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In trying to keep up with current climate science, I often run across articles that I think are interesting or challenging. Here are a few of the articles that have caught my eye in recent weeks. Cosmos magazine describes an counterintuitive impact of a warming climate at the end of the last Ice Age–a temporary…
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Spring has sprung with a vengeance, and warmer weather means that severe weather is more likely. That can contribute to power outages, road blockages, flooding, and other things that may affect agricultural production. Winter weather like ice storms can also cause problems for farmers trying to take care of their livestock, and get milk to…
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Earth.com had an article this week by Chrissy Sexton about some new research scientists from Minnesota have published in Nature Climate Change. The research concerns the impacts of increasing rainfall variability on the carrying capacity of grazing lands. As rainfall becomes more variable, the number of animals that can be supported by an acre of…
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I frequently hear complaints from some of my friends who are skeptical about climate change that the climate models are no good and therefore any projections they make about future climate cannot be trusted. I find that interesting because climate models are similar to weather forecasting models in how they operate although some facets of…
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The latest monthly summary of global climate conditions has been released by NOAA today, and it shows that this past January was the 5th warmest since records began in 1880. According to their report, “the 397th consecutive month (since January 1985) with temperatures above the 20th-century average. The last four years (2015-2018) saw the five…
Posted in: Climate summaries -
When I lived in Wisconsin, we blamed the hottest, most sultry days of summer on the corn in Iowa, which was pumping a lot of water vapor into the air. Now there’s a study published in Geophysical Research Letters that takes a scientific look at how the climate in the Corn Belt is changing due…
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A recent article in The Conversation discussed new findings that mangroves are expanding across the world and are moving into areas that currently are salt marshes due to warming temperatures. Mangroves are useful to protect shorelines from high waves and storm surges (and even tsunamis) because of their dense root systems. However, it is not…