climate change in your area

[bower]

Yesterday I was reading an article that cited a 7% increase in atmospheric water vapor for every 1 degree increase in global temperature. This partly helps to explain how climate change is affecting the amount of precipitation dropped by storms. - there's more available up there. The problem is, some places are getting the load of it while others are getting none.
At the moment, much of the low lying land in eastern Canada is severely flooding... again. New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec got extra snow in the winter, and then extra rain in the spring with icejams in the rivers... For some it is the second major flood in two years, and are starting to consider moving out of their homes to higher ground. By all accounts, we can expect these patterns to repeat more frequently than in the past.
https://phys.org/news/2019-04-canada...nts-years.html
Then I read another article, which talks about the terrible drought conditions presently in Northern Europe. I really had no idea how bad this is, as European weather rarely makes the news on this side of the pond. In Germany there are concerns of 30-80% crop loss if conditions don't change, and in Czechoslovakia wells are going dry and bark beetles are scourging the forest because of the dry conditions they enjoy.

https://phys.org/news/2019-04-forest...e-drought.html
Obviously this is having a big effect on farmers and gardeners everywhere, but the impact is different in different places. I wanted to start this thread to hear more firsthand from our members around the world, how their communities and farms and gardens are being affected.

Secondly if there are strategies or innovations in your community that helped to manage any kind of climate extreme upon your food or water supply, please share the news.

[mikemansker]

The last two years, we have had extreme wind events. I've lived here for more than 40 years and never had wind damage to my house. The last two years's I've had damage twice.

[bbjm]

I live in the Kansas City area and the summer dry/humid line is moving west to east and will likely move out of Kansas in the near future. I hate humidity and what it does to my garden, but the impact on the environment (native plants and animals) can be devastating if the dry line moves too quickly. Anecdotally, we still have very wet Springs in my neck of the woods. I wait until Mother's Day to plant tomatoes and hope I miss most of the cold wet weather.

[PaulF]

I am sure the overall climate is changing but what we notice is weather not climate. Like in the past 100 years the overall temperature averages have changed 1 or 2 degrees and average humidity is up or down a couple of percentages. That's why the climate change deniers and the change advocates are at each other's throats.

I have kept track of weather conditions as part of my gardening journal and here in my small estate some years are hot and dry or wet and hot or cool and wet, etc., etc. on a cyclical but fairly predictable basis.

Planting dates have stayed within a day or two of each other for 15 years and last and first frost the same. Rainfall or lack of rainfall is statistically the same. At my age I just take it as it comes and I am happy to have made it to another season.

Time to get my seedlings outside and begin the hardening off period.

[Worth1]

I have no idea if climate change has effected where I live or if there is one where I live.
Speaking of drought all we hear about here or at least what I have heard for years is the dust bowl days of the 30's.
Little do many know we had a bad drought in the 50's too.
As of late my area seems to be either dried up or a flood situation.

With the population increasing here by the minute we wont be able to handle the water needed to support it with the attitude about using it we now have.
Drought or no drought.

When you fly over the so called fly over states you see farms in the desert.
They get the water from underground that wont be resupplied by today's rain.
That water has been stored there for thousands of years from a climate long gone.


Another factor that many dont realize is the way we live now and the way we used to live.
We used to live in what they call multi generational dwellings.
Where different generations of a family lived in the same house.
Now they dont so the effect has a drastic effect on the environment and the amount of energy used.
It is going on in China too.
Even though the population isn't growing as fast as it used to the dwellings are increasing.
In my humble opinion I dont think we need to focus so much on drought and climate change.
We need to start to focus on how to live with it.

That might include building bigger better bridges to handle flooding to not taking three to four showers a day to conserve water.


I know this is more than the original thread starter asked for but here it is anyway.

[ginger2778]

I see a big change here. I was born in Coral Gables, a suburb of Miami, in 1956. We don't get much winter, but we always had at least one frost every year, until 2010, and we haven't had one since. It always used to cool off by mid to late October, now it's usually mid November.
We also used to have our rainy season starting late April, now it mostly begins in late June.

[AlittleSalt]

I keep up with the daily weather records as a hobby if nothing else. April here in this part of Texas has a wide range of extremes. Here is an example: http://www.dfwweather.org/wxrecords.php

[Cole_Robbie]

I have given up on early high tunnel tomatoes, because they are premised on having a spring. The past several years, temperatures go from the low 20s at night, which is too cold, to the 80s in the day, which is warm enough to not need a high tunnel, in about two weeks. Spring used to last months. Now it goes from cold to hot almost immediately.

