SST Anomalies
NASA has put up a nice sea surface temperature page, for tracking El Niño in the Pacific and hurricane conditions in the Atlantic. You can see the El Niño warming.
Archive of entries posted on October 2006
Phenology
Looks like the National Phenology Network is chugging forward: Over the past two years, Julio Betancourt of the Desert Laboratory has been collaborating with Mark Schwartz of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a group of scientists from various disciplines, federal agencies, academic institutions, and environmental networks to develop a wall-to-wall, coast-to-coast phenology observation network for …
Drought and the Price of Wheat
Drought concerns (Australia, El Niño) continue to drive up the price of wheat: Wheat prices rose to a 10-year high on concern that drought will reduce supply from Australia, the third-largest exporter of the grain. Prices earlier soared by their daily limit for a second day and reached the highest since June, 1996, in Chicago. …
Piñon and drought
Great piece by Daniel Collins today on Pinus edulis (our beloved piñon) and decadal-scale climate variability. [T]his episodicity was driven not by natural population processes but by the progression of strong decadal wet and dry regimes, as evidenced by the tree ring data. During pluvial events (pluvial is the opposite of drought), abundant soil moisture …
We Must Not Forget the Anna Politkovskaya’s
From Susan Moeller and Moisés Naím in today’s LA Times: There is no doubt that new technologies are changing the way all of us get and understand information. The trend is toward actively “searching” for what one wants to watch, read or listen to rather than passively taking in whatever editors or producers select. The …
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A Good Science Story
A friend sent along a link to Erika Niedowski’s piece in the Baltimore Sun over the weekend about a bunch of researchers studying extremophiles at the end of the Earth. No politics here, no big breakthroughs, just some delightful writing. As my friend said, “Sometimes a good science story is just a good science story.” …
The “Civil War Drought”
Talking about drought with Mom and Dad at dinner tonight (my poor family), I brought up the “Civil War Drought”, which hit the middle of North America in the late 1850s and ’60s. Dad wanted to know more about where it hit, and I wasn’t sure. I found out. I could just call and tell …
Brooks on Climate, Society and “Progress”
Nick Brooks kindly dropped by a few weeks back with a comment that’s worth pulling out and highlighting in its entirety. Brooks is assistant director of the University of East Anglia’s Saharan Studies Programme, and I’d commented on a paper of his on cultural response to climate change. Nick’s comment: Flattering that you guys are …
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Science in Service of Society
In which a team of Australian researchers determines the half-life of the teaspoon. It would be easy to jump to conclusions here about the obvious policy responses this suggests, but I think it’s important to remember that science can do no more than inform the political/policy process. What society does with this information is as …
Drought in Kenya
This is a great example of the issue Daniel Collins raised a couple of days ago in a discussion of the definition of drought – the extent to which the demand side of the equation must be taken into consideration. It’s a Reuters story about Prince Edward’s visit to northwest Kenya, “where drought has decimated …