Canada and USA agricultural weather issues and changes in our solar cycles

15 06 2009
Photo

Frosted organic cranberries are seen at Canneberges Quebec farm in St-Louis-de-Blandford October 17, 2007. REUTERS / Mathieu Belanger

There’s been some concern lately over climate and agriculture. In the last few days we’ve had headlines such as:

Crops under stress as temperatures fall (UK Telegraph)

Canadian Wheat Output May Fall on Dry, Cool Weather (Bloomberg)

Southeastern Missouri farmers try to overcome wet spring, soggy crops (TV4 Kansas City)

About the same time as these stories I got an email from David Archibald that talks about shifts in growing areas in the USA and the increased yields we’ve seen in the past quarter century. The concern of course is that those gains may vanish with the advent of a quiet solar cycle: Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : Agriculture, climate_change, solar

SurfaceStations now at 80% of the network surveyed: Illinois and Florida USHCN surveys complete

15 06 2009

Illinois USHCN StationsFlorida USHCN stations

It has been a long time coming to get these two states completed. I’m happy to report that they have now been completely surveyed for all USHCN stations. I’d like to personally thank volunteer Ted Semons for his week long road trip in Illinois to get the remaining 17 stations completed, plus volunteer Ron Horvath for getting Key West Florida completed

Further, as of last night, we have now surveyed 981 stations out of the 1221 USHCN weather station network, for 80.3% of the total. With only 19 stations to go to reach 1000 surveyed, I have no doubt we’ll bat 1000 soon. Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : Announcements, weather_stations