I don't know if deer count as climate, but the population has exploded. I just saw a half dozen does in town...in the middle of the day. My state has done this on purpose, to fuel the hunting industry. When my grandparents were market gardeners in the 1980s, they never fenced their gardens and did not have deer damage. Today, we have to fence all the gardens, or the deer eat everything.

[Barb_FL]

Originally Posted by ginger2778

I see a big change here. I was born in Coral Gables, a suburb of Miami, in 1956. We don't get much winter, but we always had at least one frost every year, until 2010, and we haven't had one since. It always used to cool off by mid to late October, now it's usually mid November.
We also used to have our rainy season starting late April, now it mostly begins in late June.

I'm about 3 hours north of Marsha, and there was a definitely coolness of weather by October 15 and I remember telling everyone that April was the best month. We use to be able to turn our AC off in October and except in rare occasions not start it until April.
Some years now, it never goes off.

Now all of October is hot and so is April.


Even on Accuweather, the daytime temps look similar but the nighttime temps have been running 10 degrees warmer for years now. If those historical temperatures held true, I could grow tomatoes year round.

One other thing, I use to grow the blueberries that required the least amount of chill hours (chill hours are <45). I think the minimum was 300 total chill hours required. We haven't seen that in years.

[Scooty]

Originally Posted by Barb_FL

I'm about 3 hours north of Marsha, and there was a definitely coolness of weather by October 15 and I remember telling everyone that April was the best month. We use to be able to turn our AC off in October and except in rare occasions not start it until April.
Some years now, it never goes off.

Now all of October is hot and so is April.


Even on Accuweather, the daytime temps look similar but the nighttime temps have been running 10 degrees warmer for years now. If those historical temperatures held true, I could grow tomatoes year round.

One other thing, I use to grow the blueberries that required the least amount of chill hours (chill hours are <45). I think the minimum was 300 total chill hours required. We haven't seen that in years.

Snow forecast for tomorrow...... 65 and sunny green right now....

Also, I think honeyberries are way better than blueberries all else being equal. Less work. No need to amendment for soil ph. Too bad the chilling hour requirement is so high, otherwise I suspect more people would grow it.

[Gardeneer]

When I moved down here in 2016 we had a hurricae and flooding for weeks. The locals said that something like that happened 40 some years ago. Fast forward ,October 2018. Another hurricane and even worse floodin.
Most farmers lost most of their soybean, cotton, sweet potato....
Never mind my garden. In 2018 extended flooding killed everything I had in my garden.
So this is,what I am witnessing. Farmers are hit big. That is worse than temprory destuction caused by flooding.

[mikemansker]

This may get me booted from T'Ville, but if that is the case, then I'm happy to go.

We live on a little ball in the middle of a huge universe, surrounded by multiple planets that are uninhabitable. We survive in a delicate balance of temperature, oxygen and precipitation. Science documents that greenhouse gasses are building in our atmosphere causing sea levels to rise, polar ice to retreat and global temperatures to rise at an alarming rate.

I'm 70, and I'll be long gone before the consequences of our neglect come down on us, but I have children, grandchildren and great grandchildren who will suffer as a result of the callous neglect we have about our planet. We allow those who stand to gain by continuing to burn fossil fuels to dictate our decisions.

There was a time in America where we were concerned about leaving a legacy to our children and grandchildren so they could live a better life than us, but now it's greed and power that dictate energy policy.

I wish we could zip ahead 50 years and see what our decisions have wrought. Other than that, there is little hope that we will have the will to influence decisions away from profit and toward preserving our planet.

[greenthumbomaha]

Everything you said is correct, Mike. I've been a mom and out of academia for 30 something years. As a former scientist, I never heard nor offered an opinion, only a presentation of measurable and reproducible data. Carbon samples in core ice samples are measured in a laboratory, and they are trending upward in an alarming rate. If my direction had not been changed by parenthood, the study of climate would surely have been at the top of my priority list. I am sad the results of many years of scholarly research are being diminished by those who have no idea how to gather and use this highly specialized information.


- Lisa

[Nematode]

I hike sometimes at Agassiz rock.
It is an enormous boulder perched on top of a hill, left there by a glacier.
So it's thankfully quite a bit warmer here than it used to be. I can grow tomatoes now at a location that was once under a mile or so of ice. Other than that not much evidence of climate change here.

http://www.thetrustees.org/places-to...ssiz-rock.html

[nctomatoman]

I've been gardening in Raleigh for 27 years. Zone 7 when we moved in, zone 8 now. Rosemary and Bay and Oleander outdoors was unthinkable. Now, it thrives. Weeds, weather patterns, frequency and intensity of rain and extreme heat and humidity - I am gardening very differently now than I was gardening when we moved here.