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With the continued lack of rainfall in the Florida peninsula, an area of severe (D2) drought has been added to the Drought Monitor map this week. The severe drought stretches along the east coast northeast of Lake Okeechobee. Rainfall in the next week will probably keep things unchanged in next week’s map. No drought elsewhere…
Posted in: Drought -
Here is an interesting site that shows what your weather will be like over the next few days by plotting the results of several different weather models side by side. When the models agree, the lines are all close together, indicating good agreement. When they diverge, then you know the models are less certain. In…
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I’ve frequently been asked how we know that human activity is responsible for a warming earth. Of course there are natural factors that are influencing the climate, such as sunspots (on time scales up to a decade), orbital variations around the sun (on time scales of 10,000 to 100,000 years), and volcanic eruptions (effects usually…
Posted in: Climate science -
Here are two recent stories that sum up the year in Georgia agriculture. WSB described the gut-wrenching losses due to Hurricane Michael in some parts of the state as well as impacts from frost on peach farmers here. Then the Atlanta Journal-Constitution described the impacts of Hurricanes Michael (and Irma last year) on pecan production…
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The 2018 annual summary of the climate for the Southeast is now available online. It includes a summary of conditions across the region and a list of the top ten most extreme events. You can read it at https://www.sercc.com/climateinfo_files/monthly/southeast_monthly_report/southeast20181_12.pdf. Note that listings of the ranking of 2018 compared to other years for the Southeast is…
Posted in: Climate summaries -
While the Southeast is not known as a big producer of alternative energy such as wind energy (other than along the coast and the mountains, the winds are not strong here), we do have one thing that is very valuable from an energy perspective–sunshine! Even though our humidity and cloud cover are often high, we…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
After a few weeks’ hiatus, here is the latest question from the Georgia Climate Project. This week’s question is on how urban areas are affecting local weather and climate. You probably have already heard of the urban heat island and how it makes cities warmer, but you might not know that cities also increase rainfall…
Posted in: Climate science