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My meeting in Asheville NC ended today with presentations from a number of federal agencies who are involved in collecting and disseminating climate information. The biggest of all is the National Centers for Environmental Information, previously called the National Climatic Data Center, which is mainly located in Asheville just down the street from where we…
Posted in: Sources of weather and climate data -
Sometimes it takes me a while to find an interesting story. This 2015 story on dry beans from Modern Farmer discusses a cross between common beans like white or kidney and the tepary bean. The tepary bean is much less sensitive to hot temperatures than the common beans, and the crosses looks like they will…
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This week’s Drought Monitor shows the last bit of drought is gone from the Southeast after recent rains. Just a few patches of abnormally dry conditions are left due to lingering precipitation deficits. Cooler conditions associated with the rain and clouds also mean that many areas of the Southeast are expected to be below normal…
Posted in: Drought -
A new study released this week indicates that the American South will feel the worst economic effects of a warming climate. Articles in The Atlantic here and in the New York Times here describe the results of the study published today in Science which use a new economic method of calculating economic costs by calculating…
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Recent studies on the rate at which sea level is rising due to warmer ocean water and melting ice sheets show that not only is sea level rising in most areas, but the rate at which it is rising is increasing. This has important implications for coastal communities, which often do planning based on the…
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One of the products featured at this week’s AASC meeting in Asheville is a new atlas of precipitation patterns and probabilities in the Carolinas which was developed by the Carolinas RISA project in conjunction with the National Integrated Drought Information System in the past few years. It provides a number of maps and other resources…
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National Geographic has an interesting article this week on a new NASA study documenting increases in forest fires caused by lightning strikes in the boreal forest in the northern parts of North America. The article says that “Since 1975, the number of fires ignited by lightning has increased between two and five percent, driven by…