LAST YEAR Oregon and Washington experienced their warmest year on record. Here’s what we know about 2015’s anything-but-normal climate. The big climatic event for the Northwest in 2015 was the severe drought. Many of our region’s typically snow-covered mountains were reduced to bare ground. This meant that precipitation fell largely as rain, not as
By Cynthia King Reprinted from: WSU News AgWeatherNet By Nic Loyd, WSU meteorologist, and Linda Weiford, WSU News SPOKANE, Wash. – If you live in the Inland Northwest, you know about its zigzaggy climate: One week we’re dressed in shorts, the next in coats; one day we’re opening umbrellas, the next we’re shoveling snow; one […]
By CIRCulator Editorial Staff Reprinted from: The Climate CIRCulator FIRES AND OTHER disturbances are the primary agents of ecological change in forests. Under climate change, forest fires are expected to grow both in frequency and size. One recent study examines what that means for the Northwest. The study published in the journal Ecological Modeling comes […]
By CIRCulator Editorial Staff Reprinted from: The Climate CIRCulator AS WE WROTE in the October issue of the CIRCulator, wildfires are expected to grow in size and frequency under climate change. (See “Large Wildfires Expected Under Climate Change.”) Consequently, there’s considerable interest in finding ways to encourage homeowners to take preventative measures on their property—such […]
RANGING IN ELEVATION from 267 to 3,000 meters (roughly 875 to 10,000 feet) and nestled in the corner of northeast Oregon and southeast Washington, the Blue Mountains are a collection of small mountain ranges that comprise a rich, complex ecosystem of forests, streams, and snow-capped peaks. As with other mountain ecosystems in the U.S. West
By CIRCulator Editorial Staff Reprinted from: The Climate CIRCulator FORESTS’ ABILITY to “breathe in” carbon dioxide (CO2) is widely understood to act as a kind of offset or buffer to human-caused climate change. Put simply, forests are essentially picking up the slack—at least some of it—for our heavy carbon-emitting lifestyles. However, forests’ capacity to act […]
By David Schmidt Reprinted from: Animal Ag Doug is a dairy producer (about 1700 cows). I met him a few months back and at a Dairy Conference at Cornell. I was recording some interviews with researchers and farmers on the topic of climate and animal agriculture. I am still reviewing the interviews as I continue […]
By CIRCulator Editorial Staff Reprinted from: The Climate CIRCulator THESE DAYS the vegetation of Oregon’s economically important Willamette River basin is a mix of grasslands and croplands along the Willamette River Valley floor and coniferous forests in the uplands. These higher elevations are important for local forest industries. Under climate change, rising temperatures are expected […]
By CIRCulator Editorial Staff Reprinted from: The Climate CIRCulator CLIMATE CHANGE is expected to influence where and how much snow will blanket our future winters. This change, says a new study, is already happening. The study, published in the Journal of Climate, examines on-the-ground measurements of snow cover in the continental United States over the […]
By CIRCulator Editorial Staff, Reprinted from: The Climate CIRCulator ORDINARILY, climate change adaptation tends to be a top-down process. Climate researchers identify the best climate science and data, run climate simulations, and, eventually, make that data available to end users, who put it to work in their adaptation efforts. The problem is this approach doesn’t […]