• The Southeast Farm Press published a story yesterday summarizing a presentation given at Clemson University on June 10.  The speaker was Sonny Ramaswamy presenting a talk on the role food and agriculture will play in the future. He focused on both the promise and the problems faced by agriculture in the U.S. and globally. Population growth…

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  • NASA has a great web site for viewing pictures of changes that have occurred over time around the globe, both from natural causes like landslides and manmade causes like increases in agriculture.  You may enjoy paging through these to see how the earth’s surface has varied on a variety of time scales.  The photos below,…

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  • Bloomsberg Businessweek had a dynamic graphic online today showing the impacts of different factors on the Earth’s temperature.  You can see it at https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/.  The factors include greenhouse gases, aerosols from pollution, volcanic eruptions, ozone and land use changes.

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  • After a few more days of heat, the Southeast should get some welcome relief from the hot conditions, according to the Climate Prediction Center and other NWS outlets.  You can see the 6-10 day anomaly map at https://www.cpc.noaa.gov.  Some of the extended models have the cooler conditions extending out through the first week of July.…

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  • NOAA is now predicting a 90 percent chance of a strong El Nino lasting into the fall and most likely through the winter.  What does that mean for impacts across the country?  Cliff Mass has an excellent blog posting on this subject at https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2015/06/a-strong-el-nino-develops-what-does.html. Even though his blog is directed towards the Pacific Northwest, you can…

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  • Lightning safety

    Some NWS offices are holding Lightning Safety Awareness activities this week, and I thought it was a good reminder to all of us who spend time outside in the summer. The NWS Summer Safety Awareness resources pages can be found at https://www.nws.noaa.gov/com/weatherreadynation/summer_safety.html#.VYlHfflVhBc. Lightning myths and facts https://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/myths.shtml Understanding lightning https://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/science/scienceintro.htm And finally, I am happy to hear that…

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  • A friend of mine pointed out this interesting new web site from ESRI called Hydro Hierarchy.  The web site allows you to look at the relationship between rivers and their drainage patterns across the US.  A bar plot on the lower left shows the 2014 streamflow values.  The radial graph on the top left shows…

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