered in forest now. In Georgia alone, about 70 percent of the land is now forested. Producers used to be able to make a good living off of forestry during the housing booms of previous decades, but now they are barely getting by. The Wall Street Journal has a…

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  • I saw an article on Yahoo News about La Nina making tornado season more severe this year. And if you look at the overall tornado season for the country, that seems to be true. But previous research has shown that the area of the most tornadoes just shifts, so that areas west of us get…

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