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MountainXpress has an interesting story this week about the tremendous flood that affected western North Carolina, and Asheville in particular, in mid-July 1916. According to their story, “the tail end of a hurricane, coming close on the heels of another one, had dumped 22 inches of rain on Western North Carolina in 24 hours, inundating…
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WNCN.com, a CBS affiliate in North Carolina, reported this week that the cold snap that affected North Carolina in late April has effectively destroyed the blueberry crop at some farms in their state. The Whitted Bowers Farm in Orange County reported that they have lost $21,000 due to the freezing temperatures, leaving them little crop left…
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Water vapor and carbon dioxide are both contributors to greenhouse warming on the Earth. I’ve gotten questions from time to time about their relative importance to greenhouse warming. Dr. Marshall Shepherd of UGA provides a good discussion of the topic in a recent Forbes.com blog post here.
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Thirty years ago, Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and Republican John Chafee convened a two-day hearing on climate change. Chris Mooney writes in the Washington Post that the top level message of scientists at the time was “eerily” familiar to today. Much of what the climate scientists were saying in 1986…
Posted in: History -
Extremely hot conditions have brought a spate of record high temperatures to some parts of the country, including a few records set in the Southeast late last week. This does not look like it will change any time soon, unfortunately. You can read more about the heat in the Southwest and what to do to keep yourself…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
The latest outlook from the Climate Prediction Center gives a high chance of above-normal temperatures this summer and extending on into next fall and winter. The summer chances are mainly linked to long-term warming trends in temperature, while next winter’s warm temperatures are tied to the likely development of a La Niña in the next…
Posted in: Climate outlooks -
Earthzine published an interesting article earlier this month about the decrease in wind speeds that have occurred in recent years compared to the longer-term average. You can read it at https://earthzine.org/2016/06/10/a-new-kind-of-drought-u-s-record-low-windiness-in-2015/. This is important because of our increasing use of wind power to provide electricity, since lower wind speeds are less efficient for power production and…